Franz Beard’s Basketball Confidential

When Andy Miller of ASM Sports Management agreed to take on Marreese Speights as his client, it pretty much sealed the deal that Speights was going to stay in the NBA Draft. Miller, whose clients include Kevin Garnett and Chauncey Billups, has a reputation for providing accurate, exact information to his clients, agreed to take on Speights as a client only after he did the research and talked to GMs and scouts.

Miller had already agreed to take on Speights before there were several workouts for a number of NBA teams but no official decision was made until Speights had gone through the paces a few times. The results of the workouts confirmed the information that Miller had gathered over the previous couple of months.

Meanwhile, Florida coach Billy Donovan used his network of NBA sources to gather information about where Speights was likely to go in the draft. When his information matched up with that of Miller, a longtime friend and an agent that Donovan trusts, it created enough of a comfort level that Donovan gave Speights his blessing to go ahead and take the plunge of signing with an agent.

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Franz Beard
Back in January of 1969, the late, great Jack Hairston, then the sports editor of the Jacksonville Journal, called me on the phone one night and asked me if I wanted to work for him. I said yes. The entire interview took 30 seconds. It's my experience that whenever the interview lasts 30 seconds or less, I get the job. In the 48 years that I've been writing and getting paid for it, I've covered Super Bowls, World Series, NCAA basketball championships, BCS championship games, heavyweight title fights and what seems like thousands of college football, baseball and basketball games. I'm a columnist and special assignments editor for Gator Country once again, writing about the only team that ever mattered to me, the Florida Gators.