Israel Gutierrez of the Palm Beach Post writes about what teams look for during pre-draft workouts. NBA teams want to get to know players as they prepare for the draft. During private workouts from late May to mid-June, prospects are scrutinized in individual and group drills, poked, probed and measured and questioned about family, feelings and habits.

Most workouts follow the same pattern. Two to Four players take physicals before going through drills designed to measure athletic ability. "We put them through the typical drills and stuff like that prior to the workout where they're running sprints and slides and time them on those things," Heat coach Pat Riley said. "We measure their hands, their arms, their legs. We measure their height, their jumps."

After drills, the team will simulate game situations to test the players? on-court skills. Sometimes, teams choose to liven up the process. Memphis Grizzlies Director of Player Personnel Tony Barone once told two players to dribble to half-court and shoot from there. "If you make it,'' he said, "you'll make our summer team.'' Both players hit the shot.

"It was unbelievable,'' Barone said. "And neither of them could play.''

Separate from the drills is the interview process. Most teams expect the good players to perform well on the court. Before using a valuable draft pick on a player, a team will want to ensued that the player will perform well on and off the court. For the players, the interview process can be critical. Some teams even hire psychologists to give personality tests.

"Essentially, some of your best information comes not when you have a guy sitting in front of you drilling him with questions, but what happens with a guy once you drop him off at the hotel,? said Heat General Manager Randy Pfund. ?Does he go back out? How does he treat people when you're not around? We do interviews at times when we ask specific questions. But sometimes we get the same information over a lunch or a dinner."

"I think the other thing you can tell is how excited he is to work out for you," Knicks assistant coach Steve Clifford said. "You're not recruiting so it's not a major, major deal, but it's always a factor because you want people who want to play for your organization."

In the end, these workouts and interviews usually account for anywhere between 5 and 30 percent of the evaluation process. Very rarely does a player work himself out of the draft, or perform well enough to shoot himself up the charts.

"We do background checks, that's a tool," Bucks General Manager Ernie Grunfeld said. "You talk to maybe their college coaches and people that have seen him, that's a tool. You watch them, obviously that's very important, how they do in game conditions.

"This, the workout, is just another tool."