Report: New York Knicks conducted improper workouts
The New York Knicks may have violated NBA rules by hosting secret workouts of college players in gyms throughout Atlanta over the past four years, according to Yahoo! Sports.
NBA regulations restrict teams from working out players before the beginning of the NBA’s pre-draft camp.
According to the report, which cited three players reportedly involved in the workouts, Rodney Heard, director of East Coast scouting for the Knicks, was the one who organized and conducted
the sessions.
Brandon Rush, entering his third NBA season with the Indiana Pacers this year, suffered a knee injury during one of the aforementioned workouts in 2007 that forced him to miss out on the
NBA Draft that year.
“It was [during] drill work, doing a three-man weave,” Rush said in a recent interview. “I went up for a dunk, came down and that was it. It was a quick pop in my knee.”
Rush confirmed that Heard was indeed running the workout and mentioned another player involved in the clandestine sessions. “One guy I do remember was Joe
Crawford from Kentucky."
When contacted, Crawford did admit attending the workout and seeing Rush succumb to the injury.“You don’t want to see that happen to anyone,” said Crawford, who would not confirm or deny
the presence of Heard. “I knew that he could be a top-five pick and I was just hoping and praying he was going to recover.”
As for Heard himself, he denied the entire story.
“That’s so far from the truth,” Heard said. “Someone called me and told me he (Rush) got hurt. I was in Florida at our staff meetings.”
When Heard was informed that Rush said he was running the workouts, he responded: “I wasn’t there. That’s a lie.”
Former Knicks president Isiah Thomas, who hired Heard in 2006, declined an interview with Yahoo! Sports. Donnie Walsh, who succeeded Thomas, denied any involvement. “I don’t know anything
about this. I didn’t know any of our scouts worked out people like this. They know they’re not supposed to.”
At the centre of the allegations is Heard’s close relationship with player agent Chris Luchey, who represents, among others, current Knick Wilson Chandler, DePaul’s Dar Tucker, Baylor’s
Ekpe Udoh, and Notre Dame’s Tory Jackson, all players who reportedly participated in the Heard-led workouts.
One Western Conference executive, speaking on condition of anonymity, said holding workouts such as these can provide a team with a considerable advantage. “The more information that you
can get on a player, the better off you are in this business. If we could bring in underclassmen for two weeks and get to know them even better, we would all do it.”
“Say we played Player ‘X’ from watching him play in college for a year. And then, we bring him in for a couple of weeks and he acts like a complete whack job – or he can’t do what we thought
on the floor, or he’s late every day. That tells you a lot.”
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