[Clarkmeister]

There are scrubby DI teams that would have no shot whatsoever. Not only are the players not good, they are small. A bad DI team could conceivably be a 40pt dog to a typical Duke/Carolina/Florida etc kind of team. Play 5 on 4 vs say Jordan, Shaq, Magic and Bird, they'd be totally hosed. You can only double one guy (likely Shaq), leaving the others, all of whom are big guys in their own right, with huge mismatches. Scoring in the paint would be really rare, leaving the bad DI team to shoot jumpshots all day, not a winning strategy since they'd likely be one and done.

I think the cutoff is likely a good DI team. Since there's no bench, I'd guess the mature prime NBA greats would wear down collegiate players and could win a close game.

I think the performance of today's Team USA vs international competition should serve as a pretty good barometer that 5 on 4 wouldn't work against even a poor NBA team.