Players of Intrigue at the Combine

[TheSundanceKid]

My favorite part of the combine is seeing which players the Celtics end up interviewing.  Last year Terry Rozier was one of 16 players interviewed (as was Justise Winslow).  The year before Marcus Smart was one of the interviewees, and Ainge had some particularly nice things to say about him after the interview.  Kelly Olynyk was also interviewed.  So pay attention to the list of players they meet with -- one of these names is typically called on draft night by the Celtics.

Do you know if Ainge spoke to Fab Melo the year he drafted him? I'd be interested to know if that was an outlier or if it perhaps led to Ainge putting more focus on the interviews

I wasn't able to find anything that far back on the intertubes.  But there are a few key points:

1) Teams and players both have limits on the amount of interviews they can conduct or participate in.  Each team submits it's interview requests, and the NBA plays a sort of matching game.  The fewer interview requests you make, the more priority you're given for your requests, which helps prevent teams from just requesting to interview everyone.  So while I don't know if Ainge interviewed Melo, he may have requested to but not been able, or he may have had others he wanted to interview more, and so Melo was left off his list. (The only name I could find that he did interview was Meyers Leonard.)

2) I would be shocked if Melo wasn't brought in for a workout, which also affords an interview opportunity, as well as a chance to see how quickly he responds to coaching.  The only time I remember hearing about Ainge really picking blindly was with Gerald Green, who was expected to be off the board several picks before the Celtics' turn, and even that story might be more apocryphal than true.

3) I also find it somewhat noteworthy that Robert Upshaw was given an interview last year, but never made it to a workout and was passed over in the draft.  He did have to cancel some workouts because of a medical issue, so maybe it was that more than anything else, but the interview also could have been an early weed-out (no pun intended, but I really wish it were!)

Good points. I guess the Combine is just the first opportunity that they have to meet these players. It's interesting because for us as fans it's very hard to gauge each player's personalities from afar yet it must play an important part in the draft process for GMs.

Generally Ainge does seem to get mentally tough players which is nice. My only concern is when he branches out to get a guy with more "upside" but perhaps less mental drive he seems to whiff each time e.g. Melo and perhaps Young.