Two years after they were starters on the Ohio State team that won 35 games and played in the NCAA championship game, Conley is preparing for his third season in the NBA while Harris hopes some team in the league will just give him a chance.

"It's hard to get into the NBA if you don't get drafted," said Harris, who played the past two seasons in Finland and in the NBA Development League. "You just have to show scouts that you want it ... that you want to play in the NBA and you're going to bust your butt to get there."

He spoke this week before a 90-minute workout with three other players at Soar of Columbus, a spartan, two-room facility tucked away in a business park on E. Powell Road.

Dave Spiller, a former Ohio State assistant coach who recruited the 6-foot-7 Harris and has trained him for years, said he is trying to infuse his client with a sense of urgency.

"This has got to be the year he gets in," Spiller said. "Lawrence Funderburke, I remember, it took him four or five years and he came back and got in. I'm telling Ivan, 'OK, you've been out a couple of years now, you've got to get in. You've got to make a move this year.' "

Harris will have ample opportunity the next few weeks.

He is one of 25 D-League players invited to Los Angeles this weekend to play for NBA scouts.

He will be in Cleveland next weekend for a camp from which two players will be picked for the Cavaliers' summer-league team.

He will be in Orlando from July 6-8 for a tournament at which European scouts evaluate free-agent prospects for next season. Westland graduate Josh Bostic, the Division II Player of the Year at Findlay and a Spiller client, also has been invited there.

"You have to show these scouts that you have no flaws in your game," Harris said.

What Harris still must show them is that he can do more than make open shots.

He averaged 15.7 points and 5.1 rebounds in the D-League last season and shot 48.1 percent from the field, including 42.9 percent behind the three-point arc. But he averaged less than two free throws per game, indicative of an inability to beat a defender off the dribble and get to the rim.

That's why Spiller matched him up in a workout this week against 6-1 guard Al Fisher of Kent State, whom Harris struggled to get past off the dribble.

"He's got to show he's more than a catch-and-shoot guy," Spiller said. "He's definitely a guy who can stretch defenses. But when (opponents) put a smaller defender on him, he has to be able to get in the lane and shoot over him. If he can show that, I think he'll have a spot."

If Harris does not earn a spot on an NBA roster next season, he said he's probably headed back to Europe, where the pay is better than in the D-League. There, the top players make less than $30,000 a year.

"Playing in the Development League, I feel like I can play with NBA players," Harris said. "There were a lot of guys who dropped down (from NBA teams) and I felt like I held my own against them."

bbaptist@dispatch.com