Give Me The Rock

September 22, 2008

Carnival of the NBA #60, etc…

Filed under: Fantasy Basketball — Nels @ 7:38 pm

HoopsAvenue (home to it’s own unique brand of fantasy basketball, which has somehow escaped mention here before) brings us the Brotherhood of the Traveling Blogs. So, check that out, and also check out Hoops Avenue’s fantasy game to see if you find their rules as interesting as I do. Almost makes me want to sign up. Because, y’know, I’m never in more fantasy leagues than I can handle or anything.

Eric Wong at RotoEvil almost has his fantasy draft guide ready. Evidently we here at GMTR are WAY undercharging for our stuff (not that Eric is overcharging, you see - I’m sure his guide is FAR superior to ours - but simply because we are basically giving it away in exchange for good karma).

And finally, I get ripped - and rightly so - in the Points in the Paint Mock Draft Analysis. As I noted in one of many chat sessions that take place at the GMTR 2008 Fantasy Basketball Mock Draft Spreadsheet. I don’t think the non-collaborators can join the chat (or if they can even see the chats), but my comment was that I was glad for the practice, so I’ll be much more certain of what to do when the GMTR Readers’ League draft rolls around. Patrick and I are still working on the entry method for the Readers’ League, but don’t worry, Patrick has said he’s willing to play in two leagues this year if we have that many people who want to take on the reigning champ. And while I did win the DroppingDimes so-called Experts League last season, my spidey-sense tells me that people will be much more interested in knocking off the GMTR Readers’ League champ than they will taking out Mr. Ninth Place. But just to see (and since I have this PollDaddy account now) …

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Whoa! Ripped?

Perhaps it would be poetic payback to make me eat my words with some STFU sauce in the actual Reader’s League?

I didn’t mean to come down to harshly. Well, I actually think I’ve been a good boy and have the trash dialed down. You know I’ve got the blogger-crush thing going on for you and Patrick. Where’s the love?

Ok. Perhaps I’m blabbing too much. This comment will either tickle your competitive bones and get my foot in the door for the Reader’s league or get me banned from GMTR! I’ll STFU now coz I’d rather gamble on a YAO or Arenas pick at the moment than risking the latter happening.

Hugs and Kisses!

PitP

Comment by Points in the Paint — September 22, 2008 @ 8:44 pm

theres only one thing i dont like about the taking the best player strategy. That is, youre stuck with that player. The reason of course is that a certain player considered to be the “best available” to you is only available because no one else wanted him. So if no one else wanted him at draft time, chances are no one will want him later if you want to trade him. Theres only a slight chance you will get fair value for him. However, vince carter should outperform his ADP on the Roundup board and maybe Nels can Flip him for something of more value later. The only reason I got gasol so late (or what i consider late) is because no one else wanted him. So how much trade value does he really have?

So with all that being said, is it better to be the guy who drafts a player that you know everyone else is watching? Someone like danny granger this year or josh smith. Then be able to trade them if needed. Or is it better to draft someone who no one else wanted like vince carter or pau gasol.

Theres a chance, a good chance, that vince carter out performs al jefferson, josh smith, and many other drafted ahead of him. If I needed a big man but none were available in the $th, should i draft Vince carter (20something?)or Ron artest (19 on yahoo) and try to trade them later for jefferson or bosh later in the season.

Im not a rankings guy, I usually go by team needs. But there are managers out there who are all about getting the better deal. They think theyre getting $5 in exchange for $1

Im not sure how well i explained that, but i hope everyone understands. Sorry. Just rambling

Comment by Terrance — September 23, 2008 @ 12:00 am

here’s my 2 cents terrance.

i don’t agree that when you pick BPA you’re essentially getting somebody that nobody wants. in essence when someone picks, they are picking who they “think” is the BPA. BPA is a relative thing, many people obviously thought that Pau wasn’t the BPA when their pick came up, while you obviously thought that he was the hands down BPA and they were doing him injustice.

also, BPA doesn’t necessarily mean BPA on the board. sometimes BPA means, BPA for your team. that affects your decisions as well.

so if we’re gonna continue with your line of thought on players like granger and pau, i think it’s always best to pick who you think is BPA on the board. when the season rolls around, and pau proves his worth then managers will just have to admit they committed a grave mistake in underestimating him. the only reason players are undervalued anyway is due to uncertainty. remove that from the equation and then they’ll be more open to trading.

Comment by dyeyk2000 — September 23, 2008 @ 7:16 am

Brotherhood of the Traveling blogs not pants LOL!

