The Best Players in the NBA - Tournament - Rules

Welcome to the latest brainchild of mine: The Best Players in the NBA Tournament! This series will feature all of the hottest stars in the league right now, and they will compete in a tournament to see who the best player is. Now don’t get too excited; there will be no actual one on one games. It is going to be based off of my opinions and observations, along with cold hard stats. However, if you disagree with what I come up with, feel free to leave a scathing comment! This post is just an intro to the Tournament and will explain how I am rating all of the players. I am also going to describe the format of the tournament. So, let’s get on to the rules!

Picking the Original Pool of Players

This may be the part that most of you will disagree with; and with good reason. How am I picking these first round players? Well, I am just picking them based off of my opinions. Now, I am not going to go and pick these guys arbitrarily. In fact most of them are generally agreed upon to be the top tier of stars in the NBA.

One rule that I am following is that the player has to be a genuine superstar. I define that as being a player who can single handedly change not just one game, but many games, and in turn, change a teams fortune. I am talking about the real game breakers here. I am also trying to pick the most complete players as well. I don’t want a one dimensional 3 point shooter, nor do I want a guy who just dunks well. The final part that I took into consideration with these initial nominations is the players star power. I am referring to how many times there name pops up in the media or on the internet; how often they get mentioned. This is not terribly important, but it is a factor.

The Format of the Tournament

This tournament will be made up of 16 players vying to be crowned Best Player in the NBA. The competition will be head to head in each round, with half of the players advancing. There will be several categories that I will be judging the players on. I will then assign a numerical value to each category, and when I add up the numbers, the player with the highest score advances. The Skill category will have a 10 point maximum for each player, as will Notoriety. The One on One category will award 3 points to the player that I think would win in a One on One game.

How Players Advance

In the head to head competition, the player with the highest point total will advance. It is just that simple.

Skill

Using career stats along general skill abilities, I will give each player a score ranging from 1 to 10.

Notoriety

Using my general sense of a players star power along with the number of results from Google for their name, I will give each player a score ranging from 1 to 10.

One on One

This is my best guess as to who would win in a One on One battle to the death! Or, just a basketball game…

The Initial List of Players

The players are seated here according to their teams final record for the past regular season, providing a modest gauge to their ability to carry a team.

1. Dirk Nowitzki
2. Steve Nash
3. Tim Duncan
4. Tracy McGrady
5. Yao Ming
6. Lebron James
7. Carmelo Anthony
8. Allen Iverson
9. Dwayne Wade
10. Shaquille Oneal
11. Kobe Bryant
12. Baron Davis
13. Jason Kidd
14. Gilbert Arenas
15. Dwight Howard
16. Kevin Garnett

I just wanted to mention as a side not that I was inspired to do this tournament by a blog called This Week in Basketball.

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