I'm buying into Bynum for now, as you all have heard me harp about how we need a high ceiling player, but right now I'm putting Ike ahead of the Splitter's and Petro's of the world. 6'9 with a 7'4 wingspan, GREAT post skills, ferocious rebounder, shotblocker and can nail an NBA 3 point shot and has a handle. Also an elite level athlete with a chisled body.

#

The NBA draft is starting to really heat up.

NBA teams are in full workout mode. Some teams are bringing in as many as eight prospects a day  a necessity with 108 underclassmen declaring for the draft.

The entire league will descend upon Chicago Tuesday for the NBA pre-draft camp. As soon as it's over, most will be on a plane to Treviso, Italy, to watch many of the top international prospects work out at the Reebok Eurocamp.

During the last 10 days of individual workouts, Insider's been burning up cell phones talking to NBA scouts and general managers to get their thoughts heading into the Chicago pre-draft camp.

Here's what we've learned:

Stock up

# We've been dogging Arizona State's Ike Diogu and Kansas' Wayne Simien for years because of numerous NBA scouting reports that had them both listed at 6-foot-7 in shoes. NBA scouts hold firm to a threshold that says a player must to be a minimum of 6-foot-8 in shoes to play the power forward position (Charles Barkley notwithstanding). Neither Diogu nor Simien has the perimeter skills to make the transformation to the three, so they've picked up the derogatory "biggie smalls" designation.

Ooops. Our bad. Both players were in Denver May 31 for a workout and a startling truth was uncovered: Both guys are taller than we thought they were.

According to a source inside the Nuggets, Simien measured 6-8 without shoes. NBA teams add another 1¼ inches for shoes, bringing his height up to 6-9¼

Diogu measured 6-foot-7½ in socks, with an amazing 7-foot-4 wingspan. That means he's nearly 6-9 in shoes with the reach of a 7-footer.

Size matters in the NBA, and both players are now tall enough to be considered legit power forwards. In fact, Diogu, because of his wingspan, now figures to be on the tall end of things.

Combine that with feedback from several teams that both players have been excellent in workouts and you can expect both to rocket up the boards in the next few weeks.

Combine Diogu's toughness with a very good skill set, and he's going to look great in these types of workouts. What's surprised people is his shooting. Diogu is known as a guy who works his butt off in the paint. But he's shown teams that he has legitimate NBA 3-point range in workouts. Given a pretty solid handle, his size, toughness and that improving jump shot, Diogu is likely to move up our board big-time the next time our mock draft is released, after the Chicago camp. Based on what we're hearing, he might be a late lottery selection now.

"If a team wants a four who's going to know how to score and rebound in this league," one NBA scout told Insider. "I don't know how they can miss with Ike. After watching him work out, we came away a lot more impressed."

Simien also has been very good. He's not an amazing athlete, but he's shown great skills and polish at every workout. He has the ability to score down low and away from the basket. If his medicals check out at the Chicago physicals (some teams are concerned about a rash of injuries for Simien), he should be able to crack the top 20.

# Diogu and Simien aren't the only ones measuring up. Florida's David Lee was 6-8½ without shoes at the same workout in Denver. That puts him at nearly 6-10 in shoes. Lee has also been impressive at all of his workouts, garnering high praise in Phoenix, Utah and Denver for his athleticism, motor and toughness. If he had a jump shot he'd be a lock for the first round. Even without a jumper, some teams in the 20s are saying that he's in the mix.

# Spain's Fran Vasquez is putting on a show in his homeland at the moment. While most of the top international prospects are still young and relatively inexperienced, Vasquez is playing a major starting role on his team, averaging 12.6 points and eight rebounds per game in the playoffs for Malaga. He was very good earlier in the week in an elimination game, leading his team in both points (18) and rebounds (11).

Those might not seem like huge numbers for Americans, but in Europe, for someone age 22, they're pretty big.

The Hornets (fourth pick), Jazz (sixth pick), Raptors (seventh pick) and Knicks (eighth pick) are all showing major interest in Vasquez. He should be the first international player off the boards.

# Louisville's Francisco Garcia is also playing to rave reviews right now. He has shot lights out in workouts and proven to be a better athlete than originally thought. Teams still worry a little about his body and lateral quickness, but he, too, seems to be a player destined to crack the first round in our next mock draft.

