Saturday’s Den: Brackets for a hypothetical 1-on-1 tournament with NBA players

13) People at the Action Network www.actionnetwork.com came up with a great source of discussion Thursday; a hypothetical, 64-player 1-on-1 tournament. Tremendous stuff to argue about and good way to spend time filling out brackets. It is worth a look.

12) #1 seeds: Kawhi Leonard, Lebron James, Giannis Antetokounmpo, James Harden.

#16 seeds: Jonathan Isaac, Kelly Oubre, Aaron Gordon, Blake Griffin.

Harden-Griffin first round game would be entertaining.

11) #2 seeds: Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, Anthony Davis, Joel Embiid

#15 seeds: Eric Gordon, Domantas Sabonis, LaMarcus Aldridge, Eric Bledsoe

Durant is coming off of an achilles injury; those can be tough to recover from.

10) #3 seeds: Jayson Tatum, Pascal Siakim, Ben Simmons, Paul George

#14 seeds: Fred VanVleet, Kyle Lowry, Danilo Gallinari, Nikola Vucevic

Simmons can’t shoot; passing doesn’t matter- Gallinari would be a live 14-seed.

9) #4 seeds: Damian Lillard, Bradley Beal, Karl-Anthony Towns, Jimmy Butler

#13 seeds: D’Angelo Russell, Buddy Hield, Carmelo Anthony, Jaren Jackson

8) Steph Curry, Luka Doncic, Russell Westbrook are all 5-seeds, not sure how Curry would defend a much bigger player, but that guy would have to go outside to guard him, too.

7) When they had a 1-on-1 tournament in the early 70’s, JoJo White won one of them; he was a good NBA player, but I doubt he was one of the favorites. Good shooter, though.

Bob Lanier beat Connie Hawkins 50-46 in a legendary game (games were up tp 20, but you had to win by either 3 or 4 points).

6) Harden, Curry and Jimmy Butler are all in the same region; Curry-butler would’ve been a really interesting second round game.

5) Nikola Jokic as an 11-seed is interesting, because he could back a smaller player in, but he can also make 3’s. Could he defend a smaller sharpshooter?

4) One factor if this was really going to happen; how far apart would each round be? Guys coming off injuries, or older players might struggle if there were two games on same day, or if they had to play 2,3 days in a row. One of those intangibles we’ll never know.

3) Think about it; even if you’re a #16-seed here, it means you’re on of the 64 best basketball players in the world, which would be pretty cool.

2) My Final Four: Damian Lillard, Bradley Beal, Danilo Gallinari, James Harden.

1) Anyway, there is a printable bracket at www.actionnetwork.com If you’re interested, print one out and give it some thought. 

Author: Armadillo Sports

I've been involved in sports my whole life, now just write about them. I like to travel, mostly to Las Vegas- they have gambling there.