With free agency winding down, the NBA is heading toward its usual August-September dormancy.
But there’s plenty of NBA activity going on in Las Vegas right now. Not that you’ll hear much about it.
Denver Nuggets assistant coach Tim Grgurich is holding his annual summer camp this week, and it is likely the least publicized event on the NBA’s calendar. Actually, it’s not even on the calendar.
Which is exactly how Grgurich wants it.
Grgurich has been an NBA assistant coach for 17 seasons, 11 of them under George Karl. Grgurich is widely respected in the basketball community and acknowledged as one of the best individual workout instructors in the league.
But Grgurich makes a point to stay under the radar, which goes double for his camp.
The media is not allowed at Grgurich’s camp … and no agents, either. It's held at an innocuous high school about 15 minutes out of town. Grgurich also refuses to speak with the media, and has had that policy for years.
Rodney Stuckey Marcus Williams, Richard Hendrix, C.J. Watson and Anthony Morrow are there for the Warriors, and other notables this year include Utah’s Paul Millsap, Stephon Marbury, Denver’s J.R. Smith, Minnesota’s Rashad McCants and dozens of other pros and non-pros _ approximately 60 in all.
But the camp isn’t only for players. In fact, it is just as much for NBA assistant coaches. Several teams _ including the Warriors, who have been a staple at the camp _ send their coaching staffs.
One of the goals of the camp is to familiarize young players with NBA practice concepts and terminology. Players receive a lot of individual attention, and of course, there is plenty of scrimmaging.
The competition is said to be strong, with NBA veterans consistently popping in.
The camp is also beneficial to assistant coaches because they get a sense for how other teams go about practicing or working guys out, the drills they use, etc. Obviously, there’s a networking factor.
Gary Payton Grgurich’s camp is important enough that many NBA general managers and coaches will stop in at some point during the week. Grgurich’s camp is said to be where Detroit’s Rodney Stuckey began bursting onto the scene a year ago.
Grgurich’s camp wasn’t always in Vegas, and it wasn’t always so popular. It began in the early 1990s in Oakland, CA, and in the early, early days he had just one camper: Gary Payton.
Grgurich, then an assistant with Seattle, used to come to the Bay Area and work with Payton, particularly on Payton’s jump shot. Eventually, the likes of Chris Mullin, Shawn Kemp and Tim Hardaway glommed on.
And it took off from there. James Dailey, who was a star at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, CA, was part of a three-man workout along with Grgurich and Payton back in the day.
“The one thing I remember was that Grgurich was sweating as much, if not more, than Gary,” Dailey said.
That’s what’s probably going on this week in Vegas. A lot of sweating. But who knows?
