The NBA officially released the list of 63 players who will take part in the NBA combine, held from May 11th through May 15th, a list which contained one notable exception: Ben Simmons.
That’s not entirely surprising of course. In fact, it continues a trend in recent years where top prospects have elected to skip the combine, including Anthony Bennett in 2013, Andrew Wiggins, Jabari Parker, and Joel Embiid in 2014, and Karl-Anthony Towns and Jahlil Okafor in 2015.
Beyond Simmons, and fellow collegiate prospects Domantas Sabonis and Dejounte Murray, the list is largely void of international prospects, as many of them are still playing competitive basketball overseas. The major exception to that is Chinese big man Zhou Qi, who will be in attendance at the combine.
Even among the players who will be attending the combine, many will elect not to participate in all of the events. Some will skip just the 5-on-5 basketball games being played, as agents convince them that there is little to gain, and that it’s more likely to hurt their draft stock for fear that a bad game or two so close to the draft can stick in the back of decision makers mind. Some may also elect to sit out the athletic testing and/or shooting drills held at the combine as well.
In fact, last year no player that wound up being selected in the top 10 competed in any of the basketball or athletic testing drills at the combine.
So, if most of the top players won’t be picking up a basketball or getting their wingspan, vertical jump, or standing reach measured, what’s the purpose of the event?
Interviews, and medical testing.
For many players this will be the first time they get a chance to speak to NBA executives, and it provides them a chance to explain who they are, what makes them tick, and how they approach their craft. While additional interviews and athletic tests will be done when teams bring prospects into their own gym for private workouts, it’s the chance to make a good first impression and perhaps land a workout that may not have been on the team’s radar before the combine.
For those who do take part in the athletic testing portions of the combine it will give all of us a chance to obsess over who ran through cones a quarter of a second faster than the other, or how one player’s wingspan being 0.5 inches longer than the competition should bump him up draft boards. Welcome to the NBA draft’s silly season.
Notable exceptions
Each year the list of players invited to the combine contains a few notable exceptions, and this year’s list is no different.
Some of the higher profile players who did not get an invite were seniors such as Yogi Ferrell (Indiana), Alex Poythress (Kentucky), Damion Lee (Louisville), Fred VanVleet (Wichita State), and Sheldon McLellan (Miami)
The easiest explanation for this is the new NCAA withdrawal rules, which gives guys who have not hired an agent until late May to withdraw from the draft and retain college eligibility. In previous years, the withdrawal deadline was before the combine, and with the new rules the combine is a great opportunity for underclassmen to meet with executives and get information that is crucial to make the decision on whether or not to stay in the draft. Because of that, there’s more to gain for underclassman than there is for seniors.
With fewer invitations to the combine available to seniors, it would make other events, like the Portsmouth Invitation Tournament, a seniors-only pre-draft competition, more relevant. But top ranked seniors have traditionally declined invitations to Portsmouth, thinking they’re better than the competition and expecting to be invited to May’s combine. Of those mentioned above, none of them attended Portsmouth.
In time, as the realities of the new withdrawal system, and how that impacts the NBA combine, come into focus for seniors and their agents, behavior seems almost bound to change, and more seniors should, hopefully, accept invitations to Portsmouth. For now, however, seniors will be underrepresented at the NBA pre-draft camps, and will have to work that much harder to secure individual workouts with teams to showcase their ability and prove why they should be selected in June 23rd’s NBA draft
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