We move into the Draft Room up to nine days in advance of the draft. It’s a large conference room that’s set up for our entire scouting staff as they make final draft preparations along with me, Larry Bird and Jim O’Brien. In part, we finalize both our draft board and our evaluations of each draft prospect, but we are also in constant communication with every team in the league to get a sense on how the overall draft is shaping up. We have seven to ten phones set up. They’re not extremely busy during the pre-draft period, but on draft night they ring off the hook.

In preparation for the draft, Larry and I had conversations with almost every team in regard to trades for players, picks and possibly trading up or trading down in the draft. After those conversations had taken place, we had a fairly good idea with which teams we might be able to execute a trade.

Heading into draft night, the player we targeted was Brandon Rush. There was a sense publicly that we were targeting D.J. Augustin, but because of the trade talks involving Jermaine O’Neal which centered on trading for an established point guard, we were actually focused on Brandon. In the end, we were fortunate to get two established point guards in T.J. Ford and Jarrett Jack.

With the changes we’ve made, we feel we have taken a great step in moving the franchise forward.

As the 11th pick approached, we spoke with Portland and consummated the deal, contingent on the player they wanted being available as long as it was not Brandon Rush. Jerryd Bayless was their guy, and when he was not selected by New Jersey with the 10th pick, we finalized the deal and selected Bayless for Portland.

The deal with Toronto involving Roy Hibbert was agreed to much earlier in the day and as a result, we knew we were going to have the 17th pick. We were confident that Roy was going to be there. If he had gone earlier, we still would have made the trade but would have been extremely disappointed as he is the player we wanted. He is a solid big man with great character and big upside who helps our depth up front.

Even after we picked at 17, we aggressively tried to acquire an additional pick until the players we valued were gone. It wasn't until well into the second round that we felt the night was essentially done for us.

From a basketball standpoint, we think we've changed the team we have with players who are a better fit for Coach O'Brien's system and style of play. At the same time we have significantly improved not only our cap position for the future, but we now have the flexibility to continue to improve our team.