At The Hive 9th Pick Tournament: Prospects and Seeding

Welcome fellow At The Hive readers to the site's first ever draft pick tournament! After creating this bracket, which consists of 15 prospects and one trade option, I feel like this covers all the possible names that could be selected at No. 9 for the Charlotte Hornets on draft night.

I did consider doing a 24th pick tournament as well, but there's obviously a lot more excitement revolving around Charlotte's lottery pick, via Detroit, in one of the deepest drafts in a decade.

Want to know more about how this tournament process works? Well, the last two drafts I've done similar tournament-style draft articles -- and they were a hit even with the picks being made in the mid-20's. I expect it to be even better now with the talent in the tournament taking a huge step up.

Now, lets get to the nitty-gritty of what everyone is excited about: the bracket.

For the seeding process, I did a mixture of two things: my personal big board and the Hornets' overall needs. Once finished, the bracket came out to be pretty competitive -- and possible matchups deeper into it will be instant classics.

No. 1 Seeds: Trade Out for Vet and Noah Vonleh

No. 2 Seeds: Julius Randle and Aaron Gordon

No. 3 Seeds: Marcus Smart and Nik Stauskas

No. 4 Seeds: Dario Saric and Gary Harris

No. 5 Seeds: Doug McDermott and James Young

No. 6 Seeds: Zach LaVine and P.J. Hairston

No. 7 Seeds: Rodney Hood and T.J. Warren

No. 8 Seeds: Adreian Payne and Jusuf Nurkic

The first matchup will debut Sunday morning, and it will run up, hopefully, until the draft. Hope everyone enjoys this NBA draft tournament as much as I will be making it!