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I have watched the NBA draft just about every year, so to see myself up there, that is something I am excited about.
I wrote a draft of 'Playboy' for Warner Brothers, and it was impossible to really be independent of Hugh Hefner. In the end, Hugh Hefner was unable to take the back seat required to be able to write something about him that I felt I could do.
I have always had great respect for those who served. In my time, we had the draft.
It's hard to change a roster around. You've got to hit your draft picks right, you've gotta hit free agency right, and a team's got to fit together.
I had that mindset that I feel that I am the best prospect in the draft, but everything happens for a reason.
I generally write a first draft that's pretty lean. Just get the story down.
The benefit of this kind of outlining is that you discover a story's flaws before you invest a lot of time writing the first draft, and it's almost impossible to get stuck at a difficult chapter, because you've already done the work to push through those kinds of blocks.
As flashy as draft picks are, the reality of them helping out in Year One anyway is not necessarily the case. That's not the reality.
I talk about the NFL Draft on a daily basis because this is the sport I cover - this is the show I do - and I talk about everything that's taking place every single day.
With no draft, the only people who went to war were those who wanted to, or at least those who wanted to join the military.
I write every first draft - almost every draft, but certainly the first - by hand on blank white pieces of paper, so I don't know how long it is as I'm writing; it just piles up, and then I input it all in my computer, and I learn how long it is.
You never know what's going to happen in the draft. You just wait until your name gets called and then things happen.
Once I've got the first draft down on paper then I do five or six more drafts, the last two of which will be polishing drafts. The ones in between will flesh out the characters and maybe I'll check my research.
So, there's no guarantee in the NFL that if you've got the No. 1 pick or you've got a top-five pick, that you're going to be able to draft a franchise quarterback.
When the draft comes and goes, there's a certain set of players you acquire and there's a whole bunch of others you had interest in acquiring. That doesn't die.
As a matter of policy from the beginning with our team, there have been three things we've said we won't draft a player: if they've been involved in domestic violence, drug abuse, or if they show lack of respect for authority.
Whenever you're coming out in the same draft class with anybody, you're going to be compared to them, but I'm not super worried about that.
I'm a wide-open book. I talk to guys coming out in the draft every year. I'm a wide-open book. I'll give you my experiences. And I'll tell you what I went through. But I would never project on another player that you should do this or you should do that.
I didn't care about the draft. I didn't want to do the workouts - they put you in two-on-two full-court drills with guards. That's not going to help me.
I would advise any beginning writer to write the first drafts as if no one else will ever read them - without a thought about publication - and only in the last draft to consider how the work will look from the outside.
I write an actual script rather quickly - a draft will take me two weeks - but I write a lot of drafts. My big thing is I don't re-read. When I write, I never re-read back. I'll send it, because if I re-read back, it will cripple me.
I still wake up thinking about draft choices we should have made that would have impacted the franchise for a long time, but I don't wake up thinking about one individual player move.
Mess up and draft somebody at my position, because you are going to sit around and watch him sit the bench. That's always been my mentality. I see it as a challenge.
I have worked out with the Thunder, Lakers, Knicks, Grizzlies, Spurs, and a few others before the draft. I have worked out primarily against shorter and supposedly faster players in these workouts.
After I finished my first draft of 'Salvage the Bones,' I felt that I wasn't political enough. I had to be more honest about the realities of the community I was writing about.
Generally I finish a first draft in 2-6 months, then I set it aside for a while so that when I come back to it I can read it with fresh eyes and figure out how to improve it.
I think I got spoiled and that writing a short story and getting it published, or writing a novel and getting it published, you pretty much get to do the first, second and third draft yourself without a whole lot of interference.
I'm not a fast writer, and I find the process of writing a first draft to be painful and frustrating. Usually, I start with a character, a premise, and some image that gives me a particular feeling.
I was thinking about the NBA after my fourth year, but I also realized I could get my master's paid for and have another year on the court to raise my draft stock even higher. I felt if I could do those things, I could have my cake and eat it, too.
Many first-time novelists end up rewriting their first two or three chapters, trying to get them 'just right.' But the point of the first draft is not to get it right; it's to get it written - so that you'll have something to work with.
That summer after the draft was probably the most fun I've ever had, because all I had to do every day was wake up and go work out for four or five hours. I got to play some golf, which I love to do, too, and then got to hang out with my family.
It was even hard to imagine I was going to play in the NBA, because so many guys playing in Europe are not even getting to the Euroleague and everything. But everybody wants to play in the NBA. So when draft night came, it was a dream come true.
When it comes to the draft process, I'm going to be - I'm not going to say anything stupid - but I'm going to be my authentic, true self, and hopefully someone in an organization says, 'That's my guy.'
On draft day, I wasn't really nervous at all. Then you turn on the draft, the first five picks go by, and then you still thinking, 'Oh man, I don't know where I'm going to go.' It's really just, by the time draft hits, that's when you get nervous.
My own feeling is that one should refuse to participate in any activity that implements American aggression - thus tax refusal, draft refusal, avoidance of work that can be used by the agencies of militarism and repression, all seem to me essential.
So I'm going to tell you, it's going to be a good year. There are good players all over this country, and it is our job as a scouting department to find them, draft them, sign them, develop them, and help us to continue to win championships. So it's going to be a good year.
I don't want to be that guy that thinks he is a high draft pick and that he has it all.
The draft is like game day on a 3rd-and-5. You have a lot of plays you can choose from. You go with your gut, pick and play and hope it works.
To a lot of people, I might just be the guy who went No. 1 in the draft. Or the guy who lost his job to Colin Kaepernick. Or the guy who helped turn a 2-14 Chiefs team into a back-to-back division champ... but then couldn't put them over the top.
The Draft is about the re-generation of hope and excitement for teams. Every pick your team makes could be the next Tom Brady. He could be the guy who turns around the fortune of the franchise.
I received my draft notice right after graduation from college and had three months before going into the Army in September to think about it.
I learned that Yao Ming broke his navicular bone like five days before the 2009 draft. From that moment on, all I thought about was going from zero stars to one star. How do you do it?
There's a lot of really good players in the draft and we're all looking to make a name for ourselves at the next level. I guess we'll find out 10 years down the road and there's gonna be discussions throughout time about it, but we can't control that.
I revise a lot while I'm drafting, often going back to the beginning again and again to revise because I've changed massive things about the story. By the time I get to the end of a first draft, I've been through the beginning lots of times.
If I follow the media and everyone that tries to set expectations for me because I'm a high draft pick, if I follow that, I will never become a great player.
I carried around a lot of weight and anxiety - expectations of being a top draft pick and fulfilling those. It was really burdensome and not fun. Stressful. I had to go through some things before I finally turned that around and got back to playing for the right reasons.
We just have fun with our NFL Draft coverage because we understand that it's a long process, and there can be technical glitches that we don't profess to ignore. During our late coverage of the Draft, we sometimes get slap-happy and distort the heads of our analysts.
What do you do when you get a draft notice and you think a war is wrong? And I struggled with that for months prior to my being inducted into the army, and I'm still struggling with it, 40 years later.
It's been super weird because you have zoom meetings and then it's like high school again, I'm stuck at home with my parents and the only time I get out of the house is to workout. Let's just say it's not been how I envisioned my pre draft process going.
From watching the draft and following the NFL closely, anything can happen in the draft. But to me, it's not where I get drafted that matters to me, to be completely honest.