Portland Trail Blazers: March Madness cancellation complicates NBA draft

NBA scouts jobs just got a lot harder with the cancellation of NCAA March Madness over coronavirus fears. How will this impact the Trail Blazers and  the draft?

For the first time in the history of college athletics, there will be a perfect March Madness bracket.

All of them.

This past Wednesday, at 1:16 p.m. Pacific Time, the NCAA made an unprecedented announcement.

There would be no men’s or women’s championship tournaments this year.

That move came after nearly every conference had also announced that their tournaments would be canceled in order to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.

The NCAA basically had no choice.

After Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz tested positive for COVID-19, followed by his teammate Donovan Mitchell, and the NBA decided to postpone the remainder of their season at least 30 days, there was basically no way college basketball could make an excuse for going ahead.

Simply postponing the tournaments was a logistical near-impossibility, with many campuses closing through much of April. May Madness would run into the NBA combine, and draft preparations, so many of the top prospects would already have moved on to prepping for their professional careers.

Which brings us to the topic of this column.

March is the crucible for college basketball players. The cream rises to the top, and pretenders crumble.

It is also the most fertile ground for NBA talent scouts looking to firm up their opinions about top players, or uncover a diamond in the rough.

None of that is happening this year.

It’s still unclear how the NBA might move ahead with finishing out the remainder of their season, but there’s still a real possibility the Portland Trail Blazers come away with a decently high draft pick after a difficult campaign.

But how do you fully evaluate potential targets when there’s no March Madness?

Certainly, college teams had a full regular season to play, and scouts have plenty of tape they can go back over, but every year there are a few players who rise above the crowd through the inimitable pressure cooker that is March Madness.

Anyone else think CJ McCollum goes as high as 10th to Portland in 2013 without that iconic performance against Duke in 2012?

And it’s not just talent evaluators being impacted. Think of all those bubble players who now have one fewer chance to display what they can do under the brightest of lights.

Dayton’s Obi Toppin comes to mind (we profiled him as a potential Blazer pick earlier this week). Here’s a mid-major player, with plenty of interest from teams, but now lacking a big stage for evaluators to see how he’ll fare against top-shelf competition.

The same holds true for pretty much everyone on teams like San Diego State, and even Gonzaga, which is often knocked for playing lesser competition in the WCC.

Players, like Oregon’s Payton Pritchard, a 4-year senior and PAC-12 Player of the Year, could also be affected. Despite his stellar resume, a lot of talent evaluators are on the fence about the point guard. A good tournament run could have moved Pritchard into a low first-rounder, but now he may fall into the second round, or even go undrafted.

He’ll just have to hope his tape is good enough, and he can make a good showing in combines before the draft, assuming they even happen.

Ultimately, we will all get through this. The virus will wane, the panic will subside, science will come up with treatments, and our favorite professional teams will get back into action.

But many college players will finish their careers without a shining moment, or a final chance to prove they’re more than just a line on a stat sheet, but a winner who rises above the rest when the pressure is at its highest.

Others, who may have looked to jump early into the NBA face big choices about whether to return. The NCAA may offer further eligibility for some players wishing to come back, but even if given the option, a lot of players will face difficult decisions.