Give Me The Rock
this is fantasy basketball
So, I’m TiVo live-blogging my first fantasy draft of the season (excluding the Mock Draft).
The league is one started by …a stern warning via a post on the Carnival of the NBA forum at BallHype.
This was my first experience this year with the new Yahoo Draft Room. At first, I was scared, because they don’t show you where your picks are going to go when drafted, but the flashy animated transition between “waiting for the draft” and “live draft” made up for any concerns I might have had.
The new player list has the average draft position for each player, which is really helpful – of course, more helpful if you know what overall pick you are actually on. Speaking of that…
Eddy Curry was being taken on average at 136 on Yahoo. That means that for every person who takes him at 156, there is someone taking him at 116! Really? I mean, Really?
OH MY GOD ARE YOU SERIOUS?
Moving on…
30 minutes before the draft, I knew I had the 4th pick. The whole time after that I was secretly hoping that Amare would drop. My second (and slightly more likely hope) was that Kobe would drop. Well, neither of those happened.
1. (4) LeBron James, SF
After that, someone pointed out that we only needed 1 center in this league, so I immediately keyed in on which Center eligible players I could get. At pick 17, I’m pretty happy to have gotten:
2. (17) Al Jefferson, PF,C
So, at that point, I committed to the Big Ball strategy (this was a good choice with LeBron because of his low FT%). So, after that I easily made my next pick:
3. (24), David West, PF
At this point, I have an SF, PF, and C. There weren’t a lot of big men that were looking good to me, so I decided it was time to add a Guard to the roster.
4. (37), Joe Johnson, PG,SG
This was probably a mistake. I picked Johnson because he has good rebounds for a Point Guard, and a good number of steals to help with that category. His real strengths, though, aside from Points, are his Threes, FT%, and Assists, none of which (aside from Points, again) are categories I was trying to win. So, after that I tried to get back to the categories I was trying to win with:
5. (44), Greg Oden, C
So, now all my front line positions were filled, and I started looking for more Guards that could fit into my plan. And once again, I drafted a guy who gets Rebounds, Steals, and Points, even though his main strength is FT%, while being above average in Threes.
6. (57), Corey Maggette, SG,SF
Maggette does actually get more Rebounds than Joe Johnson (of course, he can’t play PG), and has a slightly higher FG%, so he’s not a terrible fit for my team, especially down at 57 where I didn’t see a lot of good big men left.
7. (64), Manu Ginobili, SG
The draft was going pretty fast at this point. There are only 10 teams in the league, and 5 of them were auto-picking, so sometimes there were only 30 seconds or so separating 3 picks. I know Manu is out for probably the first month of the season, but I was hoping his high FG% and decent rebounding for a Guard, plus good steals and decent blocks (once again, for a Guard) will help me in the categories I’m trying to win here.
After this, I will admit, I was just reaching to see what I could find.
8. (77), Grant Hill, SG,SF
I went with Hill for his FG% and defensive cats, and – once again – decent rebounding for a GF. I think, once again: once again, that there weren’t any big men that I wanted to reach for at this point, and so I was trying to shore up categories with guys that I felt were worth taking at this point.
9. (84), Francisco Garcia, SG,SF
After Garcia, I finally got to some big men who were strong in the categories I was looking for, and look! they both happen to play for my hometown Chicago Bulls!
10. (97), Joakim Noah, PF,C
11. (104) Drew Gooden, PF
I really wanted to pick up Derrick Rose at some point, but he clearly doesn’t fit with a Big Ball strategy. So, I might have to go with a small ball strategy in once of my other leagues so that I can try to get him on at least one of my teams.
While everyone in this league is a blogger, Points in the Paint already has his post up about it.
The other bloggers in the league are:
Dennis of Dropping Dimes, TEAM: Bout it Bout it.
UtesFan89 of The Utah Jazz, TEAM: Suicidal Penguins
Ethan of Newsports.com, TEAM: The Ollie McClellans
Mookie of A Stern Warning, TEAM: …a stern warning
Zach of Talkhoops.net, TEAM: Kev Ollie’s Mustache
Ryan of Hoops Addict, TEAM: Hoops Addict
Scott of Waiting for Next Year (and DroppingDimes), TEAM: WaitingForNextYear
Zorgon of Blue Blitz, TEAM: Blue Blitz
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