# Rashad McCants has gotten his fair share of bad press over the past couple of years. Scouts uniformly rate him, on talent, as one of the 10 best prospects in the draft. But he was such a difficult player to coach in college that red flags have gone up. To make matters worse, he showed up at his first workout in Toronto with a bad case of intestinal illiness.

After the workout, another participant, Julius Hodge, unaware that McCants was ill, ripped into him, saying, "We started the workout, and I was working with Rashad. We were doing shooting drills, and I was hitting everything. I think it was getting discouraging for him and near the end he decided to go to the sidelines in an attempt to say that he was hurt. Once it was found out that he wasn't hurt, he then tried to say he was sick. That was unfortunate; he was free and able to show his stuff, and he shied away from it."

McCants ended up having to sit out the rest of the workout. So why is he on the upside list? Because sources with the Lakers and Clippers watched him work out in Los Angeles just before his trip to Toronto and both came away convinced he'll be gone before they draft at Nos. 10 and 12, respectively.

"That was as good a workout as I've seen," a source on the Lakers told Insider. "He didn't miss. He's a better athlete than we thought. It was just amazing. I know he's got some baggage, but with that much talent, it's tough to see teams passing on him at the end of the day."

# Illinois guard Dee Brown looks like he'll be the headliner at the Chicago pre-draft camp. Most of the top prospects are pulling out  even Lee and Hodge have withdrawn their names in recent days  leaving Brown the guy NBA teams want to see most.

Why? Because Brown is going to get a chance to play the point at the camp, something he wasn't able to do at Illinois with Deron Williams running the show. If he's impressive, his stock will get a nice bump  probably into the first round.

# Italian big man Angelo Gigli has a name that sounds like a bad movie, but he has received high marks from a couple of NBA teams after workouts. While they say he isn't as athletic as advertised, he measured a legit 7-foot in shoes and was tougher and more skilled than teams had thought. Off the workouts, his name is generating a bit of buzz.

# Big man Deji Akindele also has played to strong reviews. He's measuring a legit 7-foot and has tested off the charts athletically. Teams are saying he's smart and picks up things quickly, but he's still pretty raw. He'll also be playing in the Chicago pre-draft camp. If he comes up big there, he'll be another guy who could see his stock really rise.

Stock down?

# It's been a tough couple of weeks for Pittsburgh's Chris Taft. First it was his lackluster workout in New York. Then he went up to Toronto and the normally reserved Rob Babcock wondered aloud about his heart.

"That's the toughest thing to measure," the Raptors GM told the Globe and Mail after the Taft workout. "Even the mind's easier to measure than the heart. It's difficult. It's very difficult.

"I think Chris is still very raw and he would certainly be better served & by going back to school. He has a tremendous amount of potential, there's no doubt. But there's a lot of guys with a great amount of potential. It's what you can do with that and whether you can develop that, that's the key."

Of course, Taft can't go back to school. He's already hired an agent. I wonder if his agent, Billy Ceisler, will now ban Babcock from all of his client's workouts as well.

Combine that with the recent revelations about the actual height of Simien and Diogu, and there's a good chance Taft will be sliding down to the bottom of the first round  and maybe even out of it, according to one NBA director of player personnel who claims his team has Taft ranked as the 10th-best power forward in the draft.

Maybe that's why, in the past few days, Taft's agent has reversed course and agreed to start working out Taft for teams in the 20s after insisting to them for weeks that he'd be in the lottery.

# High school guard Louis Williams said earlier in the week he won't be attending the University of Georgia and will instead keep his name in the NBA draft. From what we hear, it's a major mistake. Williams was recently destroyed in a workout against Hodge. Afterward, everyone told him he needed to go to college for a minimum of two years. Instead, he went out the next day and said he's staying in the draft. Either he knows something we don't, or he's getting some very bad advice.

# Nemanja Aleksandrov has, for the most part, fallen off the radar screen since tearing his ACL earlier in the year. According to his agent, David Bauman, the chances of his playing in the NBA next year are slim. He won't be able to begin playing basketball until December, which means it's likely he'll stay in Europe at least one season to rehab.

Bauman, however, hasn't pulled him out of the draft yet. According to Bauman, Aleksandrov has received a strong nibble from a team in the mid-first round and he and Bauman are trying to decide the best course of action. If he were to recover and play well next year in Europe, his stock would be much higher. However, by agreeing to something now, he would have security.

