Nick Nurse prioritizes a few things when evaluating college prospects, and they aren’t basketball skills

Nick Nurse politely rejected the notion that he scours college basketball for future prospects when he has time to watch games.

"I'm not sure I'm doing that. I'm not sure I'm making those kind of projections or predictions as I'm watching," the Sixers head coach said of what he looks for when trying to project college players at the next level.

But he's a hoops junkie like the rest of us. You spend the hours he does stewarding the game, you can't so easily turn off that part of your brain just for the sake of enjoyment.

Despite an initial effort to hide his trade secrets, Nurse eventually scratched the itch.

"But I mean, I got some things that I certainly look for. Not surprising, what some of them are. But right up at the top is competitive spirit. Do they play their ass off? Does winning matter? Those kind of things. Toughness," Nurse explained.

That's not three-point shooting or passing or ball-handling. Those things were left off the list intentionally.

"I didn't get into any of the skills yet. Then you got to start figuring out, are they big enough and strong enough to play in the NBA? The list is pretty long," he said.

"But always got those things at the top because, as a coach, you want to go out there and you want to fight, you want to compete."

So, intangibles over skills? Is the philosophy that skills can be mined later?

Nurse says he's not sure that the intangibles always show up first. But he wants to see whether the skills fit into the flow of the game. He's looking for a compliment to what's in place, not something that governs or hijacks what's in place.

"But I think that you got to quickly...Once, you'll say, 'Woah, man, look at that three that guy hit'. Then you got to see if he doesn't try to get too carried away with the big three or the big dunk. See if they can play the rest of the parts of the game."

Keeping a watchful eye on college prospects is its own job. Nurse can't be required to man the Sixers' helm and thoroughly evaluate the upcoming draft class at the same time. That's why scouting departments exist.

But with the NCAA tournament in its second weekend of play and the Sixers trying their hardest to keep their first-round pick in this summer's draft to salvage something from this train wreck of a season, the next generation is on everyone's minds.

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