Each week, we'll ask questions about the Sixers to our resident basketball analysts and see what they have to say.
Running the Give and Go this week are CSNPhilly.com columnist John Gonzalez, CSNPhilly.com producer/reporter John Finger and CSNPhilly.com producer/reporter Matt Haughton.
How much should the Sixers weigh top prospects' NCAA tournament performances?
Gonzalez
No more or less than any other game. Figuring out who's going to be the best pro is about skill projection, not looking at what a player did in this game or that.
James Harden went 2 for 10 from the field and 0 for 5 from three in his last NCAA game. It was a loss. Kevin Love went 4 for 11 in his last college game. It was also a loss. Both of them turned out to be pretty good.
Conversely, Evan Turner and Harrison Barnes played pretty well before jumping to the pros. How did that work out?
Finger
NCAA tournament games are a big deal. It's high-pressure basketball that good players will face in the NBA. So there are things that can be learned about a player in a really big game. It's not the most important aspect of determining a players' worth, but it matters.
NBA
After all, there are very few all-time great players that didn't get to the Final Four. The best players play in the best games. That's not a coincidence.
Haughton
It shouldn't be the determining factor on a player, but it certainly matters.
There's no more pressure on the collegiate level than the win-or-go-home fashion of the NCAA tournament. How a player performs on a stage that big could go a long way toward showing how they will handle the bright lights of the NBA.
I'm not saying that Jabari Parker and Andrew Wiggins' early exits from the Big Dance mean the Sixers should pass on either one if given the chance to draft them in June. But I'm sure the organization would have liked to see a player that could potentially be a main piece of the puzzle moving forward rise to the occasion against the best that college ball has to offer.