For Wesley Saunders, Predraft Workouts Are About Proving He Belongs in the NBA
LOS ANGELES — It's a cliche among employment seekers that finding a job is a full-time gig in and of itself. If that's the case, Wesley Saunders has spent the past few months working several jobs just to find one in the NBA.
Since finishing up his playing career at Harvard this past spring, Saunders has flown to at least 10 different cities—from his hometown of Los Angeles out west to New York in the east, from Chicago up north to Orlando down south—to visit with and audition for prospective teams.
You might recognize Saunders from any of his four appearances with Harvard in the NCAA tournament, with upsets over New Mexico in 2013 and Cincinnati in 2014. Or, perhaps his distinction as the 2013-14 Ivy League Player of the Year rings a bell.
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Collegiate accolades aside, what may pique the interest of NBA teams is his combination of size (6'5", 220 lbs with a 6'9" wingspan), strength and versatility on both sides of the ball.
At Harvard, Saunders grew into an attacking combo guard who could defend multiple positions, but he left observers with questions about his long-range shooting, his athleticism and the quality of his competition. As elite as the Ivy League may be academically, it leaves much to be desired athletically. That being said, some of his best performances as a collegian came against highly regarded opponents from stronger conferences.
| Nov. 13, 2012 | UMass | 18 | 1 | 5 |
| Nov. 20, 2012 | Saint Joseph's | 18 | 9 | 6 |
| Dec. 4, 2012 | Boston College | 18 | 4 | 5 |
| Dec. 29, 2012 | California | 18 | 3 | 1 |
| March 21, 2013 | New Mexico | 18 | 4 | 3 |
| Dec. 7, 2013 | Boston University | 25 | 5 | 5 |
| Jan. 1, 2014 | Boston College | 21 | 6 | 2 |
| March 22, 2014 | Michigan State | 22 | 3 | 2 |
| Nov. 25, 2014 | Houston | 24 | 10 | 4 |
| Dec. 28, 2014 | Arizona State | 15 | 3 | 3 |
| March 19, 2015 | North Carolina | 26 | 4 | 5 |
But before Saunders crisscrossed the country to reaffirm his strengths and dispel concerns about his perceived weaknesses, he spent countless hours in gyms around L.A. with David Nurse, a noted "shot doctor" and all-around NBA trainer, running through drills and fine-tuning his game in preparation for the most important interviews of his life.
Using information from his contacts with teams around the league, Nurse crafted workouts for Saunders to address the areas that scouts and front-office personnel would be looking for—specifically, the improvement of his shot, his defensive versatility and his consistency.
"It's like cramming as best possible for the ACT or SAT," Nurse told Bleacher Report, "and I do that with connections directly to what teams are looking for."
"He's trying to simulate game situations and game reads," Saunders said of Nurse. "Going through these drills by yourself, when you get to team workouts, you've got two to five people in there with you; it's going to be a lot easier because you've been through this by yourself."
Bleacher Report got a sneak peek at some of the workouts Nurse ran with Saunders on the practice courts at USC's Galen Center during the spring. The drills below were tailored both to Saunders' game and the expectations of the teams for whom he'd audition, but the process is familiar to countless young basketball players who aspire to play in the NBA and the trainers who help to guide them there.
The process of evaluating a player's fitness for a given team begins with what he does well.
Beyond intelligence and intangibles, Saunders' best selling point might be his versatility as a perimeter defender. He already has the size, strength and length to match up with guards and wings.
But in the NBA, where pace and tempo are more paramount than ever, it's not enough to be a lockdown defender in the half court. For players like Saunders, it's crucial to not only get back on defense to stymie transition opportunities but also to match up with the right man while doing so—and to have the stamina to make it all happen seamlessly.
Such is the aim of the drill below: to test and strengthen Saunders' ability to move from one end of the floor to the other and back again. It begins with a made basket, continues with him staying in front of an offensive player (in this case, Nurse) who is pushing the ball up the floor and ends with Saunders spotting up for an ever-more-ubiquitous corner three.
"The ball is pushed ahead in transition, so Wes, being the point guard in this situation, has to be the first one back on D," said Nurse. "We focus on the importance of the first two steps going offense to defense and defense to offense transition."
"Honestly, the full-court defense, he's just trying to get you tired," Saunders said afterward. "It's the last drill, so I think it's just more of a mental thing, just to see if you can close out strong.
