PMad was part of the so-called Bloggers’ League (aka Return of the Jedi) this past season, and a joyful part of that league he was. Joyful enough to snatch 3rd place away from me and leave me with an ugly purple ribbon in place of a shiny bronze medal. But all that is behind us now. I mean, I’ve totally put it behind me. No problem. None at all.

P-Maddy was invited to the Bloggers’ League (aka Return of the Jedi) because he provided the lifeblood that was (and could be again at any point, I suppose) EasyMarksman. As you can see from this first post PMad was providing so-called incites almost as long as I have been. So, that’s a good thing.

By adding PMad, Give Me The Rock (I can now reference it in that manner and it’s not like I’m talking about myself in the third person) will now be able to bring you all kinds of mad analysis. By mad, I mean like good. Not like angry or upset or anything. Although, there’s bound to be some of that as well, since I don’t think anyone has ever actually made it through a season without losing a player to injury. Unless maybe your team was only five players and all of them started for the Pistons.

Whatever the case may be, PMad should be dropping his first post here in a day or two (so he says). Since I have no editorial control (I could if I wanted, but that doesn’t seem very “blog-like”), I will be just as interested as all seven of you to see what’s going on inside his head.

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Seattle forward Rashard Lewis sat out the SuperSonics’ game in Houston on Wednesday night with a sprained right ankle.

The 6-foot-10 Lewis, Seattle’s second-leading scorer, had 14 points when he turned his ankle with 3:12 left in the Sonics’ 98-97 win over Memphis on Tuesday night.

And normally, I’d care, but the Return of the Jedi league ended on an error last week, and as a result, I coudn’t care less about Rashard. (The error was the way I calculated the playoffs versus the way Sportsline did. I take responsiblity, and I take my 4th place ribbon as well. In my league, it’s like a “fun run” where everyone gets a ribbon. Congratulations all you people in my league! Good job! Well, except you, Free Darko. I’m not sure what to say to you. But you still get a ribbon.) Of course, now that he’s injured, that probably makes Ray Allen more valuable in my other league. But, I have a BYE in the first round of that league (cause I finished the “regular season” in 2nd place). So, really, Rashard’s injury is just not that important.

So, all in all, Rashard is out, just when you needed him most (well, unless you’re in a roto league, I suppose. But if you are in a roto league, this goes to show you why shouldn’t leave “extra” games for the end of the season.) Sorry, that’s the way fantasy basketball goes. If you really feel like crying about, go IM the dude with Amare Stoudemire to cheer yourself up.

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Tests on Wallace’s ailing left leg have revealed a medial tibia bone bruise, an injury suffered when he fell to the ground after going for a rebound in Friday’s loss to the Orlando Magic. The Bobcats expect the swingman to be sidelined for the next 4-6 weeks, just adding to their long list of injury problems this season.

If he was a horse ala the kind of thoroughbred he has been playing like this year, he might have to be put to sleep. I saw that fall on one of those highlight shows that I only get to see when I go out on Saturday nights cause everywhere outside of my house has cable and it looked like a pretty hard fall.

Fantasy Impact

Anyway… didn’t I just do an analysis of the Bobcats? Yes, yes I did. But this changes everything. Alan Anderson doesn’t exactly look like he’s going to pan out, but Bernard Robinson actually might. Of course, they both make Jumaine Jones look like the stud of the century. I’d take those 18 points and 8 rebounds he had after Wallace left the game, fo sho.

I’m a little surprised that Keith Bogans hasn’t stepped up a little more, but perhaps we should give him another game or two without Wallace before taking him off the players to watch list.

In Other News

I picked Anthony Johnson in my FantasyBasketball.com Writers League. I am now 2.5 games out of 1st place there, putting me at #2. I’ll take that. I am also in sole possession of 1st place in my Return of the Jedi Basketblogger league. Can we end the season right now? Seriously, no where to go but down now… I guess we’ll see how long my luck-disguised-as-skill will last.

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The Denver Nuggets announced Wednesday that Camby will undergo surgery for a fractured right pinky.

Camby will have pins surgically inserted into the finger Thursday. The team then will set a timetable for his return.

Pins does not sound good. Perhaps they should just replace his skeleton with one made of adamantium.

