Portsmouth Invitational Tournament’s Setting Is Intimate, But Stakes Are High At Basketball’s Tradition-Rich Event
- Spencer Davies
- Apr 14
- 14 min read
Updated: Apr 18
For more than 70 years, the Portsmouth Invitational Tournament has been a hidden gem on the NBA pre-draft circuit—a no-frills event with deep roots and real impact. Tucked away in a small Virginia town, it’s a place where future pros compete, relationships are built, and stories unfold. Few know it better than committee board member Ryan Blake, who’s helped carry on the legacy of his father, the legendary Marty Blake.
Ryan Blake had been minding his business in the conference room at the back of the local Holiday Inn hotel, manually sizing prospects with a tape measurer before the Portsmouth Invitational Tournament games got underway.
His father, the illustrious Marty Blake, was holding court at a table and having a good time when a participant barged in and started shouting.
Marty! Marty! I’m telling you, I’m gonna be the man. I’m gonna be the MVP. I shouldn’t even be here. I need to be up at the pre-draft camp. I’m gonna play and tear it up, Marty! Once you give me that MVP, I want you to check out my brother. He’s gonna be better than me, Marty.
“Jerry West was there and a couple of other GMs, and they're all talking about the old days. My dad was keeping quiet, then just leans in there and goes, ‘God, I hope so,’” Blake told Babcock Hoops in an exclusive phone interview with a chuckle.
“That poor kid just looked down. He just walked out of the door. I just remember everybody laughing. He didn't have a good tournament after that, bless his heart, but he wasn't good enough. He was just a really cocky guy. But there was just a lot of stories like that. You could probably make a documentary.”
For more than 70 years, the P.I.T. has hosted college seniors and scouts from around the world as the oldest pre-draft gathering of them all. Over the course of four days, NBA front offices, talent evaluators, coaches, prospects, retirees and fans come together for one of the most cherished annual occasions on the basketball calendar.
“It is not a high-profile media kind of event. It’s supported by the community,” Blake said. “Nobody gets paid. It's all volunteers. I don't get paid, the chairman doesn't get paid. They generate this money for philanthropic things all around the Chesapeake area, plus the scholarships that we raise for kids coming out of school. It's a really cool thing.”
“From the local restaurants that NBA personnel frequent to the hotel lobbies where people gather and catch up, it’s a mix of business and camaraderie,” our Matt Babcock added. “I’ve had business deals take shape there and shared plenty of laughs with friends in the industry. There’s a tradition and history around it that people appreciate. It’s a well-run, professional event. Ryan Blake has done a great job carrying on the legacy of his father, Marty, an absolute legend in the basketball world. Ryan and the team have kept the P.I.T. a well-oiled machine year after year. Beyond being a great evaluation setting, there’s a unique off-court culture at Portsmouth.”
A leading member of the P.I.T. committee board and longtime NBA scout, Blake considers himself an unofficial player rep, always lending a voice and an open ear (and formerly did measurements in the old days).
He has been working with the P.I.T. since Marty began discovering would-be greats of the game in the small town across the pond from Norfolk, Virginia, in the 1970s.
“Larry Bird used to call me and say, ‘It's one of my favorite events because it's just laid back. It's very approachable.’ There's a different energy to it. It's authentic,” Ryan said. “But also for the players, I talk to them. I say this is a good opportunity for you.
“You're going to get interviews, but also reach out and ask those teams for advice when you're getting interviewed. Ask those retired players for advice. It is also a learning opportunity, and you get these opportunities that you're not going to get at the [NBA Draft] Combine, and you'll have that advice. You're going to have that advantage, too.”
Babcock, too, has been attending P.I.T. since he was little, tagging along with his dad (Dave) and uncles (Rob and Pete), who were front-office executives.
“Even back then, I felt privileged to be there,” Babcock said. “Over the years, I’ve experienced it through different lenses — first as a fan, then as a sports agent, and now as an NBA Draft analyst and scout. It’s always been an inspiring environment. You’re up close with NBA personnel and players who are grinding to move the needle and chasing their dream of making it to the league. The setting is intimate, but the stakes are high.”
