Give Me The Rock
this is fantasy basketball
This was my first year to participate in a GMTR league. Admittedly, a little bit of luck (arguably a lot) played a role in getting me to the top podium spot. I snuck into the playoffs as the last seed. I also had to duke it out with some tough teams on my way to the championship bracket.
So some new players/managers to the game might ask “What kind of team is a team that will make the Playoffs in fantasy head to head?” Well hopefully this look into the teams that made the playoffs, their core players and basic strategy will shed a sliver of light towards answering that question.
I figured I would discuss with you readers the strategies employed by the elite six teams that made the Playoffs in the GMTR Readers League. This was how the teams were seeded coming into the playoffs and their win-loss records.
Now let’s take a look at what these teams were made of and how they got into the Playoffs.
Big Baby Got Back
This is where I have to give Patrick credit where credit is due. I mean his team was basically anchored by a disappointing Shawn Marion and an even more disappointing Marcus Camby, who by the way through his poor performance this season and long time away from the court due to injuries just bitch-slapped Patrick’s team faster than you can say “Chris Brown Indictment.” I’m pretty sure Patrick will be filing a restraining order on Marcus for next season’s draft. Fine, so those two former studs obviously didn’t take BBGB to the top. Then who did? Well it was Antawn Jamison, Rashard Lewis, Mo Williams, and John Salmons who bore the team on their collective shoulders. BBGB also had the dubious distinction of having to sit on the utterly useless Gilbert Arenas on one of its bench slots for pretty much majority of the season. I wonder if the allure of having Flip Saunders at the coaching helm of the Wizards renew what little confidence and/or trust (?) Patrick has/had in Agent Zero for next season. Without the assistance of the big fantasy names like CP3, LBJ, Wade, Howard (Dwight), Durant; Patrick brilliantly piloted his team to an impressive regular season finish.
He originally drafted the team with the intent of foregoing an attempt at the points category. As the season lumbered along, the team kind of morphed into a small-ish ball team which didn’t actually intend to compete in assists. In the 24 weeks that were played out by the team, it did well in the following categories:
Fantasy Basketball Jedi
Now this team was clearly defined from draft day. He was blessed to have gotten LeBron James in the first round of the draft, decided to follow-up with Tim Duncan; Big Ball (w/steals and points) then became the name of the game for this team. He had Andris Biedrins, Ron Artest, Jose Calderon, Paul Millsap and later on in the season Monta Ellis, Boris Diaw and Tyrus Thomas to strengthen his campaign.
This team was a perfect example of how much flexibility drafting LeBron James in the first round actually gives you. Here you have an awesome scoring small forward who gave his team rebounds, blocks, FG%, and in the end became the transitional glue that linked in his guard’s assists and steals. Essentially, he drafted a team with the intent to only lose freethrow percentage, turnovers and three pointers made.
Categories that FBJ were good at were:
Kobe Tai’s Pinkie
Nels’ team was a straight up small ball team, plain and simple. It was solid as a rock (pun very much intended). How could it not be? It had Dwyane Wade, Billups, Ray Allen, Rasheed Wallace, Troy Murphy, Jamal Crawford, and real-life rookie of the year Derrick Rose as its core. He took full advantage of Ray Allen and Wade’s comeback season, and Billups’ new offense-oriented team. Let’s not forget that he had the BEST small ball big man in the game today, Troy Murphy, as well. He drafted small, and stayed the course of his original focus throughout the regular season.
His best categories were:
His good showing in the TOs cat, was there mainly in part to Wade being his only real high TO contributor. This was also probably the main reason that Nels’ personal real-life favorite rookie sat in his small ball team’s bench for, uh pretty much the whole season. Whether he was just on his roster for decorative reasons, or he just didn’t want anyone else making use of his kid will have to be answered by Nels himself. Yes folks, while us mortal fantasy managers were drooling over the back court help Derrick Rose could have provided our teams, Coach Nels sat the guy down! It speaks a lot about the talent he had on his roster. Either that or D-Rose and Coach Nels had some kind of locker room squabble we didn’t know about.
In Baclao We Trust
This was one of the more interesting teams in the league and frankly, one of the teams I considered to be dark horse to win it. During the live draft I could not really peg down his strategy. The team took Kobe Bryant in the first round, then followed it up with Dwight Howard in the second. It looked more like a balanced approach at first, but after reviewing the categories that the team did well in, it appears that the team ended up building a successful big ball team despite starting off the draft with Kobe. This was probably more a result of the dominance D-Ho had in this season’s big man numbers. Rounding out IBWT’s dynamic duo were the likes of Mike Bibby, Gerald Wallace, Nene Hilario, Andre Miller, Josh Smith, Charlie Villanueva, and Shaq-Daddy-Diesel.
