The Blogfather takes the personality test given to NBA draft prospects. He scores pretty well in some areas, but more-or-less flunks when it comes to "internal motivation." Huh? One of the most successful sports bloggers suffers from low motor-itis?

Anyway, it's an interesting column on personality testing and assessing NBA players.

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"As humans, we have this fascination with the idea bringing somebody in for an examination will tell us what we need to know about how they'll perform in the future. But increasingly researchers find that lessons from tests, interviews and the like are not nearly as useful as lessons from months or years of recent past performance.

If you want to know who's going to play basketball well in the future, the best predictor is not who can run this fast or jump that high, but who has played basketball well in the recent past.

As a half-hour test taken in the present and designed to predict the future, the Sports Aptitude exam has its work cut out for it. It is further challenged by being a personality test. They are common in the American workplace, but evidence suggests this is a particularly tough nut to crack, which makes sense as we are only beginning to understand the nuance of how the human brain really works."
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Note: The Blazers aren't on the list of this firm's clients, but they do have a sports psychologist (Dana Sinclair) who consults with the team. A recent Oregonian article mentioned that she interviewed players at the Draft Combine in Chicago, and in past years Mike Barrett has said that she is one of the people in the war room on draft night.