So Long Orlando: The NBA after years of hearing how useless the Pre-Draft camps have become has given into the pressure and conceded victory for the agents. In a memo sent to NBA teams last month the league has decided it will not return to Orlando this summer, instead in its place will be a scaled back "camp" in Chicago, which will be mainly for private interviews, medical testing and measures. There will not be organized games in Chicago, although it's expected the bulk of NBA decision makers will still meet in Chicago in late May, as the "camp" has always been the breeding ground for draft day trades and lobbying and networking for coaching and front office jobs. For years the value of the "Pre-draft Camp" has decreased as more and more of top talent chooses to skip the camp in favor of picking select individual team workouts. Word is that the league will also remove the bulk of their workout restrictions from the teams. Last year teams were not able to work out players until after the camp, this year those restrictions may be done away with entirely, although a league source said yesterday that, that particular issue has not been decided. One NBA Insider said the decision to lift restrictions on workouts would likely have a dramatic impact on college basketball, saying from what's been circulating around the NBA, teams could theoretically start working guys out the day their season ends in April, which could radically change the landscape of training and in whether guys just quit working in college altogether to prepare for workouts beginning in March. League sources said they doubted that there would be no restrictions at all, but one thing is clear the decision to phase out the Pre-draft Camp will impact the fringe guys that are not sold on their place in the league and even more power will be heaped on to the agents who have become the chief manipulators of how the draft process goes.