Sixty-four student-athletes receive an invitation, each assigned to a team. With eight squads consisting of eight players, everybody plays three games at minimum. On the final day, there’s a championship and third-place game in the winning bracket, while fifth and seventh place are also up for grabs in separate contests in the consolation bracket.
“We guarantee that everybody's going to get an equal amount of minutes,” said Blake, pushing back on the notion that the event is “guard-dominated.”
“I tell players, if you're worried about what you're trying to do to show the NBA teams that you are an NBA player, do not go up and jack up threes,” Blake said. “When you're guarded and there's 20 seconds left on the clock, the best thing you do is you play to win. These are experienced decision-makers [watching]. They know more about basketball than you do, and you play defense and you play hard. You're going to be playing 20 minutes a game. You should not be tired. It’s an old cliche: Play to win.
“If you're a point guard and you're used to scoring, but you find the hot hand and you keep distributing to the hot hand and that hot hand keeps scoring and you come up with like six assists, but you got five rebounds and two points, the NBA teams know what you're doing out there as a point guard. And if you're a defender, a rim protector, shot blocker, and you're throwing assists and blocks and rebounds and running hard and defending, they're going to understand that too.”
For the last three years, grassroots officials have gained valuable experience refereeing NBA-style games at the P.I.T., which before the pandemic would go by halves with college officiating. In addition, every team has highly regarded high school head coaches and assistants on staff, and for the last 15-20 years, it has included former pros who are looking to follow that career path.
“This is a huge benefit towards the players because they're getting advice and stories and all these things about what they've been through, which is a great program. And they will tell 'em not to (do the wrong things),” Blake said. “They [both] get that first experience of working and playing in an NBA setting too, which is great because they get to learn some of the new rules and getting your first NBA sets and all those, there's a lot of 'em, like Horns and Floppy and all that kind of stuff. They're getting those things, but it is a good experience for them.”
In the 1990s, Blake and his father identified 19 positions that NBA teams can field a roster with. Versatility is important, yet leaning into your strengths is paramount.
“You can have a 6-foot-6 point guard that doesn't shoot well from behind the arc but is a playmaker and defender,” Blake explained. “You can have an undersized 2-guard that is a sniper from deep. And you can have a versatile center or a non-versatile power forward who's a rim protector and shot blocker, and all those positions can go on once.
“So, if you have an NBA skill set, you want to show that. If you can't shoot it from three, you don't want to do that at Portsmouth.”
That’s what happens strictly in the game settings. Athletic testing is another aspect considered just as critical, if not more so.
Over the last decade, P.I.T. has partnered with Basic Athletic Measurement to calculate accurate data regarding agility, vertical leap, reaction time and speed using advanced technology. Additionally, BAM quantifies height, reach, weight, wingspan, hand length and hand width.
Blake shares that Brett Brungardt, the co-founder of BAM, has a study showing that 98% of the players who test twice improve on their first results.
“When NBA teams are evaluating, I always say this, you have a circle graph, right? And you're trying to shade in things and answer questions and strengths and concerns and stuff. And every little thing can help open up doors to that,” Blake said.
“I'll have my scouts. We get together, I call it a collective, and there might be a player we say, ‘Well, he doesn't have really good lateral quickness. I don't think he can defend on the perimeter.’ You get his lateral quickness testing, and it's off the chain. So if an NBA decision maker sees that and they go, ‘Wait a second, this is what our eye test says. Let's bring him in and have him up against someone that's extremely quick and let's have them work out, and we’ll see how that does.’ That opens up the door, too.”
Blake’s scouting directly correlates with the P.I.T. selection process. With more than 25,000 miles put on his truck to watch live action this season, he takes all of his findings and puts together a ballot of prospects. The tournament’s policy mandates that any senior on the shortlist who plays a full year without being suspended is eligible. NBA teams then vote on who they’d like to see, and a committee assembles the field from there in a collaborative effort.
The P.I.T. is financially beneficial to franchises to boot, saving them from spending money on private workouts. They have the eye test and the results of testing made readily available – the good and the bad.
“Jerry West used to say, when we’d send out scouting reports and stuff, it's not only the benefit of us telling them who's good enough to play and who to go see but also who not to go see,” Blake said.
Every year, the NBA guarantees that at least five Portsmouth players will make it to Chicago for the NBA Draft Combine and G League camp. Boogie Ellis was one of the standouts in the pre-draft process who made the most of his chances.
