Video, quotes: Yogi Ferrell talks pre-draft process
Former Indiana All-American guard Yogi Ferrell is in the midst of pre-draft workouts for several NBA teams and spoke to reporters on Tuesday following a workout for the Detroit Pistons.
Here’s video of Ferrell’s comments and we’ve transcribed his comments below as well:
On how much longer the workout process will go:
“I’ll probably have six or seven more (workouts). Just trickling down, just going one-by-one, getting through them.”
On if he’s worked out before with Marcus Paige:
“Yeah, we were in Dallas together.”
On if he’s known Paige for a while:
“Yeah, we used to play against each other in AAU and played against each other in college a few games. And now we’re playing in these pre-draft workouts.”
On whether players get penalized for staying in college for four years:
“You could probably say that with the new rules of guys being able to test the waters. I feel for guys like me and Marcus, guys who stay four years, these teams have a lot of film on us, so even if they don’t get to see us work out for them, they can just go and look back at previous games to see our type of play.”
On if he was bothered by not getting invited to the draft combine:
“Not really, I was on the alternate list, unfortunately didn’t get picked. I wasn’t discouraged by it. Basically just used that time to get in the gym, get better and get ready for my first workout. I wasn’t down on myself and thinking that this was the end. I knew I had a lot of workouts lined up. I just went in with high hopes going into these workouts.”
On the biggest thing he’s had to work on or refine since his IU career ended:
“Not really refine, but make my strengths stronger, work on my weaknesses. What I’m working on is reading ball screens, different ball-screen reads, because this is a ball-screen league. And working on my pace, going from slow to fast, not playing 100 miles an hour, kind of just slowing down a little bit.”
On what teams want to see from him in workouts:
“The common theme, especially for my position in being a point guard, they want to see is, ‘do you have intangibles? Do you have something that another point guard doesn’t have? And do you do that thing well?’ And I think that’s the biggest thing that teams in the NBA want to see, so you’ve got to try and find a way to impress them with your ability on the court.”
On the intangibles he wants to show teams he has:
“Energy and the way I go out and talk to my teammates on the court. I’m a vocal leader, I’m loud to my guys, I’ll get on guys. And the biggest thing is just going into the game and trying to change the dynamic of it. Whether we’re up or down, just trying to find different ways to add energy to the team.”
On the difficulty of trying to show those things in a workout setting:
“In workouts, it’s basically 3-on-3, so I’m just talking to two other guys (laughs), that’s about it. Obviously it is kind of hard, but I feel like if they can see it now with just two guys, they’ll be able to see at the next level.”
On who he believes will win the NBA Finals:
“It’s going to be one for the ages, I’ll tell you that. I do not have a winner right now, I’ve got to think on it some more. The Cavs are playing like how they should have played last year, but obviously everybody was hurt. Now that everybody is healthy, it’s definitely going to be one of the more exciting finals.”
On what he took away from his four years at Indiana:
“Just hard work, working every single day. Coming from coach (Tom) Crean, a great coach, I feel like he developed me to be the best point guard possible. I trusted him, I trusted the coaching staff and the biggest thing there is development. I feel like they really developed me.”
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