GMTR Mock Draft Analysis: Round Four

Categorized as: Author: Erik, Fantasy Basketball, Fantasy Basketball Strategy
Posted on: October 12th, 2009

As we all know, three picks don’t make a team. We’re going to follow how each team fills up its roster and satisfies both its statistical and positional needs. I’ve been tracking and assessing how the stats of  each player picked interacts with previous picks from a strategic perspective. That’s just how I draft in H2H, strategically and/or at least planned out. Not everyone may draft this way, and there’s nothing wrong with it per se. I just take a look at pick synergy and discuss how teams fare to win or lose certain categories.

Photo by Barry Chin via Boston.com

Round 4

Pick 4-1: Josh Smith, F – Ok, so Project Spurs did not go for Tim Duncan like I was hoping/predicting. It appears that he really has a thing for talented swingmen who produce in multiple categories. Josh Smith would definitely have to be one of the top names on that list of players. As far as his strategy seems to be shaping up in the first four rounds of the mock draft, it appears this team likes to multi-cat swing + PG when he bounces. This is evident by his Wallace-Roy bounce, and now with his Parker-Smith bounce. His team is making more sense to me now. Parker and Roy make for a strong scoring back court, while Wallace and Smith do just about everything a team needs from the swing position. Not bad. I’m interested to see how he will round out his need to fill his team’s center slots later on in the draft.

Pick 4-2: Jason Richardson, G/F – I’m a bit surprised to see Jason picked ahead of the likes of Vince Carter or Paul Pierce. I see J-Rich having a huge having a big comeback this season. Not that he was particularly bad last year, I just think that the Suns return to its run-and-gun style should assist Richardson in grabbing a return into the Fantasy Basketball limelight. He shot well from the field last season and should hamper this team’s FG% investments less than Rashard Lewis, the team’s third round pick. We’ve got what looks like a big-ball + threes going on at this point. J-Rich is also light in the TOs department and it appears that this team is trying to compete in that category among others.

Pick 4-3: Jason Terry, G – Considering the reliability of Josh Howard’s unreliability, I wouldn’t call this pick too much of a reach. Jet will almost always come up big during Howard’s absences, which for Terry owners is thankfully neither few nor far between. Terry is coming off one of his best fantasy seasons yet, and we project him to do well once again this year. He will shoot a ton of threes, and steal the ball often enough to make up for Deron’s shortcomings in those departments. The fact that Jason does all of that and at a solid  46.3 FG% is simply icing on the cake. Terry and Jamison’s low turnovers help soften the blow of what Deron Williams and Steve Nash will be piling up, but it’s still a long road ahead if this team plans on compensating in that department as opposed to punting it altogether. This is an interesting approach as the conventional route would be to add a steals dimension to the team as opposed to turnover mitigation. Let’s see how it pans out in the end.

Pick 4-4: Vince Carter, G/F – How does Vince Carter, Caron Butler, and David West fit in with Dwight Howard? Frankly, I’m not really sure. For now, this team looks like it’s taking the draft the “best player available” route. Well at least to some degree it is. I am not 100% sure VC’s move to Orlando will fare well for his fantasy value. I’m not sure how he will mesh with Dwight and SVG. All told, based on how Carter performed last season, he looks like he’s a good value pick at this stage in the draft.

Pick 4-5: Kevin Garnett, PF – Even with some expected decline in KG’s numbers due to him playing in a post-injury season; he should still put up reasonably decent big man numbers for the core of Amar’e-Pau. He preserves the team’s relatively solid free throw shooting. Talk about unconventional. This team’s big men are better shooters from the line than its guards, which at this point is just Rajon Rondo. KG fits well in the sense that he strengthen boards and percentages while chipping in a little something-something in the blocks and steals categories every night. His low TOs are also a welcome addition to what appears to be a well-drafted finesse big-ball team.

