Ben Simmons Belongs In The NCAA Tournament, Even If LSU (Maybe) Doesn't

Kansas was not a particularly good basketball team in February of 1988. The Jayhawks lost to Iowa State and Notre Dame in late January and dropped out of the top 25, and then topped off a five-game losing streak by falling to Nebraska, Kansas State and Oklahoma. After winning five straight over unranked Big 8 opponents, they lost to a pair of top-five teams, Duke and Oklahoma, and then fell by 15 to Kansas State in the conference tournament, affixing themselves squarely on the NCAA tournament bubble—all of this despite the presence of forward Danny Manning, the best player in the country by a considerable margin.

What happened next, of course, was one of the greatest fairy-tale endings in college basketball history. Perhaps you recall the run made by "Danny and the Miracles," the national champion with the most regular-season losses in tournament history; perhaps you remember the way Larry Brown's Jayhawks, a No. 6 seed in the Midwest region, avenged those earlier losses to Duke and Oklahoma in the Final Four. Manning put up 31 points and 18 rebounds in that championship game; he was the only real threat the Jayhawks had—before their first-round game against Xavier, the Musketeers' center reportedly said, "All they've got is Manning. I'm guarding him. No problem."

I've been thinking about that team quite often in the past few weeks, for an obvious reason: Ben Simmons, the best player in college basketball this season—maybe the best college basketball player in a generation—is currently laboring for a team that may not make the NCAA tournament. This has been the dominant storyline in the media since LSU struggled through its early-season non-conference schedule; this is the dominant storyline now, after LSU's loss to Alabama on Wednesday night dropped the Tigers to 16-10 on the season.

It has become enough of a concern that ESPN's Dana O'Neil posed the question I've been wondering about all season long: What does all of this mean to the NCAA tournament selection committee? Does LSU get greater consideration because Simmons is so undeniably wonderful to watch? And the answer, at least from the people O'Neil spoke to, was largely a resounding no. "In respect to Simmons and LSU, that's prompted me to think back to all of the times that I've been in the room and I can honestly say nothing pops into my head. Not one time that an individual's play or talent was discussed," said former NCAA executive vice president Tom Jernstedt.

I understand the motivation behind this line of thinking. I get that the committee is expected to labor behind some judicial pretense of impartiality, that it is designed to evaluate the weight of teams and not the impact of individuals. Particularly with college football, this makes sense; if anything, the first couple years of the college football selection committee choosing playoff participants has proven that groups of experts tend to veer toward the safest possible choices.

But in basketball, things are vastly different. The postseason tournament is so much larger, so much more diverse, an endless array of great teams and brilliant individual players and small-conference underdogs and underachieving major-conference squads. In basketball, the committee is choosing 64 teams; it has to take chances on certain resumes. And in basketball, one player can affect the perception—and often, the success—of a team in a way not even an elite quarterback ever could. And this is why I would have no real issue with the selection committee taking Simmons into account; this is why I think he should unquestionably be a factor in their decision-making process. If LSU is firmly ensconced on the bubble—if it comes down to RPI rankings and Ken Pomeroy's numbers and "good wins" versus "bad losses"—Simmons should serve as a potential tiebreaker. Because having him in the NCAA Tournament would make the whole thing better.

"He's a terrific talent," an anonymous former committee member told O'Neil. "But at the end of the day, it's not an individual sport. I cannot in my five years remember a single time anyone has said, 'Wouldn't it be great to have Player X in the tournament because it would be great for the event?' It's never happened before. Ever."

I don't doubt that this person is telling the truth. I don't think anyone in that room would ever approach it so gratuitously. But, as Jernstedt told O'Neil, he could not control "how people think and how it affects their voting." And there are times when what is "great for the event" is not some perversion of the process. There are times where, all things being equal, it makes perfect sense to veer toward entertainment value. The selection committee is putting together a basketball tournament that generates billions of dollars in television revenue because it's fun to watch; they are not electing the next Pope.

If it's a choice between, say, 20-12 LSU and a 20-11 Colorado team, I have no problem with choosing the former. All of the No. 1 NBA draft picks on teams seeded lower than fifth or worse since Manning's run—Anthony Bennett at UNLV in 2013, Andrew Bogut at Utah in 2005, Shaquille O'Neal at LSU in 1992—won at least one tournament game, and Bogut led his team to the Sweet Sixteen. Assuming LSU has defensible tournament credentials, there's no reason why Simmons shouldn't be given that same chance. There's no reason we should be afraid to admit that we'd at least like to watch him try.