5 first round NCAA Tournament games with NBA Draft implications

The NCAA Tournament is a great chance to get introduced to some of the NBA Draft prospects you haven’t heard about. These are the first round games to watch

College basketball is storming to the top of all things sports now that March Madness is upon us. While talking head after talking head tries to convince you that they are the person with the information you need to win the office pool, NBA front offices are also paying close attention to the action unfolding before us.

From Thursday to Sunday, 32 games will be played. While it is easy for us to turn on our television and channel skip back-and-forth looking for the most exciting finish, NBA teams generally take a different approach in how they attempt to consume all the basketball that the NCAA Tournament delivers to us. Aside from having a multitude of staff members stationed at different host cities across the nation, most teams by now have a list of prospects that they are interested in and spend the majority of the tournament tracking specific players.

With that approach in mind, let’s take a look at the opening weekend’s slate of games and lock in on the five that feature the most potential NBA talent. This way, we can ensure that we are watching along with some — if not all — of the 30 NBA franchises this weekend (and we’ll feel better and more informed when we blast Team X for drafting Player X over Player Y this summer: everybody wins!).

These games won’t feature names like Zion Williamson, RJ Barrett, Cam Reddish, De’Andre Hunter, etc. because though those are names likely to be featured prominently in the lottery, their first game against 16-seeds isn’t really going to tell us more than what we’ve already seen of them. The five games featured here focus on two teams facing off that have potential NBA-caliber talent on both sidelines.