Give Me The Rock

Watch out! It’s time for some complaining! If you don’t want to hear my express my frustration at some injuries that have befallen one of my teams, you can skip this post. If you want to laugh at me, or console yourself by knowing that things could be worse, this is your post.

In the Carnival of the NBA Battle of the Bloggers League I have somehow managed to compile an 8-10 record two weeks in (but don’t worry, it’s all downhill from there).

In this league, we have only 2 bench spots, and on my team those two spots are reserved for Manu Ginobili, since he’s a decent Big Ball SG, and Greg Oden, who was taken down, as we all know, by a Laker team knowing that foul play was its only chance at going 82-0.

Now having my bench filled with injuries before the first week is even over wasn’t the end of the world in this league (okay, it was the beginning of the end), because we - like in the GMTR Monster League (which I promise I’ll get around to blogging about at some point, but in the mean time you can read some gloating from the first place team here) - only start one Center. And being as I have five Centers on my roster: Al Jefferson, Spencer Hawes, Drew Gooden, Oden, and Shaq, putting another Center into Oden’s spot was not a problem. I mean, really, I consider that a pretty daunting Big Ball front line, and when you add in the fact that I have LeBron as my SF, it almost doesn’t matter who I have at the Guard positions. As mentioned, though, I will have Manu as my SG when he returns. Until then, though, I’ve got… Corey Maggette! Oh! Injured!

And then there’s Drew Gooden, who is out for… well, who knows? He’s currently in the fantasy owner’s arch-nemsis state of Day-to-Day.

Oh, and did I mention that Shaq was rested for 1 of his 4 games last week, and only played 12 minutes in one of the others. I know, I’d probably have some actual right to complain if I hadn’t just dug him out of the free agent pool in exchange for Joakim Noah (another Center!). But still, when you’re already down 2 starting positions in an H2H league, having another guy miss games due to “resting” is not cool.

Just as a reminder, 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

First things first: Glad to see Patrick has a Gravatar now!

Next up… in the Carnival of the NBA Battle of the Bloggers League, we’ve only got 2 bench spots and I currently have Greg Oden, Manu Ginobli, and Francisco Garcia all injured. So, basically I’m a man down to whatever team I’m playing. The rest of my lineup is here, or if you don’t want to click over:
LeBron James
Al Jefferson
David West
Joe Johnson
Corey Maggette
Grant Hill
Joakim Noah
Drew Gooden

The only good thing is that we only start 1 Center, so I can slide Al Jefferson over there to take care of that. Actually, there’s another good thing… the league is H2H with Daily Lineup Changes! (Brendan, I’m looking at you) So, I can drop Garcia and put someone else in right away…

The question is: should I drop Garcia and pick up someone else? And if so, who???? I’ll take any suggestions since I know you can’t see who’s actually available and I kind of think it’s annoying when people give a limited list of players only to leave me wondering who they’re excluding as possible pick ups. Clearly this is a Big Ball team, and I have Garcia at F right now, so players who can play F would be most useful, but I could slide Grant Hill or Corey Maggette to F if the right SG’s name is thrown out there.

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