1-on-1 with Kings rookie Nik Stauskas: Part 2

theScore's Joseph Casciaro caught up with Sacramento Kings rookie Nik Stauskas this summer to find out how life changes off the court once a player is drafted and how the entire draft process unfolds for players.

Presented in association with Fanlime, here is Part 2 of that interview.

Take us through the whole whirlwind experience of the pre-draft process, workouts, meetings, flying from city to city, etc.

It’s nerve racking. Especially when you go into some workouts and it’s you and maybe a couple other guys and then you look on the sidelines and there’s former players that you watched growing up, there’s coaches you recognize from on TV, and they’re all just sitting there watching you.

Going through that process, you have to be confident in yourself. It gets tiring. Fortunately for me, I didn’t do that many workouts. I only worked out for four different teams. But I know a lot of guys who ended up doing 16, 17, 18 workouts, and you can only imagine how tiring that gets. Just traveling from city to city for pretty much a month straight.

In between all that, I was in Chicago pretty much doing my pre-draft workouts there. It’s exhausting, because it pretty much becomes your job. Just everyday preparing for those workouts, because those are the same thing as job interviews.

Now that it's become your job, are there any days where maybe the fun has been taken out of the game for you?

I think for me as a kid, when I grew up just playing basketball, I wouldn’t necessarily always be training. I would be just messing around some times. I would play 1-on-1, 2-on-2 with my friends, and now every time you step into the gym you have to step into the gym with purpose. You have to set goals and work on certain things, and some days when you’re tired, you’re not going to want to sit there for two or three hours and give 100 percent effort on that because your body gets tired, you get exhausted.

It’s tough to keep up that work ethic all the time. I still enjoy it. For me, I still enjoy working hard and seeing myself improve, but it’s definitely tougher than when I would work out when I was younger and it was all just for fun.

What are pre-draft interviews with teams like? How does it compare to a regular job interview for the rest of us?

Every team approaches it a different way. Some teams will take you out to lunch or dinner and be more informal and it won’t necessarily be all basketball talk. They’ll talk about a whole bunch of things and people will be laughing and whatnot. And there’s some interviews where you go in and it’s like you’re sitting at a desk and they’re sitting at a desk and it’s a really serious talk for 30 or 45 minutes.

Obviously they do their jobs as far as studying your game and watching your highlights and all that kind of stuff. I think they have a good idea of the way you’re going to play and what you’re going to bring to the table. What they want to know at those interviews is more your personality and character.

You hear about players getting some pretty interesting questions from teams sometimes. What was the weirdest question you got during the interview process?

One team asked me if I’d rather win Rookie of the Year or party with Justin Bieber.

And your answer?

I said I’d rather win Rookie of the Year because if I win Rookie of the Year, Justin Bieber will want to party with me.

A big component of the pre-draft process is the medical stuff. How does an NBA physical compare to the physical average people go to the doctor for?

To be honest, it was probably two of the most boring days of my life. Basically at the NBA combine, what happens is you end up spending two days at the hospital.

The first day you get a bunch of tests done. They draw blood, they do testing on your lungs, they do testing on your eyes, do testing on your heart. They do pretty much every test you can think of. After that, I guess they do their research on your previous injuries, whether it was in high school or college, and depending on those injuries, you get asked to do X-Rays and MRI's on certain parts of your body. So for guys that have had a lot of injuries in the past – I know because I had friends and teammates that went through it – they went for MRIs and X-rays for three or four hours at a time.

Then the second day is basically the teams get all the results from all of the tests that you had, and basically there are stations of teams, and you get passed around from station to station, from team to team, and they read the results of your MRIs, your blood tests, everything. And they move your knees and all your joints in every direction they can, to see if there’s anything wrong with them. They ask you every single question about your medical history.

In those two days, I ended up being at the hospital for a good 10-12 hours. It becomes a lot, but you understand it because these teams are making million dollar investments and they want to make sure that you’re healthy and that your body is going to withstand an 82-game season.

You mentioned earlier that during workouts for teams, you saw players you grew up watching, now on the sidelines watching you. Do you remember any in particular?

One that was cool for me was I worked out for the Lakers, and while I was working out for them, I went to the gym early that morning to warm up. I’m shooting around and I look upstairs and there’s an office that has a window in there, and I look up, and Kobe (Bryant) is there. I was the only one on the court and Kobe is sitting there just watching me. That was cool, because I always looked up to Kobe growing up. He was always one of my favorite players. Just having little moments like that was kind of cool.

And now, since you guys are division rivals, you’re going to be playing against him four times a year

Yeah … it’s going to be crazy. I’m looking forward to it.

Other than Kobe, which players are you most looking forward to going up against? Will any leave you star-struck the first time you see them in a game setting as a fellow NBAer?

Well for me growing up, LeBron was always my favorite player, so the first time going up against him, I might be a little bit star-struck or a little bit in awe. But I think that will be the only player, because he’s always been my favorite player.

Did you have any relationships with older NBA players before you got drafted? Have you picked any players’ brains?

There are two guys specifically that I’ve been really close with. Steve Nash is one of them, who I’ve known since I was about 14 or 15. I always can go to him if I have any questions or need someone to talk to.

Another guy who I met at the NBA top 100 camp when I was in high school is Mo Evans. He used to be the Vice President of the Players Association. He kind of became a mentor for me and throughout this whole process, he was a guy I could call and talk to about anything. I stayed at his house one time when I was in high school and got to talk to him about the NBA life and going through all this stuff. It’s good to have people like that who can keep it 100 percent real with you and tell you the way it is.

Your only NBA action so far has been at Summer League. Did you have any ‘wow’ moments in Vegas where it really hit you that you're in the NBA?

Maybe the one standout moment for me was our very first game. The very first play of our first game, the play was ran for me to come off of a dribble-handoff and kind of create from there. It was like 10 seconds into my first game and I got the dribble-handoff and pulled up for a jumper and hit it. And that was just a good feeling, because your nerves coming into that first game – to get a bucket on that first possession. It was a great feeling for me, kind of just feeling like ‘I belong here. This is my job now and I’m going to have fun doing it.’

For more from Stauskas on life as an NBAer, check out Fanlime.