NEW YORK — For once, Tyler Hansbrough showed up at a basketball event Wednesday and stayed well under the radar.

At a pre-NBA draft media function in a Times Square hotel, the former North Carolina star sat down at his designated table to meet the press. It wasn’t hard to do: There were only two reporters to meet.
Other players like Blake Griffin — the likely No.1 pick in the draft — drew as many as 40 media members to their table at the same time. Players like Italian point guard Brandon Jennings and Connecticut center Hasheem Thabeet had at least a dozen.
And while Hansbrough’s interview session did eventually grow to a reasonable number, he was fine with it being an intimate gathering.
“I kind of like this position I’m in,” “Hansbrough said. “I’m not worried about trying to get all the attention.”
The attention came fast and hard at Hansbrough for the past four years at North Carolina, where he finished as a national champion in 2009 as well as the Tar Heels’ all-time leading scorer and rebounder.
At Thursday night’s NBA draft, however, Hansbrough likely won’t be among the first 10 picks. New Jersey at No.11 is a very possible landing spot — Hansbrough worked out there Tuesday and thought it went well — as are several other teams in the teens and early 20s.
There are questions about whether Hansbrough’s physical style will work when he’s facing players several inches taller and far stronger in the NBA. But those questions certainly don’t come from Hansbrough.
“People are going to say what they want,” Hansbrough said. “It’s not me saying that. You guys (reporters) ask me, ’Why do people doubt you?’ I don’t know. But I’m not doubting myself. I’m confident.”
Hansbrough has flitted around the country for the past couple of months. He had “eight or nine” individual workouts for NBA squads as he tried — successfully, he believes — to improve his draft stock. He said teams were generally surprised that he was more “athletic” than he appeared on TV.
Now he’s admittedly nervous. Hansbrough didn’t sleep at all his first night in New York on Tuesday because he was so wired up, he said.
So what will the team that drafts Hansbrough on Thursday night get?
“A guy that’s got a lot of energy and a high motor,” he said. “But also a guy who can step out and shoot the mid-range jump shot, who is more skilled than a lot of people give him credit for and who is a very good rebounder offensively.”
Hansbrough will be joined Thursday night in New York for the draft by his mother, father, older brother and agent, as well as Tar Heels coach Roy Williams. Hansbrough will wear a new blue pinstriped suit to the draft, he said. And even if he does happen to be the last one of the prospective draftees in the “green room,” Hansbrough said that wouldn’t matter.
“I’ve been dreaming of this day for a long time,” he said. “I always wanted to come to the draft so I could get a picture with the commissioner (David Stern) after my name got called.”
Hansbrough also said he had no regrets about using up all his eligibility as a Tar Heel rather than leaving early, even though he added that it probably let “people watch me for four years, so they’ve had time to criticize my game.”
Said Hansbrough: “I have no regrets about any of it, whether it helped or hurt my draft stock. I’m a national champ. I had a great time in college at North Carolina. I got my degree. And I got to be around people I really enjoyed for four years.”