Comment by HoopsAvenue — September 23, 2008 @ 8:24 am

Hey Terrance, I’d tend to agree with dyeyk2000 on this one. It’s a tough strategy trying to draft players that everyone else wants. First, you probably have to overpay to get them and while these guys will generally have good trade value (everyone always wants Josh Smith), you’d have to trade them to realize that value. I’m personally not a fan of drafting players with the intention of trading them – it seems like a difficult task to get in the heads of the other managers in the league to anticipate what they want.

I agree with you that there comes a time when drafting for team need is a smart idea, but I’d say that it should happen later in a draft after you’ve established what your teams needs are. With the first and second round picks, you don’t have a team yet – so your team basically needs everything. I’d recommend taking the guy who gives you the most of that.

It can be a good idea to strategize before a draft – and our friends at PitP have some good posts on that topic - so you can focus on building a type of team that fits your style of play. I personally like to keep things a little more fluid, if I see a league that is starting to draft a certain way or certain types of players, I’ll usually shift my strategy and go the other way so that I can get better value. This of course requires you to have pretty good knowledge of the entire player board, so I’d recommend everyone start a fantasy blog to help you there.

It also makes things easier if you just assume you’re smarter than everyone else and everyone is an idiot for letting the guy you just picked fall that fall. Just watch out for symptoms of drafterglow.

Comment by Patrick — September 23, 2008 @ 10:06 am

Yahoo! is now UP! It’s time to get the GMTR readers league or at least your entry method going, before a riot among your excited readers breaks out! LOL!

Comment by Points in the Paint — September 23, 2008 @ 4:17 pm

lol. agreed!

Comment by terrance — September 23, 2008 @ 5:00 pm

hey patrick and nels. Would there be any interest in Running a readers league and also running a league with our mock draft picks? I would be interested in seeing how our practice teams ended up finishing?

Has something like that been done before? I know dropping dimes has their mocks, so does fantasy basketball cafe, full court press, fantasy basketblog had one last season. Theres so many more sits that do the mocks, but have they ever created a yahoo league and see who exactly had the best draft?

The mock draft sites break down the drafts but never get to see them come to fruition. After all, all we will be able to do is evaluate and project who had the best draft, but who really knows until a champion is declared.

If that doesnt work, I will personally but a mock draft trophy and a readers league trophy to send to each winner at the end of the season to congratulate them. It will be engraved and everything. I know you guys remember coach pitch, machine pitch, and kid pitch baseball as a kid. Trophies are what its all about!

Anyways, just a thought.

Comment by terrance — September 24, 2008 @ 2:10 am

Hey terrance, since I’m not mock drafting, that decision will be up to Nels. But, yeah, a lot of times people will run mock drafts as actual leagues, if enough of the mock drafters agree to it.

What usually happens in these types of leagues is that certain people get more into it than others and the people who are more active on the waiver wire usually win the league. Although we do know that GMTR readers tend to be pretty hardcore, so the league might become pretty competitive.

Comment by Patrick — September 24, 2008 @ 8:53 am

Just so we’re clear, I noticed that Yahoo was up before reading comments on the blog this morning.

Terrance: I will poll the mock draftsters to see about the idea of making the mock draft into a league. Part of the problem is that there would have to be no trades and no free agent pick ups if we really wanted to see the results of the draft.

We are also toying with the idea of having 2 Readers’ Leagues if there’s enough interest.

Comment by Nels — September 24, 2008 @ 9:10 am

regarding making the mock draft into a real league…

i was actually thinking about suggesting that idea as soon as the draft is over. would be great since this draft should be almost devoid of panic picks so should be more competitive.

about the no trading thing.. hmm. i dunno. where’s the fun in that? yeah it would make sense from a “who’s the best drafter” perspective, but we could always follow league movements at the end of the year and evalate the drafts in hindsight (and maybe how a certain draft technique is flexible enough to evolve throughout the year)

Comment by dyeyk2000 — September 24, 2008 @ 10:26 am

Hey guys, I appreciate you mentioning my site, but it’s Eric, not Erik. Not that I care about that…

I DO care that you’re insinuating that I’m overcharging for my draft guide, or even that your guide is on the same level as mine. Granted, I haven’t seen yours, but I have seen your Position Rankings, and I think they’re filled with more holes than Jarlsberg cheese.

