NEW YORK _ The NBA draft is still weeks away and other than an interview lasting less than an hour in a Chicago hotel suite, there have been no workouts or measurements of the three players that almost every scout has penciled in as the top three picks this summer.
Duke's Zion Williamson is a fait accompli as the top pick to New Orleans and almost everyone figures Ja Morant, the athletic point guard from Murray State, to go No. 2 to Memphis, which would leave Williamson's Duke teammate, RJ Barrett, for the Knicks at the third spot.
It took less than a day for speculation to begin that the Grizzlies had locked in on Morant _ even though they had not done anything other than sit in a room with him in the hotel. Not a drill. Not a test. Not a measurement.
So could minds change as the draft approaches? Sure. And plenty of voices have come out in support of Barrett this week. On Madison Square Garden Network a procession of guests have been giving glowing reports of Barrett and how he could be a star in New York, some even speculating that he could be the best player in this draft, which is not a completely off-the-charts story.
"You see how he handled himself this year," said Kevin Boyle, Barrett's high school coach at Montverde Academy in his session with MSG 150. "You have an incredible player in Zion Williamson and obviously they're both great players. You can make a great argument for both to be No. 1 in the draft. Zion deserved all the attention he got. But RJ probably deserved more attention than he received and he was never jealous. He was happy for his friend, happy for the team. And I think that's a rare quality in today's kids."
So is that really the order of picks? Who knows? Morant did stick around for the NBA draft combine, doing media sessions, but he didn't do any of the testing. He didn't even do height and weight measurements, no small feat for a player who is listed at 6-3 and 175 pounds _ and some executives were guessing the height, like that of most players, was an exaggeration.
The fact is that whether he is 6-1 or 6-3 Morant has performed on the court, excelling not just in his own conference but also in the NCAA Tournament. He put up a triple-double with 17 points, 16 assists and 11 rebounds against Marquette and then scored 28 in the season-ending loss to Florida State. He did it early in the season, too, scoring 38 points at Alabama and 25 at Auburn.
But it's still worth wondering, does the hype about who is No. 2 change when the Grizzlies bring Barrett and Morant into the gym? It's worth noting, too, that it was Barrett _ not Williamson _ who was the top-rated prospect coming into the college basketball season. The son of Rowan Barrett, who played four seasons at St. John's in the 1990s, he reclassified, graduating high school early, to get to Duke last year and won't turn 19 years old until six days before the draft.
Morant was a sophomore at Murray State, having started every game as a freshman, but hardly put up numbers anywhere close to this season, when he nearly doubled his scoring average. Look at his performance against Auburn in his freshman year for comparison, He shot 2 for 10 and totaled only nine points.
What Morant showed this season was impressive. Was it enough to make it to draft night ahead of Barrett?
For their part, the Knicks aren't saying.
"We're excited about where we are," Knicks president Steve Mills said last week. "We know we'll get a good player at three. So it's something we're excited about and look forward to."
