A Look at Draft Night for the Thunder
Aug 20 2009 4:40PM
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Director of College/International Player Personnel, Rob Hennigan estimates he sees more than 100 international and college games a year.
About a thousand prospects have been evaluated, hundreds of hours of video highlights have been analyzed, almost a dozen countries have been visited and countless scenarios have been plotted.
So when the NBA Draft rolls around on Thursday, the Thunder front office will actually try to approach it like any other day. That is, until the time nears for one of the most hyped events of the year.
As the Thunder’s Director of College/International Player Personnel, Rob Hennigan has spearheaded the draft process.
Hennigan sat down with THUNDER.NBA.COM to talk about what to expect come draft day.
How many years of work go into this year’s draft?
“It starts at the point where a player becomes draft eligible. So if a player is 19 years old in the calendar year of that draft, he can technically be eligible for that draft. Whoever those players are, you have a general idea as to who that pool of players might be. You don’t know for sure until the following April when they release the Early Entry list; that tells you who’s officially in the draft. Really, when we start scouting at the beginning of the college season, we’re kind of guessing who might be in the draft. You’re really just scouting the best young players anyway. To answer your question, it’s a handful of years worth of research that lead up to finally making a decision on whether or not to draft a player.”
How many countries have you and your staff visited from the start of this draft season?
“In South America, for sure Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela…Spain, France, Serbia, Greece, Turkey, Ukraine, Italy, Australia…that’s probably it. Maybe 10 countries or so.”
How many games do you think your staff has seen in that time, both college and international?
“I would say probably 350. That’s total international games and college games – draft-related games.”
How many hours of video would you guess you’ve watched this season?
“I would just say hundreds of hours. Literally. Our video room will do a variety of edits. We’ll do an edit of just his minutes. So if a player played 38 minutes (in a game), we’ll just take those 38 minutes and take out all the commercials and stuff. We’ll look at player tendencies. If a player has a particular strength or a particular weakness, we’ll try to magnify those on a video and study those.”
What was the number of draft prospects you began the season with?
“Good question. All in all I’d say close to a thousand names. But again, if you can dribble and you have both arms and legs and you play in, like Slovakia, somehow that guy’s name is on our list. It will take us two seconds to cross him off the list, if that makes sense. To start it’s a pretty big group. But we eliminate guys pretty quickly.”
Do you put a timeframe on when you want that list narrowed?
“No, it’s more the caliber of player dictates the speed of elimination. You let the strength of the draft dictate who gets eliminated and who doesn’t. You don’t really walk in thinking, ‘we want to cut it down to 50 players by March 1.’ The caliber of the draft dictates that for us.”
Has the last few weeks leading up to the draft been the busiest time of the year for you, or is a lot of the grunt work already done?
“The way we kind of look at it, from September to April is information gathering. That’s our mantra: gather as much information as possible. And from April to June is really interpretation of all the information we’ve gathered. It’s equally as busy. It’s probably a little more hectic now because we’re trying to make sense of all the information we’ve gathered and funnel that into a decision.”
What type of hours are you working?
“It varies. I would say that this time of year we’re working 12 to 14, 15 hour days, something like that.”
In regards to draft day, when does your day start?
“In a lot of ways we treat it like any other day. We’ll get here in the morning. Draft day is kind of like the calm before the storm, the hours leading up to the draft. We’ll have rankings completed by then. We’ll have a road map on how we want to make decisions for the night. So draft day is really just about trying to gather any last minute information about players, or about the league in general – contacting other teams, trying to figure out what trades are going on, what possible trades are on the horizon. It’s stuff like that. But I think the draft day itself is more about communicating with other teams than about figuring out who you’re going to draft. That decision will have already been made for us before draft day.”
How detailed do you get with draft rankings?
“We have different rankings for different scenarios. We try to forecast in our head the intended and the unintended consequences of each decision. We’ll have a list of, ‘we’ll take this player if this player is gone. Or we’ll rank these guards if we can get this player.’ It’s really scenario-based more than just, ‘who are the best players?’”
What’s the atmosphere like in the office during the hours leading up to the draft?
“There’s a lot of excitement. You can feel the energy of the night kind of on the horizon. I think there’s a lot of…I guess excitement is the word. You just want to get to the start of the draft and figure out who will kind of land in your lap.”
How many people are actually in the war room?
“Our scouts will be in there. The whole (basketball operations staff) will be in there.”
What are you doing while the first two picks are happening?
“A lot depends on who gets picked ahead of us. We’ll just be in a position to be ready to react to the scenarios that present themselves.”
When you’re finally on the clock, is everything in place?
“Our plan is to have a detailed road map for how we’re going to make decisions. And our goal is to have that map finished before the draft starts. Once that draft starts we’ll know exactly, ‘if X happens, then we’ll do Y.’ And just follow that map. Sam (Presti) has the final say, obviously. But the process that leads to those decisions, it’s a group decision.”
