Prospect Watch: Okafor solidifying case for No. 1 as NBA's bottom-3 defined

The New York Knicks are more or less throwing in the towel. The Minnesota Timberwolves had their towel thrown in for them by the injury gods. The Philadelphia 76ers never even bothered to bring a towel.

Other teams may eventually pack it in and play for pingpong balls, but there's a five-game gap between those three dregs and the next closest team. For all intents and purposes, it's New York (5-32), Minnesota (5-28) and Philadelphia (5-28) fighting it out in the reverse standings.

It may still be a little early with conference schedules only just getting underway, but fans of those three teams will soon turn their attention to the college basketball world and get excited about the prospects they could be losing for. Here's hoping those fans enjoy post play.

The draft class of 2015 won't be getting quite the publicity that the vaunted yet so far unimpressive 2014 class received, but there is a good deal of talent available, especially for teams with specific needs.

Jahlil Okafor, a freshman center for Duke, is the clear top prize. Teams may find themselves enamored with game tape of point guard Emmanuel Mudiay from China or talk themselves into Kentucky's Karl-Anthony Towns, also a potential difference-making center, but Okafor has solidified himself as the winner's purse for a season lost.

Standing 6-foot-11 and 275 pounds, Okafor is dominating like few rookie centers in recent memory, averaging 19.5 points, 8.7 rebounds and 1.7 blocks while shooting 68.2 percent from the floor, numbers that are somehow trending upward. He's not there defensively – his size should keep his defensive floor fairly high, but he doesn't possess elite athleticism – but it's tough to think of a center good enough offensively to warrant a comparison.

That's great news for the Knicks, who have holes everywhere and simply need talent. Phil Jackson's triangle philosophy hasn't valued point-guard play that highly in the past, so they'd seem a more likely bet to go with a big than Mudiay or a wing further down the board, even if drafting by need instead of talent.

Things are less clear for the Timberwolves, who have a decent young player at every position on the floor. Minnesota, too, could opt to go with the best talent available and figure out a fit later, though drafting a center would probably spell the end of one of Nikola Pekovic. Mudiay will probably be able to handle shooting guard defensively given his size, but pairing him, a non-shooter, with Ricky Rubio could be tough offensively. Those are minor issues for a rebuilding team looking to maximize talent above all else.

Similarly for the 76ers, the top players available don't really fit their needs. They already have Nerlens Noel and Joel Embiid at the center position and Michael Carter-Williams at point guard, and the draft is fairly thin on high-end wing talent, Philly's biggest hole. In drafting Embiid when they already had Noel, the Sixers showed they'll value talent above all else, so anyone remains a possibility.

All three teams would probably select Okafor given the opportunity, with the Russell Westbrook-ian Mudiay and defensive ace Towns as the next in line. They probably won't elevate to No. 1, but Latvian Kristaps Porzingis, who dropped out of the 2014 Draft, and Kentucky's Willie Cauley-Stein are the next bigs up, while Duke's Justise Winslow and rising Kansas freshman Kelly Oubre represent the top wings available.