[Christophe Ney] For some players, that have already finished their season, the first place to be is the Orlando Pre Draft camp. Even if the level has decreased over the last years, there are still some first round picks, that come out of this first official rendez-vous of the NBA team representatives. So the number of scouts, GMs, directors of player personnel and so on is quite impressive in Orlando. But the number of European Prospects over there in Florida is quite reduced. In fact, there are only 2 players that played in Europe this season that are present to show their skills in front of the decision makers of the NBA teams: Ali Traoré from France and Renaldas Seibutis from Lithuania. If for Seibutis, this will probably be the only attendance to a camp of that style, Traoré will fly back to Europe and attend the Reebok Euro Camp which will be held in Treviso between the 9th and the 12th of June.

Other players are already announced at some camps, but will probably not be there, as they want to prepare with their respective National or Youth National teams for the upcoming European Championships. A very well known and very interesting preparation tournament for the FIBA U19 World Championship will be held in Douai in the North of France from the 6th to the 10th of June. I will be present in Douai to see some of these young kids in action as I prefer to scout players in real game setups than in a camp. The Douai tournament has a long tradition and will host this year U19 teams because of the upcoming World Championship in Serbia. Interesting players to see in Douai will be Nike Hoop Summit participants like Nicolas Batum from France or Omri Casspi from Israel. These players preferred to stay with the National team than go for a camp where they would have been dominant.

A third category of players are more underrated or even unknown players that need some publicity as they play in a weaker league or even do not play at all as they are too young to see minutes by their respective coaches. For these type of kids, an event like the Reebok Euro Camp is the ideal place to get an invitation to as they can show their skills in front of a huge number of NBA or European club officials who do not have the possibility to travel all over Europe to see them play in league games.

The last and probably the most interesting type of players are the Draft candidates that are still in the race to win their national championship with their club team. There are not much left in that case. The biggest prospect in this category is of course Tiago Splitter who plays for TAU Ceramica in Spain and will play against Wintherthur FCB in the semi finals of the ACB.

As the NBA Draft is coming closer, I will give some updates on the performances of the different European players. We will then see at the end of June for whom the camps, tournaments and workouts have been as effective that an NBA will pick a name out of the big pool of available talent.