The Madness

One astounding fact I notice each year as "March Madness" descends upon is that people who cover the NBA appear to believe that NBA GMs will be non-trivially swayed in their drafting decisions by team success enjoyed by amateur athletes playing in a single-elimination tournament. I think that's crazy. Precisely what's fun about the NCAA Tournament -- what puts the madness into March -- is that the tournament format makes the ultimate outcomes fairly random. It might make some sense to super-weight a player's individual performance during the Tournament since, presumably, you're getting a look at how the guy responds to pressure and to a somewhat more consistent level of competition than you see in the regular season. But Chad Ford says that "if Texas A&M struggles early, [Acie Law] could slide behind all of the freshmen point guards with NBA potential" and that "if [Mike Conley] can help lead Ohio State to a NCAA title as a freshman, a number of GMs will come calling in the mid-to- late first round." It's a six-round single-elimination tournament! A team that wins 89 percent of the time wins six in a row less than half the time. This just can't be your decisive factor in assessing whether Law is better than Conley. TNR has a March Madness blog, incidentally, for tournament coverage. I'll be rooting for Texas out of deference to the roommate and because I saw Kevin Durant play live in high school so I feel like I discovered him even though every scout in the country already knew all about him.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2007/03/the-madness/41679/