:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/49438751/usa-today-9108558.0.jpg)
First of all, what is The Basketball Tournament? From it's own site:
"The Basketball Tournament is an open-application, 5-on-5, single-elimination, winner-take-all basketball tournament. In 2014, the winning team took home $500K. In 2015, the winning team took home $1 million. In 2016, the winning team will take home $2 million.
This year a bunch of former Michigan State players have gotten together to form a team called the Spartan Heroes which includes Derrick Nix, Delvon Roe, Korie Lucious, Brandon Wood, Charlie Bell, Durrell Summers and Brandan Kearney so far. It appears they're still recruiting a couple more guys in Kalin Lucas and Raymar Morgan. However, at the moment Morgan is playing with the Canton Bulldogs so it might be hard to convince him to switch sides. Kalin Lucas is currently playing in Turkey but his season appears to end on May 8th so I'm guessing he should be available for the games when they start in early July.
The rules for players on the teams are that they have to be over 18, they give up their amateur status (so no college players), and they may not have more than 11 players on the team with the exception of the Ringer (which I'll get to in a second). So really any former MSU player would work except the issue is that some of the recently graduated, younger guys (Harris, Dawson, Trice, Valentine) will probably be playing in the NBA summer league or improving their game in the offseason.
The Ringer is a player that the team can add only if they have at least 2000 points when entering the tournament and they add him after they reach the Super 16. The most obvious candidate of who they might add would be Draymond Green who played with everyone on the team except Bell. The latest Draymond would be playing in the NBA playoffs would be mid to late June and the Super 16 starts July 21 so he would have time to recover. However, he may want to avoid injury and he also may be a bit worn out from the season so I wouldn't blame him if he doesn't want to join.
It's a 64 team bracket with 48 of them being selected by having the most votes. The remaining 16 teams need to be receive an at-large bid but they still need at least 7 players on the team along with at least 200 votes by June 1 to be considered. At the moment the Spartan Heroes have around 125 votes but I know that the Kentucky and Kansas State teams have around 2000-3000 votes. You can vote at their team page and they give out an incentive for sharing the link as the top 100 fans receive cash prizes if their team wins. The top fan receives $20K, the next 4 receive $10K, the next 15 after that receive $4K, and the remaining 80 fans receive $1K. You can click here to vote for them but I'm also going to shamelessly ask that you vote using the link on my tweet below as it can help my rank on the fan list. GO GREEN!
Get on board everyone because I kinda want to see this happen #TBT2016 https://t.co/9bqL1PIoNZ
— Matt Mc (@McMathketball) April 29, 2016