insider please

While the height and weight measurements from the NBA Combine are interesting and relevant, NBA general managers and scouts also spend a lot of time dissecting the results of the NBA athletic testing.

Everyone takes these with a grain of salt. Every year the quote "best athlete in the draft" does not turn into the best player in the draft. Teams do take these reports seriously. This is the first objective testing that we have on these guys and sometimes our eyes do deceive us.

What are the drills?

Players are asked to bench press 185 pounds as many times as they can, test their vertical jump two ways (no step and maximum) and run several drills to measure speed and lateral quickness.

Insider has obtained this confidential report from a league source. The NBA no longer creates a composite score to rank the top athletes in the draft. So we’ll break it down for you by category.

Vertical leap: Marquette’s Darius Johnson-Odom recorded the biggest maximum vertical with a whopping 41.5 inches. Duke’s Miles Plumlee (40.5 inches), Kentucky’s Marquis Teague (40.5 inches), Vanderbilt’s Jeff Taylor (40 inches), Missouri’s Marcus Denmon (40 inches) and Alabama’s Tony Mitchell (40 inches) also topped 40 inches. A number of other players jumped 39 or more inches in the maximum vertical jump: Harrison Barnes, Damian Lillard and Orlando Johnson (39.5 inches) and Bradley Beal (39 inches). Henry Sims and J’Covan Brown (29.5 inches) had the worst max vert in the combine.

Bench press: Marquette’s Jae Crowder tested as the strongest athlete in the camp. He bench pressed a 185 pound bar 20 times. Meyers Leonard and JaMychal Green were next with 19 reps. Three players — Will Barton, Tony Wroten Jr. and Tyshawn Taylor couldn’t get the bar up one time.

Lane agility: Baylor’s Quincy Acy had the best score, finishing the drill in a less-than-blazing 10.48 seconds (Norris Cole did it in 10.07 seconds last year). Jordan Taylor and Kim English both finished under 10.6 seconds. Ohio State’s Jared Sullinger finished dead last with a pretty pathetic 12.77 second score.

Three-quarter court sprints: North Carolina’s Harrison Barnes led the way with a 3.16 sec run. Thomas Robinson and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist finished second and third at 3.17 and 3.18 seconds respectively. Sullinger was last with an awful 3.81 seconds.

Analysis: The top ranked player in the draft, Kentucky’s Anthony Davis, did not participate in drills, but virtually every other top candidate in the draft did.

Of the next top five players, Barnes was the most impressive. He’s gotten a rep the past few years of being an average athlete. However, here he excelled in every category. He was explosive, quick, fast and strong. Such a great result could really boost his draft stock with teams that worried about his explosiveness.

Joe Robbins/Getty ImagesBradley Beal dominated nearly every category of the combine’s athletic testing.

Beal wasn’t far behind Barnes. Beal also had the rep as a player who wasn’t as explosive as some of the elite players in the draft, but he too dominated every category.

The three guys with the reps as great athletes — Thomas Robinson, Ande Drummond and Kidd-Gilchrist — all did well, but didn’t quite live up to the performance of Barnes and Beal.

Drummond showed off that amazing lateral quickness for a big man, but wasn’t as explosive off the floor as we expected. Robinson had one of the fastest 3/4 sprint times, but also didn’t dominate the vertical jump (though his number is the same as Blake Griffin‘s a few years ago) and really struggled with his lateral quickness. Kidd-Gilchrist also showed great speed in the open court, but he too wasn’t exactly elite in any other category.

In short, all of the top players in the draft looked like great athletes — but some looked better than others.

Several other top players including Lillard, Perry Jones, Arnett Moultrie, Moe Harkless and Jeff Taylor also shined in this setting. Lillard may be the biggest surprise of the group. Some scouts thought he was an average athlete coming out of school — but he showed really well across the board here.

A lot of teams are excited about this year’s 2-guard crop and Jeremy Lamb, Austin Rivers and Terrence Ross all looked good at this setting. Again, that’s not a big surprise for Lamb and Ross. They are both explosive leapers. But Rivers ending up with a 37-inch max vertical was a bit of surprise. Unfortunately for Rivers and Ross, their average lateral quickness numbers hurt them a bit.

Two players at the top of the charts that really struggled were Sullinger and John Henson. There’s no surprise there for Sullinger. Everyone knows he plays below the rim and lacks athleticism. Still, his numbers were historically poor.

Henson is a much bigger shock. He has the rep as being a long, explosive athlete. He is long — about as long as anyone in the draft — but his vertical jump numbers were anemic. I wonder if that will affect where he goes in the draft.

One player that continues to just dominate these drills is Duke’s Miles Plumlee. Not only is he jumping out of the gym, but he’s strong and showing surprising lateral quickness for a big man. His stock continues to really rise as we get closer to the draft.

Several other prospects including Sims, Brown and Andrew Nicholson really struggled with the athletic testing as well. It won’t matter as much for Nicholson because of his shooting ability and length, but it could really hurt Sims and Brown.

Henson getting 4 more reps on the bench press than Austin Rivers is surprising to me.