The 2017 NCAA tournament has revealed a lot about the top NBA draft prospects

The NCAA tournament field has been sliced from 68 to 16, and gone are many of the top NBA draft prospects we wanted to see. In that spirit, this week’s Flanns & Zillz focuses on our thoughts on the draft class after the first weekend of madness.

ZILLER: Just like most NBA writers, we’re using the NCAA tournament to cram on the top prospects for the 2017 draft, which is just three months away. But before we get into what happened over the weekend, let’s discuss the two elephants not in the room: Markelle Fultz and Dennis Smith Jr. are two elite prospects whose teams didn’t make the tournament.

Nothing Fultz did at Washington this season dropped him down the big boards. The Huskies were bad, but Fultz showcased exactly what put him atop mock drafts for a couple of years. In fact, he improved his stock by showing he could shoot the long ball. So many recent hyper-athletic point guards lacked that piece when entering the league. He proved he can shoot.

So Fultz missing the tournament shouldn’t hurt his case, just as it didn’t for Ben Simmons last year.

But the knock on Smith at N.C. State was that he lacked focus and intensity, and he didn’t disprove that when the chips were down for the Wolfpack. He’s smaller than Fultz and a worse shooter, and I think not reminding teams what makes him a top prospect here in March could cost him a few spots. Small guards tend to drop in the lottery without massive Marches.

What do you think about the fate of the prospects who missed the Madness?

FLANNERY: I think Markelle Fultz will be the No. 1 pick even though people will talk way too much about Lonzo Ball over the next few weeks. Fultz is the guy and it wouldn’t surprise me if someone — maybe Duke’s Jayson Tatum or Kansas’ Josh Jackson — overtook Ball for the second spot. But let’s not get too far ahead of things yet.

Smith is an enigma. He has major physical talent with obvious holes in his game that can be developed with more experience. That’s the hope anyway. Talent evaluators would really like to see him spend another year in school and work on his point guard skills, but he’s going to be a lottery pick regardless. NC State is also making a coaching change, so there’s no reason for him to go back.

I would have liked to have seen more of Jonathan Isaac. I’m still not sure what to make of that guy.

ZILLER: I’ve moderated somewhat on the NBA age minimum, but Dennis Smith Jr. is one of those guys for which one-and-done did absolutely no benefit for anyone (not even Mark Gottfried, his now unemployed college coach). Smith will still go super high in the lottery without any assurances he’ll pan out.

Isaac did help himself — he considered entering the 2016 NBA draft through a loophole but went to Florida State instead — by showing decent three-point range for the tall, skinny prospect. I am concerned about whether he can actually be a combo forward in today’s NBA or whether he’s a pure center. Small forwards usually aren’t this tall, and defense could be a major concern if he’s asked to play the wing instead of the pivot. He’s also not much of a playmaker. He’s intriguing, but he’s also going to be compared to the more-skilled Tatum and Jackson.

Should we talk about Tatum? I know we both love that dude.

FLANNERY: Tatum is really good. I watched a lot of his work in the ACC tournament and came away impressed. He’s not a great long-range shooter by any means, but he’s got nice footwork and he can score in isolation. He just looks like an NBA player and the upside, as they say, is strong. Tatum’s almost a year younger than Josh Jackson. That matters when we’re talking about draft babies.

Jackson’s the other guy who’s almost certain to crack the top five. He’s a live wire on the court, but he can really pass and he plays so hard. You like what you’ve seen from him?

ZILLER: He’s an exciting player on the court, for sure. I especially enjoy his playmaking ability.

His off-the-court issues of late really can’t be ignored, though. He admitted to kicking the car of his teammate’s ex and is alleged to have hit it repeatedly in an apparent attempt to intimidate her after a public fight between her and Jackson’s teammate. Teams are rightfully sensitive to off-the-court issues and so Jackson’s spectacular on-court potential cannot and should not be seen in a vacuum. (Kansas in general is basically impossible for me to watch — there’s too much unspoken context and all of the credit for overcoming “distractions” makes me ill.)

