You may or may not have noticed Yahoo’s recent banner ads for their fantasy basketball site (it’s actually a pretty small ad that Yahoo tucks way down at the bottom of their main page, making it very easy to miss).

Besides the fact that Yahoo is advertising their “free” site with StatTracker – the very thing you have to pay to use - does anyone else find it interesting that Yahoo fantasy basketball has selected Tracy McGrady as their spokesman? And what’s up with his eyes in that ad? I think he might be trying to possess me. Maybe I’m overreacting here, but were Chris Webber and Grant Hill not available? I understand that McGrady might be a recognizable name to casual fans who might be on the fence about playing fantasy basketball this year, but the league has so many great young players who would actually get me way more excited about the game. McGrady leaves me feeling indifferent, at best. Like they had this ad lying around from 2001 and said what the hell, let’s just reuse this instead of spending the money to make something new.

Ok, I’m dusting the cobwebs off my MBA diploma to come up with a million dollar idea, or at least one that’s better than sticking Tracy McGrady on a 200 pixel banner ad at the bottom of a webpage. First, as long as his commitments to NBA.com wouldn’t prevent him from doing it, get Gilbert Arenas to be your spokesman. Then you get him to agree to play in a league, or if he won’t, get the guy who runs his blog to pretend he’s Arenas playing in a league. Then you hold a contest giving away 11 or 13 or however many spots in a fantasy league with Gilbert Arenas. All you have to do to qualify is sign-up to play on the site and write 100 words on why you deserve to play in a league with Gilbert Arenas. Select the best, have them play it out in a league open to the public, and give the winner of the league an all expenses paid trip to hang out with Agent Zero for the day. You’ll have Arenas talking and blogging about the league, which would then make the sheep like me talk and blog about the league, which would then allow the traditional media to steal stuff from blogs for their own stories. Plus, you give 11+ people a chance to talk smack with Gilbert Arenas and you make one person very, very happy. It’s a win-win-win situation.