Every year, the NCAA Tournament affects how NBA prospects are perceived. These are games played at the highest level, with the utmost intensity. They should be valued more than others. The key, though, is making sure that you don’t let the potential for recency bias overshadow the story that the 30-game sample for each prospect has already told.



There’s no better way to dive into this phenomenon than with Purdue guard Carsen Edwards. For four games, Edwards looked like the second-best player in the country. He went into the phone booth as his normal self, then came out as college basketball’s James Harden. The 6-foot guard out of Texas averaged 34.8 points per game in the tournament, including shooting an outrageous 45.9 percent from 3 on over 15 attempts per game while getting to the line nine times per contest. He dropped 42 on both Villanova and Virginia, the latter performance a virtuoso display of shot-making regardless of the player they put against...