McMillan relies on reports

TUALATIN, Ore. — The last two NBA Drafts have taught Nate McMillan to place his trust in the Portland Trail Blazers’ scout team.

At times, the Blazers’ coach has only seen video footage of players the team has selected.

Other times, he has relied mostly on reputation because players could not come to Portland for a workout.

Yet the Blazers have yet to make a draft blunder since McMillan joined the team in 2005, even in the first round’s hit-or-miss region of the mid-20s, where they have made gambling on European prospects an annual routine.

So when Portland drafts in that same position in Thursday’s NBA Draft, McMillan said he will largely take a back-seat role while turning his increasing trust to the Blazers’ scouts and management.

"I kind of sit back and observe," McMillan said. "This is their time of year."

And what a time of year the Blazers have made it.

Sure, there were the splashy moves that rebuilt the franchise around Brandon Roy, LaMarcus Aldridge and Greg Oden — all lottery picks who were selected among the top six in their respective drafts. But just as important to the Blazers’ resurgence has been the draft successes in the late first round, where impact players are tougher to find.

In each of the last three years, Portland has found a player in the bottom third of the first round who went on to crack the rotation as a rookie:

n Sergio Rodriguez had just turned 20 years old when the Blazers purchased his draft rights (27th overall) from Phoenix in 2006, but he went on to play in 67 games as a rookie and posted a nearly 3-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio.

n Rudy Fernandez was already an international star when Portland acquired his draft rights (24th overall) in another cash-considerations trade with Phoenix, and went on to earn All-Rookie honors while developing into a key contributor off the bench.

n Nicolas Batum, acquired after a draft-day trade brought Houston’s 25th pick to Portland, started 76 games last season after Martell Webster was lost for the year with a foot injury, and developed into one of the team’s key wing defenders.

Blazers officials say that string of successes has come from a combination of advance scouting, aggressive maneuvering, and a little luck.

It starts with Portland’s commitment to European scouting, where Jason Filippi — a scout based in Italy — provides a constant monitor of European talent. Full-time European scouts are not uncommon in the NBA, but not all teams employ them, either.

But Pritchard said Filippi, who he praised for being "phenomenally organized," plays a key role in giving the Blazers a jump on the region’s rising talents.

That boots-on-the-ground vigilance positioned Portland to aggressively pursue Europeans in the last three drafts by purchasing extra picks and gambling on players whom the Blazers were not certain would, or could, come to the NBA immediately.

Pritchard has repeatedly projected that Fernandez would have been a 2008 lottery selection if the Blazers had not gambled on the Spanish guard and drafted him a year earlier, knowing that a buyout clause in Fernandez’s contract would prevent him from joining the team for at least another year.

Portland was also not certain if Batum was ready to compete at the NBA level when it drafted him last year, but his development was the biggest surprise — and made the gamble of his draft selection the biggest payoff — of last season.

"We’re looking for the best player, always," Assistant General Manager Tom Penn said about the Blazers’ success with European players. "With the foreign guys, you can sort of see he’s going to be the best player in a year or two, when we need him. So you get a chance to draft that player knowing he won’t be coming over right away."

That strategy may not apply the same way this year, though. Pritchard admits the European talent pool is down from past years.

Recent mock drafts suggest that as few as two foreign players could be selected in the first round, which would be the fewest since two were taken in 1999. But the Blazers have worked out one of those prospects — Israel’s Omri Casspi, a 6-foot-9 small forward who has drawn comparisons to Orlando’s versatile small forward Hedo Turkoglu. Casspi is expected to be taken with one of the last half-dozen first-round picks.

But despite the weaker-than-usual selection of talent, Pritchard will not dismiss the possibility of looking to Europe for draft possibilities, or limit their first-round options to that continent. Their process of evaluation and strategy, he said, remains the same as the last three years.

"I don’t want to change it up," Pritchard said. "We’ve still got some work to do. I wouldn’t want to commit to anything on that yet."