Five other players, New Zealand's Steven Adams, Michigan's Tim Hardaway Jr., Miami's Shane Larkin, New Mexico's Tony Snell and North Carolina's C.J. Leslie, also really helped themselves over the past few days.
Adams' name was especially hot all weekend. His size, athletic ability, defensive skills, soft shooting touch around the basket and excellent interviews all positioned him to move into the lottery from the mid-first round. His rise parallels, to a large degree, what Illinois' Meyers Leonard did last year at the combine. All year, teams feared that Adams didn't have the skill or the mental makeup to be a lottery pick. By Friday, virtually every executive in the NBA was predicting Adams would go somewhere between No. 9 and No. 14 and that he had moved ahead of Kelly Olynyk and Gorgui Dieng on their draft boards.