Give Me The Rock

While I watch the Celtics play another game on the road like the Beacontown Beavers (pre-Teen Wolf edition)…

It seems like a daunting task, but could you have put together a decent fantasy team out of undrafted players at the start of the season? Now, the word undrafted is a moving target as it depends on the league, but for this post I am going to use the GMTR Draft Compilation spreadsheet that Nels put together last October. It contains mock drafts from this wonderful site, Dropping Dimes, Fantasy Sports Radar, CBS Sportsline, Sports Forecaster, and the too-bad-its-gone Fantasy Basketblog. It also contains the actual results of the Dropping Dimes Experts League draft. For a guy to be labeled “undrafted”, he had to be undrafted in all those drafts. So, what kind of team can we make?

Starters

PG: Anthony Carter (finished at 96 on the rater): While Carter got pretty much no attention during the season (hit me up in the comments if I’m wrong about that), the 32 year old started 67 games for the Nuggets, averaging 5.5 assists and 1.5 steals a game. As a free agent, expect him to be ridiculously overpaid by some team in need of a “veteran point guard” this summer.

SG: Ronnie Brewer (91): Brewer wins the award for top ranked undrafted player in 07/08, at least according to the GMTR player rater. In his second year with the Jazz, Brewer averaged 27 minutes, 12 points (off 56 percent shooting!), and 1.7 steals a game.

SF: Francisco Garcia (94): Garica’s season was kind of like John Travolta’s acting career. He started off strong, then disappeared, then came back, then disappeared again, then all of a sudden he’s dressing up like a woman and we’re loving every minute of it. It wasn’t always pretty to watch, but it added up to something.

PF: Jamario Moon (100): Ok, he’s more of a small forward, but I guess everyone likes to draft all the power forwards. Plus, he did average 1.4 blocks a game. Moon defined the word undrafted this season and was the first guy I thought about when coming up with this idea. Interesting fact: Moon started 75 games for the Raptors this season, which broke Damon Stoudamire’s rookie franchise record of 70. Cred: His website, which I will anxiously check every morning from now on waiting for his first blog post.

C: Brendan Haywood (113): A season ending heart condition to Etan Thomas opened the door for Haywood, and he sort of took advantage of it, average 11 and 7 in 80 games. For a reason I can’t explain, I expected more from him.

Bench

John Salmons (98): Smelly Fish started 41 games for the Kings and had the best season of his career, even if not everyone is a fan of his work.

Beno Udrih (106): What’s not to love about Beno? Well, he had a little trouble staying healthy, but he posted career highs in his stats across the board and looks to be the Kings PG of the future.

Linas Kleiza (140): Remember that time he dropped 41 on the Jazz? Yeah. That was awesome.

Jeff Foster (148): I figured this team needed a second center, so Foster and his 9 rebounds a game it is. I didn’t expect more from Foster, but he delivered on it.

The result? No, this team would not be competitive in a fantasy league. Not a chance. But add a solid first and second rounder, say Chris Paul and Marcus Camby, and this team still might not win a league but it’d be solidly mediocre. Just like this post.