NBA Draft Notes: Daye Guaranteed, Lawal Injured
Gani Lawal hurt his ankle on Friday at the Nets practice facility. (jamati.com)
By Ryan Feldman
rfeldman@thehoopsreport.com
Friday, June 12, 2009
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. - Austin Daye confirmed that he has been given a guarantee by a team in the top 20. However, he shrugged off the importance of that truth by saying that every NBA team tells players they are going to draft them: "They tell everyone that. Half the guys in here have been told that they are gonna take you," Daye said, referring to the 11 other players who participated with Daye in a group workout on Friday at the Nets practice facility. "But that doesn't mean anything, because anything can happen in the Draft."
Basically, Daye was implying that a team in the top 20 has told him that they will pick him, but he isn't really buying it. He is being realistic, saying that players shouldn't trust what the NBA teams are saying at this point.
Daye said he is still not certain if he will stay in the Draft or not, and was planning on talking to his advisor Friday afternoon about Monday's draft withdrawal deadline.
He blamed his poor testing at the Draft Combine in Chicago on his injured ankle. He said he wasn't really disappointed in his results at the Combine because "my ankle was messed up" and also said that he could have gotten higher on the vertical leap, but he thought he was going to get a third attempt, but that was not the case because his second attempt was worse than his first attempt.
Daye cut his lip during Friday's group draft workout after receiving an elbow from Omri Casspi and had to leave the workout to get eight stitches.
Daye wasn't the only player to get banged up at Friday's group workout. Gani Lawal hurt his ankle during the workout. A.J. Price hurt his ankle at his last draft workout, most likely in Detroit, and wasn't able to attend this weekend's festivities. He was replaced by Jeff Teague, who was then supposed to show up for Friday's session but missed his flight. Instead, Teague was moved to Saturday, and Patrick Beverley replaced Teague on Friday.
It is not certain how serious both Price and Lawal's ankle injuries are, but neither are expected to be affected too much.
Speaking of Beverley, please notice the spelling: BEVERLEY. I was talking to Beverley on Friday at the group workout about how everyone is spelling his last name wrong. Take a look all over the internet and you will see that half the time, his last name is spelled "Beverly" instead of "Beverley." Even major newspapers and other publications are getting it wrong. I even showed him that the official 2009 NBA Draft Guide that is used by the NBA, media members and team executives spells his last name wrong, but yet it spells his mother's last name correctly, which is the same last name, in his bio. Patrick was very upset about this, and I assured him that I will go out of my way to make sure nobody continues to spell BEVERLEY incorrectly. It would be quite embarrassing if his name is spelled wrong on Draft night.
23 of the 30 NBA teams were represented at the Nets practice facility: the Nets, Hawks, Celtics, Bulls, Cavaliers, Mavericks, Nuggets, Warriors, Rockets, Pacers, Lakers, Grizzlies, Heat, Hornets, Knicks, Magic, Sixers, Blazers, Kings, Spurs, Raptors, Jazz and Wizards. Some of the familiar faces at the draft workout included Larry Bird (Pacers), Danny Ainge (Celtics), Kiki Vandeweghe (Nets), Donnie Walsh (Knicks), Ed Stefanski (Sixers), Tony DiLeo (Sixers) and B.J. Armstrong (Wasserman Media Group agent), among many others.
To check out which players participated on Friday and which players are participating on Saturday and Sunday, check out the Draft Workouts page and click on any of the 23 teams that were in attendance.
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