Does March Madness lead to irrational exuberance in the NBA draft? High-value employee selection decisions and decision-making bias

We use detailed, personally-assembled data on the performance of collegiate and professional basketball players over the 1997-2010 period, to look at the impact of performance in the NCAA “March Madness” college basketball tournament on NBA teams' draft decisions and players' ultimate success in the NBA. We find that unexpected March Madness (MM) performance, in terms of team wins and player scoring, affects draft decisions, and NBA personnel who are making these draft decisions are not irrationally overweighting this MM information. If anything, the unexpected performance in the March Madness tournament deserves more weight than it gets in the draft decisions.