Neither consideration is primary, according to Bauman: "He just needs to get drafted by the right team. Draft position really doesn't matter. What matters is that a player gets with the right team that believes in him and will do what it takes to develop him. That's the most important thing."

# Insider first reported on Thursday that Croatian guard Marko Tomas had signed a five-year deal with Real Madrid. That deal doesn't have an NBA buyout for this season, and the buyout amount is pretty high in Year 2, meaning it's unlikely he'll be in the NBA for at least two more seasons.

While there are a few teams in the mid-to-late first round who are still pondering whether to guarantee him a first-round spot and keep him in Europe, the revelation probably means that Tomas withdraws from the draft.

It's unfortunate for the NBA. As far as international prospects go, he was one of the few who was actually ready to come into the league and play immediately.

The rest

# New Mexico's Danny Granger has played to rave reviews in all of his workouts. But after a recent workout at Golden State, he was sent to the hospital with a serious infection.

Those with a weak stomach probably don't want to read on.

Apparently Granger split the toenail on his big toe several weeks ago and didn't have it checked. Puss started growing under the toenail and Granger decided to remove the toenail himself to clean it out.

The toe kept getting worse and Granger kept slowing down in workouts. After a so-so workout in Golden State, the team's trainer wondered if he was hurt and was shocked to see Granger's toe, which had become seriously infected.

Granger was taken to the hospital. Doctors said that the infection had spread all the way to the bone, and put him on antibiotics. Granger was forced to shut down his workouts while it healed.

However, he won't be out for long. He has a big workout schedule for Thursday in Chicago against Hakim Warrick that's open to all 30 teams.

i do know that bynum is 7 foot in bare feet with a 7-5 wingspan, but his doctors say he is not done growing.

Hey if we had the 1st pick and the best player in the draft happened to be a superstar PF I would take him in a second and worry about trading and bench the other PFs on this team later. But like I said I can live with a C or SG bust but I will give up on the NBA if we add a 7th PF bust!

Posted by Ira:

Another interesting thing about Diogu is that he's taken almost as many free throw attempt as field goal attempts last season (311/398). He's very tough to stop inside.

yeah thats very impressive. Good luck to him and the team that drafts him. Sweetney also attempted a ton of foul shots in college

Exactly!

make that:
0 centers
2 guards
0 SGs

even if Crawford bulks up he still needs to shoot better than 39% which he hasn't done so far in his career. We need a SG who can shoot to go along with Marbury and Bynum

Posted by Killa4luv:

The part about Akindele was the most exciting to me. He should be looked at carefully.

it would be great if he dropped to 30 and we picked up another mid 1st round pick and drafted a SG

Posted by BRIGGS:

Posted by Ira:

Another interesting thing about Diogu is that he's taken almost as many free throw attempt as field goal attempts last season (311/398). He's very tough to stop inside.

He's a very good player, but if anyone thinks the Knicks are going to draft another undersized PF when they have 9 of them, they are nuts. He could be superior to any of our 4s[i think simien is, hes better than diogu]but it doesnt matter, we are overstocked at that position.

Lets go over our roster again

6-9 235 Kurt Thomas
6-8 255 Mo taylor
6-8 260 Mike Sweetney
6-6 245 Malik Rose
6-9 220 JYD
6-9 260 Jackie Butler
6-10 240 Tim Thomas
6-8 200 Trevor Ariza 8 Forwards

2 Guards 0 centers

So if Phoenix had a bunch of PFs, then they should have passed on Amare? You HAVE to take the BPA and then you can clear room on that roster for him by making lateral moves.

You go BPA. Then if the guys are close, you go need.

I have Granger, Wright, and Graham pretty closely graded (I like Granger and Wright a little more)..

I think Diogu has similar value. The nice thing about Granger, Wright, and Graham is they can play two positions.. Granger can actually play three.

Posted by Allanfan20:

Just what kind of lateral moves are you talking about, and who do YOU think will be the Best player available?

A Weatherspoon for Norris type of deal. Kurt and JYD have reasonable contracts (JYD is one year away from an expiring one) and should not be hard to move if you have reasonable expectations about the kind of player you'll get in return. Sweetney should not be hard to move if you want to move him.
As I've stated before, I don't follow college ball much. I'd have no idea who the best player available is.