Butler hopes NBA comes calling

The games have all been played. The NBA pre-draft camps are in the books. The individual workouts for NBA teams are over.

Now, Shawnee graduate Jamar Butler has to hope an NBA team shares his evaluation of his talent.

Butler, a three-and-a-half-year starter at Ohio State thinks he is NBA ready. Thursday night, when the NBA has its 2008 draft, he will find out if there is a team that shares his opinion.

The NBA draft has two rounds, with 30 players being selected in each round.

It has been 29 years since a player from a Lima high school has been picked in the NBA draft. Lima Senior's John McCullough, who went on to become the Big Eight Player of the Year at Oklahoma, was taken in the fourth round (85th overall) by the Kansas City Kings in the 1979 draft.

The last area player to be drafted was New Knoxville's Evan Eschmeyer, who was picked in the second round (34th overall) in 1999 out of Northwestern by the New Jersey Nets.

Butler finished his Ohio State career with 1,313 points. He averaged a career-best 14.9 points and 5.9 assists a game this past season and was named first-team All-Big Ten by the media.

He is the Buckeyes' career leader in 3-point field goals (242) and assists (580) and hit 104 3-pointers this season.

Butler, a 6-foot, 2-inch guard, was named the Most Valuable Player at an NBA pre-draft camp in Portsmouth, Va., last month.

He was also invited to a pre-draft camp in Orlando, but pulled a hamstring early that week and was not able to play.

His shooting ability, his good turnover-to-assist ratio and the fact he is comfortable playing point guard and shooting guard work in his favor.

After a June 4 workout with the Indiana Pacers, Butler said his ability to defend was the biggest thing he felt he had to address in his pre-draft workouts.

"I want to show I can defend.  All year at Ohio State we played zone.  We didn't play too much man to man," he said.

Draftexpress.com rates him as the No. 18 point guard prospect and No. 27 among NCAA seniors.

Ohio State freshman 7-footer Kosta Koufos had showed up as a late first-round selection in most mock drafts. Another teammate, Othello Hunter, has appeared as a longshot choice in some mock drafts.

Butler has not been mentioned in the most popular mock drafts.

If he is not drafted or does not hook on with an NBA team, playing in Europe, as former Ohio State teammates like Ron Lewis, Terence Dials and others have done, will probably be his choice.