"So he'll have you go full court, play defense on him, try to tire you out and then sprint to the corner and see if you can make shots when you're tired—kind of like to simulate the fourth quarter and see if you can finish strong."
"Three different high-level game situations in one drill," Nurse added.
Defense will play a huge part in whether Saunders catches on in the NBA, but he'll need to be more than a stopper to stick. And frankly, he and his camp have marketed him as more than that.
"When teams have asked me, I've been saying Wesley Matthews," Saunders said when asked how he's been pitching himself. "I think that when he came out of college, he had the same body type—like 6'5", 215 pounds. He wasn't a knockdown shooter like he is now. He had questions about that. He wasn't super athletic, so I think there's a lot of similarities there."
Indeed, Matthews was no high-volume marksman coming out of Marquette. Like Saunders, Matthews was more of an attacking guard in college. Not until he was a senior did he attempt more than 100 threes in a single season.
"I was a liability," Matthews told Sports Illustrated's Rob Mahoney of his rookie campaign with the Utah Jazz. "Teams were sagging off me, were leaving me and it was kinda crowding space so I had to become a player who can make shots."
Any team that takes a flier on Saunders this summer will likely expect him to do the same. He was no volume shooter, but to his credit, he knocked down 42.5 percent of his 73 threes at Harvard last season.
For Saunders, then, it's imperative that he answers any questions about his shooting ability not with numbers and relatively small samples but with sharp in-person displays of marksmanship within game-like scenarios.
In the drill below, Nurse puts Saunders through a series of simulated screening actions. The point here is to familiarize Saunders with the sorts of situations in which most NBA players actually get their shots: within the confines of a highly choreographed offense rather than as off-the-dribble freelancers.
Saunders starts by setting a cross screen and moving down toward the top of the arc, by way of a pindown, to free himself for a three. From there, he uses a flare screen to create space for a three on the wing and subsequently capitalizes on his forward momentum to finish at the basket.
"[There is] a lot more structure...there's just little small things you can do to get the advantage," Saunders said, "because in the NBA, everybody's quicker, faster, stronger, so you've got to do everything you can to get the advantage."
As such, setting and using screens efficiently and effectively will be key to his future in pro basketball.
In the next clip, Saunders simulates pulling up for a mid-range jumper off a ball screen while a defender is hot on his tail. When it comes to live game situations, Saunders will have to decide whether to shoot, pass or drive after such a screen, depending on how the defense plays him.
The sharper he is with that shot, the more defenses will have to respect it, and in turn, the better his options will be. The addition of the corner three at the end of the drill is meant, once again, to shore up his ability to knock down one of the most popular shots in the game today—one that coaches, scouts and executives around the league will want to see from him.
"The ability to make corner threes is huge in the NBA," said Nurse, "and Wes is a very high-level three-and-D-type player."
As important as shooting ability and defensive know-how are to becoming a true three-and-D threat in the NBA, doing so also requires a certain baseline of athleticism. To become the next Matthews, Trevor Ariza, Danny Green or Jimmy Butler—and, in Saunders' case, defend those guys (among others)—a player must bring to the table a combination of lateral quickness, leaping ability and north-south speed.
As with his shot, Saunders came into the predraft process dogged, in some corners, by questions about his athleticism. Here, he puts a portion of those concerns to rest by dribbling around a screen and flying in for a reverse, double-pump slam.
Teams have their own means of testing and measuring a player's athleticism, but Saunders could encounter a simple drill like this just about anywhere he goes.
What's next for someone like Saunders?
If the cornucopia of mock drafts on the Internet are any indication, Saunders may not be one of the 60 players picked in the 2015 draft. Whether or not he hears his name called on draft night, he will have to earn his spot on an NBA roster—first in summer league and then in training camp.
Even if he makes it to the regular season, he'll probably have to work his way up a depth chart and hope for a lucky break or two. The same was true for Matthews, who may not have broken out in Utah in 2009-10 had Kyle Korver and C.J. Miles not succumbed to injuries.
For now, all Saunders can do is wait and hope that the hard work he put in, before prying eyes and behind closed doors, moves him closer to his dream job.
"You never know what to expect," said Saunders, "so you've just got to be ready for anything."
Josh Martin covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter.
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