The college season ended more than a month ago. Surely everything the Pistons needed to know about the June 25 draft they had in hand when Duke came back to beat Wisconsin on April 6, right?
Uh, no.
Fans always want to know which college players their favorite team likes or wants or wouldn't touch in the months leading to the college draft. The truth is the evaluation process is never really complete until draft day – and that means right up until the pick must be made.
There's an axiom that rules in sports: You never make a decision until it must be made.
Turn back the clock two years ago at this time. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope was told by the advisory committee that advises college underclassmen considering a jump to the NBA on their likely draft status that he was probably looking at the back half of the first round with no guarantee he wouldn't fall to the second. After an eye-opening performance at the Chicago draft combine and impressive individual workouts for teams, he pushed himself into the lottery where the Pistons grabbed him at No. 8, one spot before Minnesota was poised to take him.
"Right now, we're in the study and re-evaluate phase," Pistons assistant general manager Brian Wright said. "You're constantly – up until the day of the draft – gathering information that will help you make an informed decision and then, as you're going through the season, you're breaking it down into little clusters so you can evaluate where you are and what you need to make the best decision."
It's a process that starts a full year in advance. When the 2015 draft ends, it will be a matter of days before Wright – whose main responsibility is the draft and overseeing the six-man scouting staff responsible not only for the American college game but the worldwide field of draft prospects – starts putting together the board for 2016.
It's not atypical for a team to designate a set number of players to track – 100, perhaps – and make adjustments as deemed necessary from there. Wright doesn't limit the field.
"I like to cast a wide net and then work backwards," he said. "We started with a much larger number (than 100) and worked our way through. Even with going to games, you have guys that obviously the scouts were aware of but you want them to use their basketball eye. That's what they're paid for. You don't tell them, 'This is exactly who you have to watch tonight.' Let the basketball game dictate who the players are."
Wright has structured his department so scouts have regional responsibilities – each is assigned a number of conferences – but a national perspective. So while Oronde Taliaferro might be based in the West and Maury Hanks in the Southeast and they're chiefly responsible for scouting players in their areas, all scouts are expected to weigh in with valid opinions on all players and develop a national perspective.
And as the draft nears and the Pistons know their spots – they'll have the 38th pick in the second round and will learn the position of their lottery pick on May 19 – the focus might narrow in one respect but not in another.
"Ten is a reasonable number," general manager Jeff Bower said for the number of prospects who might be under consideration if form holds in the lottery and the Pistons wind up picking eighth or ninth. (There's an 89 percent chance it's one of those two, a 10 percent chance they can move into the top three.) "You can probably expect one, two, three, maybe four (who are almost certain to be picked ahead of them). There's probably a consensus top couple of guys, but then after that you're going to want to be ready for whatever comes.
"We don't want to ignore anyone, frankly, because it's an opportunity to gain information and to get to know players. The goal would be to have some contact with guys that maybe are projected to go deeper in the draft to find out about them. Some changes come, movement happens, and we've still got a very valuable pick at 38, which will determine what direction we could go with that. We could go a lot of different ways with that, so we'll have a lot of work to do in that regard, as well."
Stan Van Gundy, Bower and Wright will lead the Pistons front-office staff heading to Chicago for the NBA draft combine that starts today and runs through Sunday. The format has changed slightly this year with Thursday and Friday afternoon sessions to include some live five-on-five competition, though roughly one-third of the 62 invitees – generally, the projected potential lottery picks – are not expected to participate in that piece of the combine.
Pistons staffers will hope to meet with as many lottery candidates as possible as part of their evaluation process. Medical testing also is conducted at the combine, where in the past players like Jared Sullinger and Darrell Arthur have been flagged for existing conditions that affected their draft stock.
We'll be in attendance for the Thursday and Friday media sessions and will have complete draft preview coverage for the next seven weeks.