With Superman Sr. and Jr. on your team, you can probably expect it to dominate the big man numbers and so indeed this team did:
This team drafted pretty well from the get go and simply did not look back. Awesome.
Skeeter/Obama 2012
This team right here is a testament to the power of owning Chris f’n Paul. He called his strategy “microball.” I suppose its an apt name considering this lucky bum, got to bounce Steve f’n Nash to partner up with his “best fantasy PG in the game.” I know, sick combo eh?
I can even recall chatting with my buddy Ogre on YM, a day after the draft and as I was telling him the rosters of my fellow drafters; he paused and said “How did you people allow the guy to get BOTH CP3 AND Nash?” I shrugged on the other end of the chat as a palpable ball of worry welled up in my throat. Precognitive as that reaction was at that time, that same ball of worry painfully popped out of my butt when I found out that team Skeeter was my going to be my finals matchup.
Speaking of team Skeeter and our matchup, Nick (its manager) wrote a little something something about his team and his draft over at Points in the Paint. That post was also a discussion (by me) about which is the better route; small ball or big ball. I hope you enjoy the read.
So as you may have read, team Skeeter not only had the benefit of owning two elite PGs; he was also able to surround them with a good supporting cast. He also had Kevin Durant, Kevin Martin, Andrea Bargnani, Zach Randolph, and Al Harrington.
True to form, this team did well in the small ball cats:
PWNAGE! Inc.
Contrary to my team’s name, it didn’t do much pwning in the league; especially in the early part of the season. My team had no clear identity nor direction at the onset of the fantasy season. I had to do some tweaking here and there, 92 moves worth in fact. My core of players who comprised the big ball strategy look which my team ended up having in the end were Dirk Nowitzki, Yao Ming, Brook Lopez, Tony Parker, Paul Pierce, Al Horford, and later on Mario Chalmers and Lamar Odom. Having Dirk, Yao, and Brook (big men with good FT%) allowed me to be unconventionally competitive in the freethrow shooting category. This is admittedly the exception and not the rule when it comes to the big ball strategy for head to head. This just goes to show that managers need to not be limited to the standard categories that big ball or small ball are generally known to dominate.
My good cats were:
There you have it folks, the six teams that made the playoffs. As you can see, they can be loosely stratified into either big ball or small ball strategies; albeit not all of them fall into the standard builds of the said strategies. For the new players who are reading this, the point you should take away is that you should at the very least have a direction in building your team. Know the categories you want to compete in and grab players that support that direction for your team.
So what happened in the playoffs?
Quarterfinals
Big Baby Got Back and Fantasy Basketball Jedi got byes as rewards for their good finishes in the fantasy regular season.
Skeeter/Obama 2012 edged out In Baclao We Trust by ONE point to finish with a 5-4 victory.
PWNAGE! Inc. edged out Kobe Tai’s Pinkie 5-3. This was a lucky break for me as Nels was missing out on the services of both Rasheed Wallace and Troy Murphy for that week.
Semi-Finals
Skeeter/Obama 2012 beats Big Baby Got Back 5-4, by sneaking away a rare small ball FG% win. This is what happens when your PGs shoot at 50% from the field.
PWNAGE! Inc. barely defeated Fantasy Basketball Jedi, 5-4 (by ONE turnover), in a classic big ball vs big ball matchup. I highlighted the details of our roster matchups in this post on Points in the Paint.
Finals
PWNAGE! Inc. defeats Skeeter/Obama 2012, 5-4, by ONE block. The reason that I did not have a more definitive win the block category was because I cycled out majority of my big men and plugged in an assortment of small guys with the intent of stealing away either FT% and/or steals from my small ball opponent. Even though Patrick was attributing my win to the defensive blocking efforts of Brook Lopez, I really have to thank Dirk Nowitzki for shooting 16-17 from the line on the second to the last night of the fantasy playoff week. It was that huge clump of made freethrows that allowed my big ball team to steal away the FT% category from a small ball team .822 to .806.
~0~
I’m sorry if this post came out as late as it did. It can still be a good reflection for next season’s draft for new and hardcore managers alike. I originally came up with this recap idea when I was considering to do a post about the presence of TOP 5 players in fantasy playoff teams. Alas, I felt too Stephon Marbury to do that and came up with this – already too long – post instead. So I figure I should let Patrick or Nels be more Joakim Noah and provide you readers with those statistics and analysis in a future post.
Cheers to the 2008-09 fantasy season that was! And to everyone that participated in the GMTR leagues, GG.
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