Fantasy Impact

Let’s see… Kenyon Martin is out… Nene is out… Francisco Elson can only score more than 4 points when he clears that magical 45 minute threshold… That leaves Eduardo Najera. Is it any suprise I got an email notification he was picked up in my Jedi league? While it depends on how long Martin and Camby are out, Najera is probably not a bad pick up. He’s never really done that much, but he’s solid, and the increased PT has started to nudge his numbers upwards.

Technorati Tags: fantasybasketball, basketball

Technorati Tags: fantasybasketball, basketball

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Chris Paul. How bout that? 10 places ahead of Baron Davis. Beating out Chauncey Billups too.

In other news, I’m squaring off with the Marksmen this week. Despite being 2nd in total points scored, he’s only 2-2 (7th place). I am third in scoring, but 3-2 is only good enough for 5th place. So, while this week appears to be a matchup of the 5th and 7th place teams, I prefer to see it as the 2nd and 3rd place teams. But I guess if I were scoring that way, I would have made it total fantasy points instead of weekly matchups. That’s okay, though. I’ll take head-to-head matchups any week over total scoring. I’d even consider a little Roto before I go for total fantasy points…

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Most Valuable Network – Attack of the Supersonics! » NBA Carnival #20

Give Me The Rock is still bringing the rock solid fantasy advice. His pick for this week was Sar Jas, and if you are one of the people who took Nels’ advice then I’m pretty sure you’re happy with the results. Speaking of results, Nels’ own Jedi fantasy league is already 5 games in to the season, and I’m happy to say that my own Pabst Blue Ribbons are currently holding down the #3 spot. We lost this week, but we’re not worried, not at all.

In another stunning show of basketblogger collaboration, there’s the NBA Blog Power Rankings at Yay! Sports. Due to some technical difficulties, I did not participate. I wasn’t the one with the technical difficulties… though I was pretty busy yesterday.

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After losing in week 1, I was down big in week 2… but thanks to Gilbert Arenas and Rashard Lewis throwing in 40+ each, I was able to storm back and even my record at 1-1. I’m now 6th overall and in the “Power” rankings (weighted by record, points for, and points against).

This week I’m leading the Cantankerous Succubi by 2 points with 2 more games over the weekend (for those fantasy basketball rookies, counting games is something that the pros do. Even though it often times doesn’t matter, it’s something that’s required in order to become a true fantasy basketball obsessionato). A win would being CS down off his 2-0 throne and elevate me above an 0-3 plebians that may remain after this week.

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If anyone is interested, NBA.com has rankings of the top 100 players this year through Nov. 12th…

I’ve got #3 and #5, and #85 probably jumped up a bit after delivering 41 points on Sunday.

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Starting things off, Mr. Pro Hop:

I hope to see plenty of that, and maybe some of this:

My second round pick:

The nice thing about Sportsline is they only have the Guard position, so doubling up on point guards in the first two rounds doesn’t hurt too much.

Moving on to round 3:

Next up: Chuke! With another throw down!

I’m hoping he’s moved on past the photo shoots and drinking problem…

But, I guess I’d be okay with drink, dribble, dunk. Chuke!

Speaking of dunking… Throw it down big man! Throw it down!

I took Chandler near the end of the 5th round, which was probably too early, but I let my loyalty to the Bulls take over… and since I do believe that he’ll be an awesome center this year, I think it’s okay. At least for me… if you don’t like the Bulls, I’d wait until the 6th for him. I was able to follow up it up with Tayshaun Prince, though, so I think that probably evens things out… at least in my mind.

The next two rounds were probably my worst of the draft… I took Wally Z (yeah, I know, it starts with an S, whatever) and Primoz. Wally appears to already be injured. Great. I drafted him (as I usually do) on potential. If he plays like I’ve always wanted him to, it’s a good pick… so we’ll see. Primoz was a pretty terrible pick since I already had 2 centers, but the one good thing is he and Okafor are both FC’s so I can play Chandler (who, actually, is also an FC) at C with one of the Bobcats, and put the other Cat at F.

