Darko was supposed to be my Viagra, but instead he left my teams flaccid, underperforming, and with heart palpitations. It’s unfair to put the blame ALL on him, as this year saw a high on season ending injuries, guys taking off the last month of the season, and teams deliberately tanking for a high draft pick (thanks Doc Rivers, I enjoyed watching).
Was anyone else very disappointed in the NBA this year? Maybe it’s my fantasy teams, because like Nels, I didn’t win a damn thing. Some people only like to brag about what they’ve won, but here at Give Me The Rock, we feel that there is something to be learned from losing. And that means I’ve learned a whole lot this year:
Basketbawful Fantasy League: 3rd place (out of 14). F**k fantasy basketball, f**k this league, and f**k H2H. As described in this post, my team was in first place for most of the year until the H2H playoffs, when I ended up in 3rd. The guys over at Basketbawful called this league (and I’m paraphrasing and/or putting words in their mouth) the demonic love-child of Adolph Hitler and Michael Jackson.
Lesson Learned: I hate leagues with playoffs.
Yahoo Champions League: 2nd place (out of 10). Sadly, this would be my best showing on the year (I have the shiny silver trophy to show for it). Overall, it wasn’t a bad performance considering the league only had four bench spots and I dealt with the aforementioned Darko situation as well as significant injuries to Yao Ming, Michael Redd, and David West. I had high hopes for Steve Francis as my starting point guard at the beginning of the year. This ultimately led me to having a revolving door at the PG position, and employing Francis, Shaun Livingston, Mike James, Delonte West, Sam Cassell, Jose Calderon, Brevin Knight, and Tyronn Lue at various times throughout the year.
Lesson Learned: Don’t underestimate the point guard position in roto leagues. They are tough to find as free agents.
APBR League: 4th place (out of 8th). It was a roto league with about 85 categories (including minutes, FT made, FG made, 3pt percentage, disqualifications, and ejections). It also had 14 positions (2 PG, 2 SG, 1 G, 2 SF, 2 PF, 2 C, 2 UTIL) and was a daily changes league with no games limit, so overall scores were highly correlated with the number of games someone could squeeze out of their team. I did what I could considering I had no idea about some of the categories (quick, give me a player who is good in disqualifications) and the fact that by January, changing in and out 14 players everyday made it feel like I was doing my taxes rather than playing fantasy basketball.
Lesson Learned: Know your categories. And no max games limit sucks the fun out of the festivities.
Maine Hoopsters: 6th place (out of 10th). I’m most disappointed with this finish out of all the leagues I played in. It’s an auction league in which I went for the win last year and traded away most of my keepers (the one keeper I would not trade away was Jason Richardson… you can laugh now). Still, I was hoping for big things partly because this is a league I play in with friends and partly because the winner of the league gets $500+. But, this year I made a dubious auction decision (drafting an entire team of mid-round guys) and was ultimately left without any big guns. The one bright spot this year is that with my team being out of contention, I was able to hold on to some pretty solid keepers for next year - Josh Smith, Luol Deng, and Brandon Roy.
Lesson Learn: Much like Nels’ fabled mid-ball team, I tried to make my own mid-ball team, made up entirely of 3rd to 7th round players. It failed miserably.
As you can see in the GMTR mock draft (more to come on that later), any guy as high on Darko as I was doesn’t deserve to win a fantasy league. But I learned some things along the way and I realize it could be worse. I could be a Wizards fan on the verge of watching my team get destroyed in the playoffs.
