Pre-draft workouts continued at the Portland Trail Blazers practice facility on Tuesday. More marquee players (namely Tyler Hansbrough and Darren Collison) will don practice jerseys on Wednesday. There is also another group workout slated for later in the week.

Crunch time is here.

It’s all ammunition for June 25 and the NBA Draft.

But how will the Blazers strategize until that day? And what really goes on behind closed doors in a draft day "war room" when Portland’s ownership, front office, coaching staff and scouting team gather and plan to make their selections?

Here’s just a glimpse - according to someone privy to that setting and involved in the selection process - of what Portland’s “war room” looks and feels like on draft day:

If you saw us in the war room you wouldn’t think we were grinding it out because it’s a very relaxed atmosphere actually.

Guys are always joking and laughing – just a group of guys doing what they enjoy. So I wouldn’t say that it’s that serious of at atmosphere, but we do put a lot of effort into it because we do literally spend all day in the war room. For ten days, we're in that office at 7 o’clock in the morning until 7 or 8 at night. We may have dinner and then reconvene again. You ask, what could you guys be talking about all day but we talk about every possible player and try and cover every possible angle. It’s not about this job being hard or fun, but it is time consuming.

We look at video of players. We may only talk about guys for five or six minutes, but you do that for about 100 players and then you have several days of work to do because you can only watch video and discuss about so many players at a time. In an hour you can only talk about a couple players really. You are spending five or ten minutes on video, fifteen minutes talking about them. By then a half hour has already gone by.

My first draft I was shocked. We were just talking about all these guys and were only going to draft one. But that’s the point. You cover every possible angle on every imaginable player and scenario. We always start like this: Okay, if we are drafting number one, who do we pick? If we were second, who would we take? Sure, we’re at 24 now but we imagine every possible scenario. Because who knows, maybe there will be a trade. We’ve always tried to move up in the past. Maybe this year we won’t. Maybe someone will give us an offer we can’t refuse. Maybe they’ll say, we want a veteran and your first round pick and we’ll give you our earlier pick. Anything can happen.

I didn’t realize that when I was first in the war room. I thought we would just have our order of preference and wait until it’s our turn to call in our pick. I didn’t realize how much background work and behind the scenes work is being done and just having to consider so many different scenarios.  Because we make a lot of calls to other teams, but other teams are calling us too asking if we’ll trade or do this or that. Or what would we have to do to get your pick and vice versa.

The phone lines are ringing not stop. It can get confusing in the war room. You can’t hear one another. People are speaking over one another, obviously they are on the phone with someone who also can’t hear – maybe a GM who is also working with someone else in the room.

People would be amazed on how many things are discussed. When we had the number one pick (2007, Greg Oden), every single team called us. Every single team. I’m sure every single team has called the Clippers this year. Every single team called us and seemed open. That’s something I’ve learned. Why would you call the Clippers for the number one pick, as if they would give it up?

I realize now that is a bad mentality in general. You never know unless you ask.

pic via: surname.com

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