Suns coach Watson looks to connect with potential draft picks

At NBA Draft workouts, Suns head coach Earl Watson gets to watch and build connections with young players he may be coaching next season.

But beyond looking at their basketball ability, Watson is able to talk to players and get a feel for them as a person and on the court.

“You have to connect first, once you connect to the players, what I call like rhythm, or their heartbeat or their soul or their personality,” Watson told Doug and Wolf on 98.7 FM, Arizona’s Sports Station. “Once you connect to that then now you can start to kind of vibe with them, and teach, and allow them become more creative and visualize the process of growing.”

Watson is very philosophical at times, believing there is more to a player than just stats and analytics.

His style provides balance to that of his GM, as Ryan McDonough tends to focus on the numbers when judging prospects.

“So for me it’s like he’s [McDonough] analytics and I’m more the other part, the feel and the personality and just something I see different,” Watson said. “I think about it like this, you cannot have music without notes; so the notes are the analytics, and the music is kind of like bringing it all together and that’s kind of how we correlate it.”

For Watson, the Suns don’t need a specific guy, position, or even skill-set.

“We need a Suns personality, Suns characteristics, a guy that’s unselfish, a guy that has that edge where you watch him play and you get motivated, a guy that can make everyone better and, most importantly, someone that wants to grow as a person,” Watson said. “It’s a lot of details that I missed in that expression, but if you’re a little bit of that with the special things that people believe, the skill and the ability to do certain things on the court. But just that personality, that Suns personality, Suns character, I think you can put that guy into any role.”