Like you, I think Tatum absolutely looks the part of an NBA player and a modern NBA small forward, more specifically. In that sense he can slide right in. He had some spectacular blocks in Duke’s Round 1 win and was the Blue Devils’ best player in their Round 2 dismissal, but I do have a few questions about his face-up defense and playmaking.

I have far fewer questions here than I do about, say, Isaac. It seems inconceivable to me that one mediocre team will nab Tatum and one will grab Isaac and they’ll both actually be competing in the NBA next year.

Speaking of Duke, do you think Luke Kennard or Grayson Allen are NBA players? And do you agree that Harry Giles would be served extremely well by staying at Duke, provided his family doesn’t have financial pressures? (It’s really unfortunate that, because the NCAA refuses to pay players, we have to mention that as an important consideration.)

FLANNERY: I like Kennard, am decidedly ehhhh on Allen, and think Giles should go back to school for another year. I long for the day when some kind of workable system can be set up that will allow pro prospects to develop on their own timeframe while enjoying the university life and not being exploited for their services. I actually think this may be attainable in our lifetime, but we’ll see.

We should probably talk about Lonzo Ball now. I remain unconvinced that he’s worthy of the hype. I think he’s good, I just don’t believe we’re watching Jason Kidd 2.0 here. What do you make of him?

ZILLER: We are relatively young and we’re talking about the NCAA maybe paying the athletes that collectively make them billions “in our lifetime.” Our expectations are super low and super realistic.

I don’t think Grayson Allen is an NBA player despite his shooting stroke. One-trick shooters need the right attitude to survive and thrive in the NBA (see: J.J. Redick) and Allen hasn’t shown he has that.

However, we DO NOT agree on Lonzo Ball. I am all the way on this train.

How often do we see this combination of brash self-assurance and wily basketball IQ? It’s rare, man. Kidd was a special, special player — one of a kind despite our inclination to compare big pass-first point guards to him every third year. Ball is different. Ball is going to come into the league trying to score and pass and control the floor. In that way, I see him more like a Deron Williams type, but with more pizzazz and less weight.

I’m not saying Ball will be Curry, Harden, or Westbrook. But we’re in the golden era of these dual-threat, fearless, playmaking point guards. Who better than Ball to carry the torch?

FLANNERY: I am willing to concede that I may be wrong here and that everyone else is correct when they see Ball as a transformative figure. Again, I’m not saying he’ll be a bad pro. I think he’ll be a good, even All-Star-level player. I’m just not seeing greatness.

I know one thing: His father isn’t going to make a damn bit of difference in where he goes and I refuse to get all worked about him one way or the other. Let the man have his 15 minutes.

I wrote last week about embracing the tournament from a player perspective and a lot of those guys are out: Miles Bridges, Jawun Evans, Semi Ojeleye (my personal fav), Monte Morris, John Collins, Donovan Mitchell. Thank god for Kentucky. I need more De’Aaron Fox and Malik Monk in my life. I also want to see Lauri Markkanen against Gonzaga’s front line. (That Xavier club looks primed for an upset, though.)

What else do you have your eye on this weekend?

ZILLER: The Kentucky kids and Markkanen are the biggest draws other than Ball, but I’d like to get a better sense of Justin Jackson, even though he’s a junior. These UNC upperclassmen so often look better in college than they do in the league, but he’ll go in the top 20 with decent expectations. We won’t know if he can meet them until he gets to the league, but I need to see more.

Switching to the basketball itself for our final thoughts: any sense of who will win this thing?

FLANNERY: I haven’t a clue, to be honest. I will note, as have many college basketball aficionados, that the seedings seem to have been thrown together by a team of circus seals. That said, half of my Final Four is already out (thanks Nova and Louisville) and I’m not feeling great about Arizona or Kentucky either. The most impressive teams I’ve seen have been Michigan, West Virginia, and Xavier. So, Carolina? Maybe?

You have any better feel for this?

ZILLER: UCLA is winning this. Let the legend of Lonzo begin!