Pick 4-6: Shawn Marion, F – Shawn Marion seems to fit the bill for what Nels’ has cooking up. Marion is arguably the best SF-eligible player who sports both good percentages, low turnovers, and should be good for a block and a steal per game.  So far, there hasn’t been much competition between the two  big-ball drafters that are virtually seated next to each other in this mock draft. Things should get a little bit tight as far as these two are concerned in the later rounds as the draft targets who shoot well from both the field and the line will be seen fewer and farther between.

Pick 4-7: Carmelo Anthony, SF – I pretty much said my piece about Melo over at PitP in this post. Since this is not  a third-round reach, I feel Carmelo provides just the right amount of fantasy value for this spot. He is a good pick in the fourth round to help offset Jose Calderon’s deficiencies in the scoring department. On the flip side, Calderon helps offset Melo’s relatively high turnovers.  Anthony also adds some rebounding punch to a team who calls Mehmet Okur its primary center at this point. Good value pick here.

Pick 4-8: Al Harrington, F/C – This pick tells me this team is going to play it small in terms of its build and design. It has two solid SGs in Kobe and Kevin Martin. Well Kobe is solid, Kevin just needs to stay away from sprains more in order to join Kobe in that niche. Chauncey is a great PG to have, and now the team’s added Al Harrington who can both score and rain down treys from the PF or C slot. Nice. Small-ball it is then.

Pick 4-9: Tim Duncan, F/C – I was wondering when these guys would come around to picking Timmy. I’m just wondering if this pick is a diversification pick or simply just a “best big man available” pick. Duncan adds boards and blocks to am already versatile core of Durant, Kidd, Iguodala. FT% will definitely be an issue for this team as Duncan is not really good at shooting those freebies from the charity stripe. Overall, his addition to the team makes it much more well rounded and actually opens up more routes for this team to take in future picks.

Pick 4-10: Elton Brand, F/C – Aside from this team’s second-round Joe Johnson pick, this roster is starting to look like a risk-reward player collection. Arenas bounce to Brand as third and fourth round picks! Talk about cheering guys on to make a comeback. I do not like it in the sense that the team adds another “risky” player to its roster so early in the draft, but I have to admire the upside potential if both Brand and Arenas do comeback strong this season. It’s a very “balls-zy” move on this team’s part. It will either win lots of match-ups or dwell in the cellar depending on how its recovering veterans fare this season.

Pick 4-11: Derrick Rose, PG – Derrick Rose is an upside pick at this point. We don’t know for sure how much he has improved over the summer. It just so happens that expectations are high for this youngster from the Bulls. Admittedly, a Rose-Harris fantasy backcourt is a pretty formidable one. They both lack threes in their lines, but are expected to deliver a good number of assists and tons of points. Let’s not forget this team led off with LeBron James in the first round, so I would have to say that its assist category is in pretty good hands at this point in the draft.

Pick 4-12: Ray Allen, SG – As I said in earlier reviews of this team, it appears that it is pretty flexible in terms of the direction it can take as far as going for big or small ball is concerned. At some point, however, the team should probably pick a direction and stick with it. Otherwise, it might just end up looking like a rotisserie team that’s being pitted against H2H teams. That, by the way, is a strategy in itself. Going for a balanced attack in the beginning and simply going for a more focused attack once it’s clear that the team will reach the playoffs. In-season, a “modular” type of team can simply add and drop players as it needs depending on what kind of team it’s facing for the week.

Drafter Quote of the Round

“… I don’t like the fact that my is relying on his knees and Amar’e's eyes, but sometimes you gotta just say WTF…” – Team The Mock-Skeeters, on drafting Kevin Garnett

Snubbed Player(s) of the Round: Paul Pierce

Previous Rounds

Round 1
Round 2
Round 3

Mock Draft Spreadsheet

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Tags: Al Harrington, Carmelo Anthony, Derrick Rose, Elton Brand, Jason Richardson, Jason Terry, Josh Smith, Kevin Garnett, Mock Drafts, Ray Allen, Shawn Marion, Tim Duncan, Vince Carter