Apologies Mr Gasol
I owe an apology to Pau Gasol. Back in August I wrote this, saying Gasol was going to drop off this season as compared to last. I mostly wrote it because I REALLY wanted to use the picture from Rolling Stone.
Even worse, because I secretly wanted a piece of the Gasol family, I drafted Marc with the 33rd pick. I say worse, because despite his good form, I traded him for Brook Lopez who continues to abuse me with his dopey comic ways while not performing on the basketball court.
Anyway, the point of this is that I just traded for Pau Gasol. I thought the day would never come. You could call me a classic Laker hater. I can’t stand Kobe Bryant (that jaw thing pushed me over the edge) and the current collection of douchebags assembled in LA astounds me. To get Gasol, I gave up my rock so far this season, Tony Parker together with Danny Granger and Dorell Wright (I also got DJ Augustin, but more on that later). This was done on a whim, mostly expecting the trade to be rejected. But I couldn’t resist trying to nab Gasol to compliment my efficient big man team – KG, Camby, Nene, the previously mentioned Brook Lopez. And now Gasol. With Durant as the centerpiece, I’d say the team is borderline complete.
Getting back to Gasol. My main points against Gasol prior to the season starting were; He wasn’t interesting, he is soft, he is a dick, and he cannot play as well as 2009-10. 3 out of 4 ain’t bad.
But he certainly can play as well as last season, perhaps even better. This season, Gasol has increased his assists and blocks while lowering his turnovers. He is shooting slightly less FG% (down 2% to 51%) while his boards have slipped by 0.4 and his points have increased by 0.2. He has hit 43 of his 48 free throws in January. Did I mentioned that he hasn’t missed a game yet?
PAU GASOL! Why did I ever doubt you? Please do not seek your revenge by transforming into Shawn Bradley.
On a side note. Looking at my original roster for the season, only four players remain. Durant, Nene, KG and Gallinari. Strange. What’s not strange is that my team has ended up just like all my other teams. Efficient big men, dumping assists. I promise myself next year I’ll try something different.
The worst game of the season
According to the peeps I follow on Twitter, the Washington/Sac-town game was atrocious. Ugly fouls, an inability to keep time, a distinct lack of defence. However, the ever optimistic account of the NBA used more fantasy friendly terms, describing the epic battle of sub .500 teams as a ‘wild win’.
What exactly does ‘wild’ mean? Here are a few thoughts. DeMarcus opened up by going 0-6 from the floor. ‘Sisco Garcia had a season-high 26 points. Nick Young (THE NICK YOUNG!) dropped 43 including 7 from down town. January 2011 will forever be known as the time when the Wizards used all 12 players including Trevor Booker and Kevin Seraphin. It doesn’t get much better for fantasy. Except… it does.
There is a myth out there that scoring and a million possessions per game maketh a fantasy player. Two theories are used frequently to uphold this supposed fact. They are the ‘Golden State Warriors theory of relatively little defence’ and the D’Antoni effect. Many a fantasy nerd will proscribe avidly to these two methods of thinking. One, that a random GSW player will be awesome that season because they will play 40 minutes and score a shit load of points. The other, any team coached by Mike D’Antoni is not going to worry about a half court offense, leading to higher possessions and more chances to accumulate precious box score statistics.
My thoughts are not in compatible with these two situations. For example, like every other dummy this season, I can see Dorell Wright is God’s gift to the waiver wire. Proveth theorum numero uno – with the small caveat of Reggie Williams who I remember at draft time was meant to be that player. Also, you cannot deny the D’Antoni effect on players such as Ray Felton, Landry Fields and Wilson Chandler. Felton and Chandler struggled before being turned into up and down machines, running the floor all day. However, again, there is the inevitable failures such as Anthony Randolph and to some extent this season, Danilo Gallinari who is struggling to click as the tempo has been raised from even last season.
BUT. The real issue is not with these two facets of fantasy NBA – it’s that people see this and presume because their possessions per game as so ridiculously high, this must be true for all teams and when teams start to play up tempo, it automatically produces fantasy results. Bringing us back to the Sacramento/Washington game and check out the rest of the box score after we move past Nick Young and Fransisco Garcia.