“Boogie Ellis had a lot of votes. He was adamant about playing in Portsmouth so he could test, so he could interview with the teams,” Blake said. “He wanted to prove how much he wanted to play in the NBA, and he was confident in his skills, and that resonated immensely. He was invited to our G League Combine, played extraordinarily well, and, I would say, graduated or was awarded another opportunity to play in a regular combine.”
Enrique Freeman and Isaac Jones also made it to G League Elite Camp and the NBA Draft Combine. Freeman earned a path to the Indiana Pacers as the 50th overall draft selection and is currently on a two-way deal. Jones, though undrafted, now has a standard contract with the Sacramento Kings. Ellis, too, is a part of the same organization and was teammates with Jones at Summer League, in training camp and with Stockton in the G League.
According to Portsmouth’s official website, over three dozen alumni are represented on current rosters, with 10 from last year’s class alone. More than 35 players will have been represented in the NBA or G League this season.
Of the active alumni, Golden State Warriors swingman Jimmy Butler stands out as a six-time NBA All-Star who’s made a trip to the NBA Finals, but there’s a member of the defending NBA champion Boston Celtics that Blake vividly recalls making a huge impression in 2017.
“When Derrick White came in after the first game, I remember one of my scouts, Enver Poljak, said something to somebody,” Blake recalled. “‘That guy's going to be in the NBA,’ and this other cocky scout looked over at him and said, ‘Well, the only place he's going to be playing is in Finland.’ And I said, ‘Nope!’ after the second game.
“By that third game, I don't think there was anybody in the building that didn't think he was going to be an NBA player. And here's a guy that also came from Division II, went to Colorado, and the rest is history.”
It was certainly a moment that nobody in attendance forgot.
“In my final year as a sports agent, I had several clients participate in the P.I.T. That same year, Derrick White from Colorado put on a standout performance,” Babcock said. “He used the event to springboard into the first round of the NBA Draft and has gone on to have a very successful NBA career. That one really stands out.”
There have been plenty of P.I.T. success stories around the NBA, past and present. From Naismith Basketball Hall of Famers such as Rick Barry, Dave Cowens and Earl “The Pearl” Monroe to John Stockton, Tim Hardaway and Dennis Rodman, the event has always brought in the top senior athletes in the country. Marty’s eye for talent just made it stronger.
From 1954 to 1970, he was the general manager of the Hawks franchise in Milwaukee, St. Louis, and Atlanta. When his time was up, Marty took the same job with the Pittsburgh Condors, a team in the ABA, the NBA’s rival. Shortly after, he founded Marty Blake & Associates, his own scouting service.
Once the four teams merged in 1976, the NBA named Marty the league’s director of scouting.
“At this point, he had found out about this tournament, and there was a lot of good players up in Portsmouth,” Blake said. “He decided to push that and started contacting the teams, saying you need to come see this tournament. And then he got involved, and as it evolved, it became this big event. My dad was instrumental in bringing Portsmouth to the forefront back in the seventies.
“I’ve been going up there since I was five. When I was in college, I remember when my dad found Scottie Pippen and brought Scottie Pippen there. Every GM and decision-maker was hitting my dad on the back, going, ‘Thank you, thank you.’ And that happened a lot of times because we did so much. He did so much about finding those hidden gems. And at the time, there wasn't really the internet, and videos were hard to get, so that was good.”
At the time, there were the P.I.T. and the Rainbow Classic to evaluate prospects. In the 1980s, Marty and Matt Winick created the pre-draft camp held at Moody Bible in Chicago. Before it evolved into the NBA Draft Combine, it was a week-long competition and learning seminar. Players would go 1-on-1, 2-on-2 and scrimmage.
Eventually, the Rainbow Classic moved to Orlando and the Desert Classic popped up in Phoenix, which closely mirrored Portsmouth’s model. It was working out great for everybody involved until things changed in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
“Portsmouth started becoming a little bit weaker because issues were coming,” Blake explained. “Agents were pulling players out of Portsmouth. If they played well or thought that they could get into Phoenix, they’d go to Phoenix. And then, Phoenix was getting people pulled out or stopping play because they’d think they would go to Chicago. Then, that whole trend of posturing and pulling out of players continued for a number of years where the pre-draft camp changed to a combine because there was so much posturing and all that kind of stuff.
