You say you’ve been looking for an NBA Draft preview?

You’re in luck, courtesy of two draftniks, people who make their living working out both NBA players and potential players.

One is Rob McClanaghan, a one-time Hendricken star, who works for uber-agent Arne Tellem in Los Angeles.

The other is Mike Procopio, known in the basketball world as “Sweet Chuck,” who used to work for the Celtics and now works in Chicago for the Attack Athletic Training Center, which is owned by Michael Jordan’s former trainer.

The facility includes four full-length courts, a 10,000-square-foot weight room, a state-of-the-art locker room, trainers and masseuses and whirlpools, three beds for naps, and just about anything else a big-time player could want, except maybe dollar bills hanging from the ceiling.

Or as Sweet Chuck says, “It’s a basketball country club.”

Last spring, Attack has had six players working out who all figure to be first-round draft picks tonight, a list that includes O.J. Mayo, Eric Gordon, Donte Green and Brandon Rush. They all work out and play against the likes of NBA players Dwayne Wade, Eddie Curry and Devon Harris, who are forever are breezing in and out.

Procopio, who got his nickname of Sweet Chuck as a teenager, began working for Leo Papile in the early ’90s, back when Papile was the founder and coach of the BABC, the premier AAU team in New England. Think Damon Runyon, if Runyon had grown up in a gym.

“I was a scorekeeper for a tournament on the Cape, and Leo pulled up in an old white caddy with the top down and about 13 guys jumped out,” he says. “It was like a clown car.”

So it began.

Papile was the mentor, the guide through the labyrinths of basketball’s subculture, a shadowy world of AAU tournaments and street agents, or what Papile once called the bowels of basketball. Now he is the director of player personnel for the Celtics, even though he still runs BABC, his link to the next assembly line of talent.

Procopio made his basketball bones working out players, the new job description of people who put placers through extensive individual workouts, designed to work on skills. He has worked out a slew of local college players around here, and within the game everyone seems to know who Sweet Chuck is, to the point that he says he had been working for the Celtics for nine months before Danny Ainge knew what his real name was.

“Not bad for some who only scored four career points for Revere High School,” he says, “but they all came on the road, so you know I was tough.”

McClanaghan’s title is director of player development for Tellem, the biggest agent in the NBA, who represents roughly 40 players, but what that really means is that he works out Tellem’s clients. That means that this spring he’s been working out Rose, the Lopez twins, the Italian kid Danilo Gallinari, D.J. Augustin, Anthony Randolph and Russell Westbrook. All have been invited to the so-called “green room,” the anointed group of 15 players the NBA expects to go high in the draft.

He works them out in a gym at a Catholic high school in Santa Monica, often before the likes of Pat Riley, Jerry West, and other NBA royalty.

Which is a long way from working out Joe Mazzulla and Jimmy Baron in the Hendricken gym three years ago.

But Clanaghan, who was on the team at Syracuse and used to watch assistant coach Bernie Fine work players out, came back to Rhode Island in 2001 and began giving basketball lessons to kids.

“I had about eight kids and I charged $25 an hour,” he says.

One thing led to another, and two years ago he spent part of the summer working out some pros and some elite players in Las Vegas, one of them being Ryan Gomes, who had seen him working out a couple of former PC players. Now he’s dealing with several players who figure to be in tonight’s lottery.

A local basketball Cinderella story?

Absolutely.

McClanaghan doesn’t want to predict tonight’s draft, given that he’s an agent, except to say that he wouldn’t be surprised if six of Tellem’s clients go in the lottery.

Derrick Rose to the Bulls with the first pick, Michael Beasley to the Heat with the second, although Procopio loves Mayo and thinks he could edge out Beasley here. If so, Beasley would go to the T-Wolves at three.

Brook Lopez to Seattle at four. Kevin Love to Memphis at five. Gallinari to the Knicks at six. Jerryd Bayless to the Clippers at seven, West Virginia’s Joe Alexander to the Bucks at eight, Russell Westbrook to Charlotte at nine, and Eric Gordon to the Nets at 10.

After that?

Texas guard D.J. Augustin to the Pacers with the 11th pick. Brandon Rush to the Kings at 12. Anthony Randolph to the Trail Blazers at 13, but Procopio expects Portland to trade this pick. Big man Jason Thompson to the Warriors at 14, and Syracuse freshman Donte Green to the Suns with the 15th pick.

But Procopio stresses that all of this could quickly go up in smoke. Everyone spends weeks trying to analyze the draft only to have one team do something completely unexpected and everything plays out differently. The best-laid plans of mice and men, basketball style.

“It’s the NBA,” he says. “A circus without a tent.”

breynold@projo.com