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During an NBA off season, news comes out in fits and spurts and it's not always easy to get a separate story up on BSotS as fast as we want. So, let's keep this open thread to discuss news as it breaks.
Daily Draft Workouts
For the first time in years, the Phoenix Suns are making draft workouts available to the media. We can get in to the last ten minutes of the workout, and then speak to players, Hornacek and front office folks. Either Kris (from SB Nation NBA and nbadraftinsider.com) or I will be there most every day.
The Suns will hold pre-draft workouts with 4 to 6 players every day between now and Monday.
The team is not advertising participants in each workout until we arrive, so we can't preview the daily activities. But once the practice is over and interviews are done, we'll tweet out the participants and maybe even some pics. And then each night, we'll recap what went down.
Based on twitter, it appears that Shabazz Muhammad, Victor Oladipo, Cody Zeller and Rudy Gobert are already in town. Not sure if they are all working out today, together, but it will be soon.
UPDATE: Confirmed by Habbas and Coro: Guards Ben McLemore, Michael Carter-Williams, Victor Oladipo and Shabazz Muhammad squaring off TODAY (Wed, June 5), with Gobert and Zeller the bigs. All are listed in the top-15 of just about every Big Board. I love it when the top players agree to work out against each other!
CORRECTION: MCW not working out today. The other 5 are good to go, plus EJ Singler and Jared Berggren. Alex Len is also in town, but not working out (injury) and suns.com just posted a piece on Anthony Bennett who is also injured and not working out for teams before the draft.
The Suns currently hold the #5, #30 and #57 picks - a range wide enough to attract just about every prospect to Phoenix.
Horny's assistants
McDonough mentioned the other day that Jeff Hornacek may have finalize his assistants by the end of this week. Hornacek ran the first draft workout on Monday with the help of Suns staffers, but it sure seems like he'd prefer to have his whole staff there with him over these next six days. I'll keep an eye out for new faces.
I would love it if Hornacek would keep Noel Gillespie on staff from last year, and bring in an old face of the franchise (Grant Hill and/or Eddie Johnson).
But even more important than those feel-good hires, I hope Hornacek hires a solid veteran coach as his lead assistant to help Horny transition into being a real head coach. Someone needs to help him learn how to run a team, and a solid vet (like Mark Jackson did with hiring Mike Malone two years ago, for example) would go a long way in that regard.
Draft promises
Some guys are already cancelling their workouts, likely due to draft promises. Don't expect to see Sergey Karasev (projected mid-first) in Phoenix, since he just flew back to Russia till the draft. The Greek freak - 6'9" PG Giannis Adetokunbo - has already left the country, as has Dennis Schroeder (PG, Germany). All are projected as mid-to-late first rounders.