I actually had this poster on my office wall during my internship in 99. It was the only basketball poster in the local one-stop shopping store that didn’t have Kobe Bryant on it. Somewhat suprising since I did live in Portland. Where were the Blazers posters? Yeah…

Back to the Bulls in the next round with Luol Deng. Once again, I wanted a Bull, so I got one. 9th round probably isn’t bad for Deng if he builds on last years excellent season.

Follow that up with another GF, Kyle Korver. Can you tell I’m big on the multi-position players? They can come up huge for you when guys start getting injured. Check out that form:

That’s fantasy points right there.

Another gamble in the 11th round… Sarunas Jasikevicius. His experince should give him a nod at the starting position over Jamaal Tinsley and Anthony Johnson. Even if he doesn’t start the season for the Pacers, he should be shortly. On Sportsline, he didn’t even show up on the “draftable” part of the list in the draft room. Sometimes you have to dig the diamonds out of the mine.

I feel I got a solid 12th rounder here in Haslem. Sure, the Heat appear to be overloaded up front, but it really depends on how you stack the depth chart. At this point, I also want to mention Alonzo Mourning… he is the backup to Shaq, who is certainly not going to play more than the 34 minutes in 73 games he had last season. Mourning went undrafted in my league, and that’s a big reason I wish I hadn’t taken Brezec. I could have taken Chris Paul, Al Harrington, Josh Childress, or even another Bull with Michael Sweetney and then taken Mourning in the last round as my 3rd center. Or I could have moved up the Deng pick to Brezec’s spot, and then gotten Mike James (who I think is going to be awesome in Toronto) in the next round. It was him or Korver and he got taken right before my pick, so I went with Korver. But I could have had both of them is the point. Anyway…

At this point (after the 12th round), I had my 11 starters (yup, that’s right! 11!) filled in, and one sub, so I just tried to fill in the spots where I thought guys might get injured, and simultaneously take the best player available. I think I did okay considering we were up past 156 players at this point…

Derek Anderson:

Trevor Ariza, who will hopefully have more interesting photos in his portfolio after this season:

Gordan Giricek, who might even start for the Jazz for a while this season in the 15th:

And finishing it out with yet another Chicago Bull (I was going to take David Lee, but he got picked right before Giricek. There are rumors that Larry Brown might start him over Malik Rose and Maurice Taylor, or at least have as the backup instead of 3rd string)

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We keep it simple and stick to a head-to-head, five-category confederation that consists of points, rebounds, assists, steals, and blocks—all positive statistics. Thus, a player like Allen Iverson is drafted where he should be because he doesn’t have the 4.6 turnovers or poor FG% weighing him down. This makes our draft ridiculously simple because essentially all that’s required is to fill all five categories as best as you can. There are just three rules: take the players who provide the most offense early and often, sprinkle in a few sleepers, and be sure to screw your buddies out of one or two picks. I mean, who wouldn’t want to be a part of this league? So the real question is, why the hell don’t more people set up their leagues to resemble ours? I guess it’s because most managers think you’re “supposed to” take part in a league that factors in negative statistics. But never once do I recall the Fantasy Gods making this imperative. We must never forget that this is a hobby and if things get too complicated to enjoy it, we must be doing something wrong. So with two weeks still separating us from the start of the season, make sure you do your best to enter/create a league with these simplified parameters. Take our word for it that you’ll have the time of your life.

I think he’s just bitter because I got Dwyane Wade in our league and he didn’t. That and he thinks it’s better to let someone draft Luke Ridnour in the second round because that person couldn’t make the live draft than to have a draft that goes for 9 days so people can actaully consider who they want. The draft is the most important part of fantasy basketball and cannot be taken lightly.

On the other hand, we’ve got Hnk Jr. who has a “Charlie Rosen” interpretation of his fantasy team (also in our league), and seems to have enjoyed every second of the gruelling 9 day marathon draft.

Speaking of the league… I thought it would be easier (and I was right) to put the draft results into the GFBE spreadsheet and let you view them their. You can also see what my draft sheet looks like after 9 days of being ripped to shreds at every turn. I told Gabe (who’s an Art Teacher, and now the manager of the freshly dubbed Ligers) that it’s like spreadsheet art. So, hopefully at least one person will appreciate it.

Coming soon: My Team – a pictorial

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