“Phoenix, after a number of years, said, ‘Okay, it's not working,’ so we were getting a lot of the players from Phoenix who we could get at Portsmouth. So, the evaluation process was getting expensive and redundant, so to speak. But Portsmouth still remained viable. Once that was eliminated, the numbers didn't work out to where players could get into Chicago. So then some of the agents were making bad decisions, or the players, depending.”
To combat this, Ryan started including a letter with the invitations to P.I.T. that detailed facts and testimonies from people who’ve experienced the event, including players, executives and agents. He still writes them now to help prospects and their representatives make the best decisions they can.
“Years ago, we were having 16 to 19 players that would choose not to come to Portsmouth, but would not get invited to Chicago and would not make an NBA team,” Blake said. “And so, a lot of players were firing agents or getting upset because they were eliminating that opportunity to be seen at a different venue in a setting that would allow them to play possibly in the position that they're naturally in, where they get equal minutes against, and testing, with the players.
“So when that letter came out, we found that we were getting stronger players coming in that weren't making those bad decisions, so to speak. And last year was the first year in a long time that we had a large number of players that fell back into that realm of not making that right decision and not getting drafted and not getting invited to either of the Chicago Combine events.”
To describe what some of those poor choices have entailed, Blake likened it to applying for a job and the applicant asking a company to call when he’s made it to the final four candidates before interviewing for the position.
“It's like, no, you're kind of the guy that you're in the top 10. You made it in the top 10, and I know the results of the voting, and I don't tell the teams, I don't tell anybody the results. Only our committee knows, right,” Blake said.
“But if a coach calls up or and says, ‘No, he's going to pull out,’ I'll say, ‘Well, I'll just tell you this. He didn't have any votes for the combine. He only got a certain amount of votes. I just want you to know that. Here are those facts. You might want to relay that to him.’ So they may know. I won't reveal those votes. It doesn't matter if they say they're not going to come. We’ve got a lot of players that are just eager to play.”
Every year, Blake recalibrates his scouting with what he calls a quadrant. He’ll go watch games on a four-to-five-day trip at the NBA, G League, High Division I, Mid-Major D-I and non D-I levels. Not everybody is going to make it to the peak of basketball, but that doesn’t mean guys shouldn’t have a shot at showing their capabilities.
“It's a numbers game,” Blake said. “It is a tier to an extent because it's seniors only, but it's also an opportunity to have that job interview in front of the teams. You get that opportunity. They're going to give more opportunities in the Combine for those early entrants or the number of seniors that have more votes and stuff that might be more high-profile players.”
The NBA Draft Combine is a staple of the evaluation process. It’s a critical chance for prospects to challenge themselves. Many are familiar with the marquee event, where projected top draft picks interview with teams and log their measurements before the draft itself in June, the week following the NBA Finals.
The Combine, however, is not for the blue-chip guys. It’s more for the players who are trying to increase their stock by testing their athletic abilities and performing well in scrimmages. It’s a time when somebody who may have gone undrafted works their way into the second round, or a projected late first-rounder stands out and propels himself closer to the lottery.
Marty Blake pioneered that concept, and the Portsmouth Invitational Tournament set the standard for pre-draft evaluation that continues today through Ryan and the special week in Virginia.
“The P.I.T. continues to be a valuable tool for evaluating prospects who may be just outside the NBA Draft Combine bubble,” Babcock said. “With NIL changing the college landscape, we’ll likely see more fringe draft prospects return to school. That only increases the importance of events like the P.I.T. It gives teams a close look at under-the-radar talent that can still make an impact at the next level.
“There have been several exposure events over the years. There was a camp in Hawaii, which was before my time, the Desert Classic in Arizona, and, of course, the NBA Draft Combine, plus more. But the P.I.T. predates them all. It’s been a foundational piece of the pre-draft process and helped pave the way for what we see now.”
The 71st Annual Portsmouth Invitational Tournament will be held at Churchland High School in Portsmouth, Virginia, from April 16–19, 2025. For ticket information, live stats, and streaming links, visit PortsmouthInvitational.com.
