Recently, I was lucky enough to participate in a mock draft set up by Jamaal Gilbert from FantasyBasketball.com. The draft pretty much consisted of various basketball bloggers as well as a few guys from FantasyBasketball.com. You’ll need to buy their 2008 fantasy draft guide to see the results of the mock, so while it wouldn’t be right for me to rundown the entire results of the draft, I don’t think I’ll be hunted down and killed if I showed you how my team shaped up.

And – in my humble opinion – it is one of the greatest mock draft teams ever assembled in the history of mock drafting.* The league consisted of 12 teams and was based on a 8-category rotisserie scoring format. It starts 4 G, 4 F, and 1 C. I had the 6th pick in the draft and here is how things shook out for me:

Round/Pick/Player
1.6 Shawn Marion (F MIA)
2.19 Elton Brand (F PHI)
3.30 David West (F NO)
4.43 Chauncey Billups (G DET)
5.54 Manu Ginobili (G SA)
6.67 Gilbert Arenas (G WAS)
7.78 Chris Kaman (C LAC)
8.91 Jason Terry (G DAL)
9.102 Leandro Barbosa (G PHO)
10.115 Jamario Moon (F TOR)
11.126 Drew Gooden (F CHI)
12.139 Grant Hill (F PHO)
13.150 Darko Milicic (C MEM)

Very nice. A couple quick notes about the mock draft:

• I’m still not really sure how Elton Brand fell to me in the second round. Dwight Howard, Deron Williams, and Baron Davis all went in the first, which was an early sign for how the rest of the draft was going to go. I remember Nash going early in the second and then – BAM – there was Brand sitting there at my pick.
• This draft is a great example of why I always go with the best player available for at least the first 3 rounds. After basically drafting 2 power forwards with my first two picks, David West was still available for me in the third. But, was it really smart to take a third PF? Chauncey Billups was available and was a good value at 30. I thought about taking him at that spot. In the end, I went with West and Billups was still available in the 4th.
• The one critique you could make against my team is the Manu Ginobili/Gilbert Arenas risks in the 5th and 6th round. In a perfect world, it’d make the most sense to draft one of those guys rather than both. But, Arenas in the 6th was impossible to pass up. Forty games out of Arenas makes him worth that 6th round pick.
• You can basically ignore my last three picks. Starting in the 11th round, I actually wanted to draft Ronnie Brewer. But CBS was being a little bitch and wouldn’t let me draft anymore guards (even though I only had 5 in a league that starts 4). By the 13th round, not only couldn’t I select a guard, but I couldn’t select a forward either. So, Darko it was (sorry Eddy Curry). So, while my team seems like it is a little weak in the guard area (especially given Arenas), if CBS didn’t interfere with my draft I’d actually have Ronnie Brewer to fill in for me while Arenas was out.

*No, I’m not really a megalomaniac and, yes, pretty much everyone loves their own draft before the season starts, but I’m usually fairly realistic with my fantasy teams. For example, Nels and I are participating in a mock draft over at Full Court Press Fantasy Basketball, where I would charitably say my draft up to this point has been adequate. Andrew Bynum in the 3rd ? Oy… I wish I could take that back.