An exclusive trip inside the NBA's combine for front office executives

The Jake Fischer Latest takes you to New Orleans for a behind-the-scenes look at the annual Tulane Pro Basketball Negotiation Competition

NEW ORLEANS — A murmur of anticipation bubbled through the packed room. It felt as though Giannis Antetokounmpo's fate would at last be decided.

The Toronto Raptors' delegation had just done the unthinkable. In trade talks with the Milwaukee Bucks, they put All-Star swingman Scottie Barnes on the table for The Greek Freak himself.

A delegation from Notre Dame, rather, simulating the Toronto Raptors in mock trade talks.

This was not Raptors general manager Bobby Webster bartering with his Bucks counterpart Jon Horst in real time, but it was engrossing just the same. These were law students competing in the championship round of the ninth annual Tulane Pro Basketball Negotiation Competition, which brings together top young legal minds and cap-focused NBA personnel every February to replicate real-life trade and free agent negotiations that NBA teams will be conducting for keeps in the offseason.

What began in 2018 with three teams from Tulane, inaugural champions Southern Law School and a mere four judges has morphed into a serious staple on the NBA calendar. It's a rise reminiscent of the vaunted Sloan Sports Analytics Conference at MIT and has sparked a clamor throughout the league to score an invite. The event takes place annually on the Thursday and Friday following the NBA All-Star Game and last week attracted a record 50 teams filled with law students plus 56 judges from all over the NBA map … including Tulane's most notable NBA alumnus: Hawks general manager Onsi Saleh. The data-driven software company Teamworks, utilized by various NBA teams to optimize operations, performance and personnel, has emerged as an event sponsor.

Just as Emerson College is known as the Division III launching pad that propelled Thunder president Sam Presti and Wizards general manager Will Dawkins to the NBA, Tulane's Sports Law program is proving to be a bonafide pipeline over the past decade for front office hopefuls to land full-time roles within a team's basketball operations or a player agency's strategy department. An estimated half of the NBA's 30 teams now employ at least one Tulane Law School alumnus or former Juris Doctor candidate who participated in the competition.

"The whole reason the event was created was to help our students get jobs in basketball," said Eric Blevins, Tulane's Sports Law Program manager.