The previously mentioned DeMarcus Cousins had 8 boards, 3 assists, 2 steals and a block. Not bad until we see he shot 4-19 from the field and missed 4 free throws (2-6). This is the other side of fast paced, up and down basketball. Shots won’t drop. Turnovers appear (3 for DMC). John Wall might have dropped 22 points and 9 assists but he killed his fantasy value with 6 turnovers and 6 from 19 from the field. JaVale McGee, averaging over 2 blocks per game for the season was only able to swat one shot, whereas you might except 4-5 with the extra possessions and shitty front court from Sac-town. Apart from rebounds, steals and points, this type of basketball has absolutely no guarantees for fantasy purposes. Fringe players get hot, ride a streak then go cold again. FG% suffers, normally reliable players turn the ball over. Did I mention I get angry when the hot players are accidentally on my opponents roster? There is that too.
Anyway, I suppose what I’m trying to say is that points and rebounds and steals do not make a fantasy team (unless you play in the Carmelo Anthony fantasy league – 4 cats, plus FT%). A game full of defence might not bring the stars out to play, but if we look at the Minnesota/San Antonio game, we see a different picture. You might be screaming that of course there are better fantasy players in this game (Parker, Manu, Duncan, Love, Mili… OK, just joking). But that doesn’t obscure the fact that it was a 107-97 slop fest in which the teams shot a combined 42% from the field. However, the game produced more threes, just as many steals and only 2 less blocks – on 34 less possessions!
I’m not advocating abandoning fast paced basketball for fantasy players. They definitely can score a shiteload of points, giving you boosts across multiple categories. It’s just that it’s a very simple explanation for success. There is a reason that players like Luke Ridnour, Nic Batum and Ray Allen have value and it’s not because they play in run and gun offences. Too often this is overlooked in favour of the dude who drops 30 points because he took 20 shots in a ‘wild win’.
—
This shirt made me laugh. A lot.
This dude is smoking crack when he says he traded Howard and Harris for Billups, Jackson and Tyrus Thomas. His FG% and Turnovers just got destroyed and who knows what will happen to Billups. However I like the pick ups (Monroe is pimping right now) so it’s definitely worth a read.
Please go and give some credence to the fbasketball blog Fantasy All-Star ballot. I hear you can win a ticket to the big (fantasy) draft in October (on the internet).
The Kitson Cup**
I used to think of myself as a very humble person in all aspects of my life. But for some reason, fantasy basketball brings out the inner jerk in me. Therefore, I will use this opportunity to gloat. I am currently sitting pretty in all three of my fantasy leagues. I know the best thing everyone likes to read about on blogs are other people’s fantasy teams, so let me begin.
From the start, is Dorell Wright the answer to all of life’s problems, or just most of them? The man is a machine. After picking him off the waivers about 7 weeks ago, I haven’t lost a game. I thought I misread his line last week when my stat-tracker said he had over a 100 points shooting at over 59% with 18 threes. But I didn’t. The team I was playing only managed 18 three pointers all week. At this stage of the season, it seems Dorell = Derrick Rose + Gilbert Arenas. Tasty. I really didn’t think anyone in GSW apart from Curry and maybe David Lee would be any good this season. Monta put that to shame and now Wright is steaming.
As I type this, Brook Lopez is currently 1-4 from the free throw line. How is this happening? I traded for Lopez and Blatche when I gave up on Marc Gasol and Tyreke Evans earlier this season. At the time I thought it was the steal of the century, however as time progresses, I am more and more uncertain. Blatche plays one good game for ever 3 bad ones and Lopez has caught a terrible case of the seemingly infectious ‘Bargnani’ syndrome. Something so terrible, the player is unable to gather more than 6 rebounds per game. Considering I love BroLo, I’m not going to give up, I just feel dudded everytime I see his O-rank of 15. There is something really satisfying for me when I own players over more than one season. It’s like being a long-term relationship. When that person is Kevin Durant, nearly all of the time spent together is awesome. Unfortunately this is hardly ever the case. But in your heart of hearts, you know it’ll work out in the end, even if Tim Duncan has seemingly stopped playing from the December-March period of the season.
