Total unscientific on my part but I've always felt better about high seeded teams' long-term chances in the tourney when they struggle in their opening round games rather than winning by 25 or 30+. Seems to get them a bit battle-hardened while you sometimes see teams that dominated in opening/round of 32 games end up getting shocked in the Sweet Sixteen.
Like I said, totally unscientific on my part.
Kenny Smith agrees with you, based on his UNC days.
Was he on that '84 UNC team Jordan's junior year?
I cant remember when he played, but he was making your point on cbs yesterday. 
He was on that team, but I disagree with him and this theory.
I mean I can see why we’d think that. If you have an early scare, you might take things more seriously (kind of like what Chuck Daly did with the '92 Dream Team when he set up the college kids to beat them in a scrimmage). Seems logical, but I don’t think it holds weight. Just remembering some of my Final Four favorites that screwed my bracket or almost screwed up my bracket in the past, I don’t think there’s really any correlation.
2013 champs Louisville won 1st two rounds by 31 and 26
2012 champs Kentucky won 1st two rounds by 15 and 16
2011 champs UConn won 1st two rounds by 29 and 5
2010 champs Duke won 1st two rounds by 28 and 15
2009 champs UNC won 1st two rounds by 43 and 14
Of course that’s just looking at the eventual champs. The difference between the 1, 2, 3 seeds that make it the Final Four or Elite Eight verses the 1, 2, 3 seeds that get bounced in the round of 32 or Sweet 16, maybe a tougher first game or two. But I think if we really dug into it, we wouldn’t see much of a correlation.