Contact Chris Silva
So when the NBA Draft rolls around on Thursday, the Thunder front office will actually try to approach it like any other day. That is, until the time nears for one of the most hyped events of the year.
As the Thunder’s Director of College/International Player Personnel, Rob Hennigan has spearheaded the draft process.
Hennigan sat down with THUNDER.NBA.COM to talk about what to expect come draft day.
How many years of work go into this year’s draft?
“It starts at the point where a player becomes draft eligible. So if a player is 19 years old in the calendar year of that draft, he can technically be eligible for that draft. Whoever those players are, you have a general idea as to who that pool of players might be. You don’t know for sure until the following April when they release the Early Entry list; that tells you who’s officially in the draft. Really, when we start scouting at the beginning of the college season, we’re kind of guessing who might be in the draft. You’re really just scouting the best young players anyway. To answer your question, it’s a handful of years worth of research that lead up to finally making a decision on whether or not to draft a player.”
How many countries have you and your staff visited from the start of this draft season?
“In South America, for sure Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela…Spain, France, Serbia, Greece, Turkey, Ukraine, Italy, Australia…that’s probably it. Maybe 10 countries or so.”
How many games do you think your staff has seen in that time, both college and international?
“I would say probably 350. That’s total international games and college games – draft-related games.”
How many hours of video would you guess you’ve watched this season?
“I would just say hundreds of hours. Literally. Our video room will do a variety of edits. We’ll do an edit of just his minutes. So if a player played 38 minutes (in a game), we’ll just take those 38 minutes and take out all the commercials and stuff. We’ll look at player tendencies. If a player has a particular strength or a particular weakness, we’ll try to magnify those on a video and study those.”
What was the number of draft prospects you began the season with?
“Good question. All in all I’d say close to a thousand names. But again, if you can dribble and you have both arms and legs and you play in, like Slovakia, somehow that guy’s name is on our list. It will take us two seconds to cross him off the list, if that makes sense. To start it’s a pretty big group. But we eliminate guys pretty quickly.”
Do you put a timeframe on when you want that list narrowed?
“No, it’s more the caliber of player dictates the speed of elimination. You let the strength of the draft dictate who gets eliminated and who doesn’t. You don’t really walk in thinking, ‘we want to cut it down to 50 players by March 1.’ The caliber of the draft dictates that for us.”
Has the last few weeks leading up to the draft been the busiest time of the year for you, or is a lot of the grunt work already done?
“The way we kind of look at it, from September to April is information gathering. That’s our mantra: gather as much information as possible. And from April to June is really interpretation of all the information we’ve gathered. It’s equally as busy. It’s probably a little more hectic now because we’re trying to make sense of all the information we’ve gathered and funnel that into a decision.”
What type of hours are you working?
“It varies. I would say that this time of year we’re working 12 to 14, 15 hour days, something like that.”
In regards to draft day, when does your day start?
“In a lot of ways we treat it like any other day. We’ll get here in the morning. Draft day is kind of like the calm before the storm, the hours leading up to the draft. We’ll have rankings completed by then. We’ll have a road map on how we want to make decisions for the night. So draft day is really just about trying to gather any last minute information about players, or about the league in general – contacting other teams, trying to figure out what trades are going on, what possible trades are on the horizon. It’s stuff like that. But I think the draft day itself is more about communicating with other teams than about figuring out who you’re going to draft. That decision will have already been made for us before draft day.”
How detailed do you get with draft rankings?
“We have different rankings for different scenarios. We try to forecast in our head the intended and the unintended consequences of each decision. We’ll have a list of, ‘we’ll take this player if this player is gone. Or we’ll rank these guards if we can get this player.’ It’s really scenario-based more than just, ‘who are the best players?’”
What’s the atmosphere like in the office during the hours leading up to the draft?
“There’s a lot of excitement. You can feel the energy of the night kind of on the horizon. I think there’s a lot of…I guess excitement is the word. You just want to get to the start of the draft and figure out who will kind of land in your lap.”
How many people are actually in the war room?
“Our scouts will be in there. The whole (basketball operations staff) will be in there.”
What are you doing while the first two picks are happening?
“A lot depends on who gets picked ahead of us. We’ll just be in a position to be ready to react to the scenarios that present themselves.”
When you’re finally on the clock, is everything in place?
“Our plan is to have a detailed road map for how we’re going to make decisions. And our goal is to have that map finished before the draft starts. Once that draft starts we’ll know exactly, ‘if X happens, then we’ll do Y.’ And just follow that map. Sam (Presti) has the final say, obviously. But the process that leads to those decisions, it’s a group decision.”
Contact Chris Silva