While Lopez is frustrating, at least he is on my team. The thing I will remember most about this season happened before a game was even played. Smack bang in the middle of our draft, about 2 hours after we had commenced, rounds 7 and 8approached. As I had the first pick, I took Gallinari. I needed a point guard. Just one, but I had seen the Rooster in person at the Garden and owned a $25 tshirt with his name! I told myself it’s OK, I’ll nab one in 15 picks. I had my heart set on Baron Davis (don’t ask me why, I’m just attracted to that incredible beard). He was snatched early. OK, no worries. Then the dreaded run of point guards began. Manu (kinda a PG), Brooks, Mo-mo, Devin Haris, GILBERT! I kept telling myself it was OK because I knew about Raymond Felton and no-one else did. I was already jumping with joy before he was taken right out of my hands by the jerk picking before me. A season dealt a terrible crushing blow before it even began. O.J Mayo was my consolation prize (this kind of sums up my draft). It doesn’t matter if I win every league this season, this will be the thing I remember most in years to come.
Onto more positive news. I am currently leading a bloggers league made up of a bunch of people from various fantasy basketball blogs. Probably because no-one else seems that interested in it. 14 teams seemed like too many when drafting but now that I’m at the top, it doesn’t seem like enough. Tippy from FantasyBasketballDaily is currently sitting one point behind me. While he makes money from playing cash games (which international players are cruelly excluded from), I sit and dream of what could’ve been. My team is made up of Grant Hill, Luke Ridnour, Francesco Garcia and Ben Wallace. I actually don’t know how I have even won one week. But there you go. Raymond Felton is part of this team. After the horrible first draft, I reached for him in the 4th round of this one. Looks like an amazing pick in hindsight however at the time it was 4am in the morning and I was just trying to keep my body awake by doing something dashing.
The problem regarding blogging and fantasy basketball for me is that when the season starts, I don’t really know what to do. Rotoworld seems to be the ultimate source of player updates, which are extremely important. A couple of other sites provide daily rounds ups (none better than GMTR and FBD). What is left? Incoherent ramblings such as this? A narrative of my personal experiences? A weekly over view of who killed it and who definitely didn’t? I think this is one of the main reasons why fantasy NBA has never made it to the ‘mainstream’. You don’t see fantasy stuff survive on sites like the Basketball Jones, Ball Don’t Lie or the TrueHoop network. It seems to be a very niche internet community which struggles to define how it fits in with the broader basketball world. Unlike MLB or the NFL, there isn’t (or at least doesn’t seem to be to me, at a computer in regional Australia) a solid link between the casual basketball fan and the fantasy nerd.
I’m going to go with incoherent ramblings until something better rears it’s ugly head in my mind.
Finally, if you own Roy Hibbert… suck it up sweet heart.
And very finally, I watch/listen to the Basketball Jones nearly every day for awhile now but this latest episode to me was one of the best for comedic gold.
**Every August to me is a special time of year. It is when the Fantasy English Premier League comes to life. I live amongst a group of friends whose mission in life is to watch as much EPL as possible. Personally, I can’t stand soccer. However, if it’s fantasy and it’s sports, I’ll give it a go. Two seasons ago, I managed to win their converted league during the very last game week (Malouda!). Now they have a trophy for it and it’s called the Kitson Cup. The reason I mention this at is because the name stems from an ability to play the ‘wild card’. In EPL, as opposed to the NBA, multiple teams can pick the same player and the competition is judged on aggregate points from the players in your team. However, once a season, you can trade as many players as you wish and totally revamp your entire team. This is the wildcard. I don’t know how this would ever work in fantasy NBA where people draft, but for those wallowing in the deep end of their respective leagues, it’s a great opportunity to give the season a whole new meaning.
