Don’t Use NCAA Tourney Performances As Draft Guide For Celtics

It will be tempting to use March Madness as a guide for which player the Celtics should draft if they end up with the No. 1 pick, but maybe that’s not such a good idea

The NCAA Tournament, or “March Madness” if you will, has always been an exciting time for basketball fans.

Most people fill out brackets to try and win a pool of cash. Some enjoy watching it because of how much parody exists in the tournament. Others use it as an excuse to hang out with their friends, and the rest of the viewers just simply love college basketball/their team in the tourney.

But for Boston Celtics fans, the reason to watch these games has developed into something else over the past couple of years: a chance to scout prospects.

If you’re even remotely familiar with what’s happening with the Celtics this year, you know they own the right to swap picks with the Brooklyn Nets – who are dead-last in the standings right now – for the upcoming draft.

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It’s all a part of a deal that helped the Celtics land top-five picks in two of the last three drafts as well.

With Boston’s great odds to wind up with the first-overall pick in the 2017 draft, many are wondering who it should pick, or if the team would get more value from trading it away. That makes March Madness such an exciting event, as constant national television coverage will provide people with an up-close view of how the top-rated prospects actually play.

But while it’s important to watch projected lottery picks like Lonzo Ball (UCLA), Josh Jackson (Kansas) and Jayson Tatum (Duke) closely over the next few weeks, it’s also important that you don’t make final judgments based on the postseason performances. These games should aid your opinions, but not make or break them.

Sure, the NCAA Tournament is the biggest stage for college basketball players. If a prospect goes off and helps his team make a deep run, then yes, his stock could rise a bit from performing at such a clutch level. If a different prospect disappears and plays poorly, then yes, his stock could slightly dip from not performing up to par at an important time.

But one to five games does not drastically change the likely potential of a player, so why judge him for that span?

Let me give an example of what I mean.

You all know Jaylen Brown, right? You know, he’s one of the top rookies in the NBA right now and is considered to have a very bright future for the Celtics.

Well just last year, Brown scored a mere four points on 1 of 6 shooting while coughing up seven turnovers in his lone game in the tourney. That’s S-E-V-E-N turnovers, and he also fouled out of the contest.

His fourth-seeded California team lost to 11th-seeded Hawaii.

Had Boston president of basketball operations Danny Ainge made up his mind on Brown after that game, the Celtics would’ve missed out on what the rookie is projected to become and perhaps wouldn’t be 43-25 right now. I’d say choosing Brown was a pretty solid move from Ainge.

Now, let’s reverse the script.

In 2013, a red-shirt junior on Gonzaga by the name of Kelly Olynyk surged through headlines across the country for his versatile talents. He played well throughout the season, but two games of scoring 20-plus points while racking up 10 and 9 rebounds in March Madness boosted his draft stock a bit.

Due to those performances, despite his team losing in the second game, many fans hopped on the Olynyk train and applauded Ainge for drafting him 13th just several months later.

That’s all great and dandy, but it’s now almost been four whole seasons that he’s been in the league and the Celtics still get inconsistent offensive performances complemented by mediocre-at-best defense. Bet you didn’t see this coming when he carved up defenses in the 2013 tourney.

And just for the record, Ainge missed out on Giannis Antetokounmpo (picked 15th), Dennis Schroder (17th), Gorgui Dieng (21st) and Rudy Gobert (27th) by drafting Olynyk.

Of course, there are plenty of players that performed well in March Madness that went on to be real NBA studs, as well as plenty of players that were projected high but poor performances in the tourney dropped their stock and led to short-lived NBA careers.

Next: Five Games to Watch in Round of 64

All I’m saying is, it’s very difficult to tell if one or two bad games will actually foreshadow a poor NBA career, or if it’s just one or two small steps toward stardom. Watch these games by all means, but don’t determine who you like just off of a performance in the NCAA Tournament.

For all you know, it could be wrong.