NBA Fantasy Performance for the 07-08 season
by Roland Beech, 82games.com
Does running this site and spending a zillion hours watching and pondering NBA games give me some kind of leg up when it comes to competing in Fantasy Basketball leagues? One would think so! To test it out, this past season I was a participant in four separate leagues of some note:
- NBA.com Magazine -- experts league that drafted in August, way ahead of normal draft timing and featuring a star studded fantasy hoops lineup of Berry, Buser, Evans, Funston, Kamla, Karabell, Liss, Loomer, Lyons, Snellings, Zegers, and me
- Yahoo! Experts League -- many of the 'usual suspects' with Yahoo's default settings including the dreaded turnover category
- 82games Draft Only League -- we meant what we said: draft 12 players and all of them start the whole season with no trades, pickups or roster moves of any kind, featuring Berry, Funston, Kamla, Liss, Loomer, Snellings from the fantasy contingent, along with Henry "TrueHoop" Abbott, Tommy "Super Writer" Craggs, Jeff "Protrade" Ma, Justin "Basketball-Reference" Kubatko, 82games' fantasy guru Eric Wong, and me. Fighting for the $1,000 first prize
- NFBBC Money League -- the audaciously named perhaps "National Fantasy Basketball Championship" with a $600 buy-in for a 12-team, 8-cat roto affair.
In the end the results were decidedly mixed I suppose:
NFBBC -- 1st ($3,500)
NBA.com -- 2nd (behind ESPN's Eric Karabell)
82games Draft-Only -- 5th (ESPN's Matt Berry won)
Yahoo! -- lowly, probably 9th or worse
NFBBC Glory
On the plus side, the money league was a big success. After being literally in last place in the first month plus of the season, I climbed the standings, eventually edging out Eric Wong for the title. The draft was a key to victory as out of the 10th spot I grabbed:
R1: Amare - stud!
R2: Wade - suspect due to injury
R3: Pierce - solid
R4: Roy - solid
R5: Jason Richardson - stud!
R6: Granger - stud!
R7: Odom - solid
R8: Bynum - solid until injury
R9: Nocioni - disappointed
R10: Mobley - yawn
R11: Fisher - decent
R12: Outlaw - never quite lived up to my sleeper expectations
R13: Brevin Knight - yawn
R14: Charlie Bell - yawn
R15: Haywood - a total steal in the 15th round
R16: Bobby Simmons - quickly dropped
(good picks in bold)
Hitting so consistently on the first half of the draft set me up for a solid year indeed. Still guys like Dunleavy, Calderon, and Turkoglu all went after my Fisher pick suggesting I missed a few as well.
82games draft only league
There's a full writeup on the picks and projected standings at the Draft Only League article, but it ended up a three man race between three of the big names: Berry, Funston, and Kamla that went down to the final day:
Final Standings:
67 - Berry
66 - Kamla
65 - Funston
61 - Snellings
60 - me
57 - Ma
54 - Kubatko
47 - Wong
44 - Craggs
43 - Abbott
34 - Loomer
26 - Liss
Wrenching injuries certainly took their toll on some of the teams, and on a total games played by the 12 man set in stone roster it looks like this:
Games Played
889 Kamla
881 Kubatko
874 Funston
873 Craggs
867 Wong
857 Ma
849 Berry
838 Abbott
826 me
808 Loomer
804 Snellings
786 Liss
...so a good performance by Berry to be 7th in GP but first in the final Roto-Standings, and $1,000 richer as a result.
ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS!
My team was: (Berry's picks in parentheses)
R1: Amare - stud! (Kobe)
R2: Iguodala - not as good as I hoped (Deron Williams)
R3: Boozer - solid (Iverson)
R4: Hinrich - complete bust (Okafor)
R5: Jason Richardson - stud! (Odom)
R6: Granger - stud! (Harrington)
R7: Marbury - Bust! Bust! Bust! (Terry)
R8: Battier - only okay (Dalembert)
R9: Murphy - disappointing (Herrmann)
R10: Anthony Parker - only okay (Marvin Williams)
R11: Nene - bad pick with the injury risk (Tinsley)
R12: Simmons - yuck (Ariza)
So far fewer good picks for me in this one, while Berry's Kobe-Deron-Iverson dynamite trio got him rolling.
In the end while the draft only league sounded like a good idea at the time, it produced a very flat season as you watched helplessly as events unfolded. We won't be doing that again anytime soon I think, but maybe we can get a full season league going instead.
If you're already gearing up for 08-09 then check out Eric's team by team reviews at 30 Teams in 30 days
|