I’ve had many readers tell me that they’d pay a lot more for my analysis, and while my guide is priced a little bit higher than others, that’s because I’m confident it will be more valuable than any other guide out there. If there was a way to track how users of my guide fare compared to users of other guides, I would gladly partake in such a study…

And since you guys seem to be serious about fantasy hoops, I’d like to challenge you to in the “National Fantasy Basketball Championship.” The entry fee is $650. Each league champ gets $3,500 and the overall champ gets an extra $2,500 or more.

The leagues are run by Greg Ambrosious, who is a 2001 Fantasy Sports Hall of Fame inductee and founder of the original $100,000 National Fantasy Baseball & Football Championships.

I have a lot of respect for what you guys do, but I think that if you’re going to talk the talk, you should walk the walk as well. I would also love to take on other top fantasy hoops sites, so click here to sign up!

http://nffcboards.stats.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=9;t=000028

Comment by RotoEvil — September 24, 2008 @ 11:33 am

Eric, I’ve added some clarifying language to the post. I only put it that way originally because Patrick and I were considering charging $4-5 for our guide (and I’m sure the price:quality ratio would account for the difference between our guide and yours), but decided since it was the first year we’d done it, that we’d just give it away as a form of advertising. It was meant, as is pretty much everything I write, as a self-deprecating piece of humor, but I realize that without any body language or verbal cues, that it could have been interpreted in all sorts of different ways.

As far as the money leagues go, I just finished a post where I mentioned that I don’t play in money leagues and acknowledge by insinuation that they almost certainly are more competitive. And while I do maintain that the GMTR Readers’ League last year was as intense as any money league is likely to be, that doesn’t make me want to pick up a $650 guantlet just because you call my rankings Jarlsberg cheese (I did like the cleverness there, though). You say that we seem serious about fantasy hoops, but as far as I’m concerned (don’t know about Patrick), that couldn’t be further from the truth. I am totally not serious about it. I just love NBA basketball, and I like looking at the numbers, and I like writing about it so I can make little jokes (usually at the expense of myself or players who get millions of dollars, and not at the expense of people who are serious about it). I play fantasy basketball for fun, and as an escape from the everyday stresses of my job (and thoughts as to where my country is headed economically, how much my property taxes are going to go up this year, and if my car will start in the morning). Hope you understand.

Comment by Nels — September 24, 2008 @ 1:40 pm

Just to make sure no one thinks I’m trying to pull shennanis here, there was an additional comment from Evil E and one from me as well. They were erased when the site got hacked on Sept 25, 2008. There are comments missing from a couple other posts too. And I just had to go through and reset the permissions on all the photos that are hosted on the GMTR server. Could be worse, I suppose.

Comment by Nels — September 26, 2008 @ 4:16 pm

Eric,

Thanks for checking in! Glad you like the site and appreciate the sense of humor we have here at GMTR. I have seen a lot of what you’ve done on RotoEvil and enjoy what you do. More power to you if you can get away with charging $17.99 for your guide, I’m sure that it’s worth every penny, as the testimonials make clear. Every year Google Adsense sends Nels and I about $0.025 US American Dollars for our time, so as far as I’m concerned, you’re living the life.

I do actually play in a money league, and have for the past 5 years. I’ve won it twice and finished in the money the other three years. Now, this league doesn’t have a $650 entry fee, but considering I’m married, it’s difficult to sneak $100 by my wife, much less $650. But if I ever get divorced, I’d be honored to play with the big boys in the big money league.

Now, if you don’t mind, the one thing I don’t appreciate about your comment is the cheap shot you take at our player rankings. It seems all too easy to go poking holes in each others player rankings. I mean, we’ve all made our share of stupid calls looking back at things. I’ve seen your cheat sheet from last season, and it looks like it contains about the same amount of missed calls as anyone makes, including us. I mean, everyone knows I love Tony Parker and all… So, you’re welcome to disagree with us, just don’t assume you’re correct. Even Stephon Marbury thought Stephon Marbury was ranked too high in your cheat sheet last year.

Comment by Patrick — September 26, 2008 @ 6:26 pm

Hey Nels - Has your site been hacked before? What type of precautions do you take so it doesn’t happen? Is it just a matter of changing permissions?

Hey Patrick - You’re right, that was a cheap shot. But would you rather I dissect your rankings thoroughly and explain everything I disagree with? If I have the time, I’ll be more than happy to do that…

Comment by Evil E — September 27, 2008 @ 10:06 am

fellas, i can’t tolerate the tie between who Id rather beat in fantasy basketball. somethings gotta give

Comment by terrance — September 29, 2008 @ 7:38 pm

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