TUALATIN, Ore. — The Portland Trail Blazers held their first open pre-draft workout Wednesday morning at their practice facility in Tualatin.
The Blazers brought in six players for Wednesday’s workout. They were headlined by projected late-first round picks, 6-8 forward Montrezl Harrell of Louisville and 6-11 forward Christian Wood of UNLV.
Both players are expected to be in range of the Blazers who have the No. 23 pick in the upcoming NBA Draft.
Stefan Nastic, a 6-11 center from Stanford, d Kenneth “Speedy” Smith, a 6-3 guard from Louisiana Tech, Luis Montero a 6-8 guard from Westchester Community College (N.Y.) and Corey Hawkins a 6-3 guard from UC Davis rounded out the participants.
Hawkins is the son of Hersey Hawkins, Blazers director of player personnel and former NBA All-Star.
In light of some other sons of NBA players starring in the NBA Finals, Hawkins was asked if his son, too, could follow the same path of Golden State’s Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson.
“I hope so! I think Steph has paved the way for a lot of those guys to be taken little more seriously,” Hersey Hawkins said. “They’ve grown up around basketball and I think your IQ when you grow up around it is much higher than other players.”
Harrell and Wood were the more buzz-worthy players, but no player carried as much mystery in the workouts as Montero.
Montero, 22, is a guard with long arms, who shot reasonably well during the session while media were present, but has no statistical resume to speak of.
The Blazers were unable to provide any statistics and a Google search returns the same.
An immigrant from the Dominican Republic, Montero played high school ball in Massachusetts before playing in 2013-14 for a community college in New York.
Even in his home country of the Dominican Republic, he isn’t well-known. But Wednesday was his fourth workout with an NBA team.
“For my country it was a surprise,” Montero said of his jump from community college to becoming a candidate to be drafted. “Nobody anticipated this.”
His school, Westchester Community College, cancelled their 2014-15 season amid a probe form the New York State inspector and the National Junior College Athletic Association to find out whether transcripts of their star athletes were altered.
“To practice with the Blazers, it was great training,” Montero said. “I’ve felt very good during this process and in all of the workouts.”
According to the Domincan sports website Universo Deportivo, Montero has a workout scheduled with the New York Knicks on Friday.
