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 | | Posted on: 11/6/2008 |
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| Written by Zach Harper |
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Posted on 9/7/2008 5:58:36 PM |
Fantasy basketball is unlike any other major fantasy sport you will play from year to year. In fantasy baseball, you can often make up ground by being quick to the waiver wire and giving young prospects a chance to shine on your roster. You can pick up and drop pitchers and add statistical categories such as wins and saves from Opening Day until one of the Steinbrenner men pops a gasket because Alex Rodriguez is voguing instead of driving in runs in October. In fantasy football, there are always a handful of running backs and receivers who come out of nowhere to gain 1,200 total yards and half a dozen touchdowns thanks to severe injuries and Fred Taylor’s faulty groin. But in fantasy basketball, that’s not how it works.
Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, fantasy basketball is decided on the day of your draft. You can usually tell which teams are going to be good and which teams have no chance at contending by the final round on fantasy draft day. There is not enough picking up and dropping of players to have a significant impact on your roster. If your team is ravaged by injuries (I’m looking at you, 2007-2008 version of Jermaine O’Neal, or nearly any season of Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady), there is rarely a player who you can pick up from the waiver wire to compensate. Occasionally, guys like Jamario Moon come out of nowhere to provide nice all-around stats for your team. But I guarantee that Moon was not making or breaking someone’s chances at getting into the playoffs. And sure, guys like Ramon Sessions sometimes can win you a league championship by putting up 11 points and 11 assists per game for the month of April. But again, picking up a player like Sessions before April wasn’t taking you to the title round in your fantasy league.
So the best thing you can do for your fantasy team is to conduct a spectacular draft, manage the number of games played properly, and sit back and send emails out to your league about the amazing play of Mike Dunleavy and how you didn’t select him until the 7th Round. Now, while I cannot be in there with you to guide you through each draft, I can give you seven pertinent tips/strategies for how to draft well and end up with the best overall team.
Step 1 in Drafting: No Rookies!
It is pretty rare to have rookies performing well enough to own in fantasy basketball. In fact, over the past three seasons, only five rookies have been truly worthy of owning. With roughly 170 rookies over those three seasons, having only five worth owning, means that on average, one or two rookies this year are worthy of being selected. But because one of the rookies in this year’s class is Greg Oden, you can bump that figure up to three.
Greg Oden appears to be one of those rare big man prospects who only comes around every five to ten years. It’s safe to pick him as a solid fantasy player because he is skilled and athletic enough to be significant in the rebounding and shot blocking categories. He won’t take a lot of shots because he isn’t a main scoring option in Portland, so his shooting percentage should be well over 50%. The two other solid candidates for good rookie fantasy players are O.J. Mayo from Memphis and Michael Beasley from Miami. Mayo is a great scoring talent with the ability to make plays for others and to be a solid defender. His shooting percentage will probably be sub-par, but he can make up for it in other categories. With Beasley, you’re getting a 20-10 machine in college. He may not get 10 rebounds per game as a rookie, but you can expect 15 points, 7 rebounds, and hitting over 60 three-pointers. Unless you are getting one of these three guys, you should not be drafting any rookies – and even these three shouldn’t be drafted early. It is unlikely that another player will join the recent fraternity of Chris Paul, Kevin Durant, Jamario Moon, Al Horford, and Brandon Roy.
Step 2 in Drafting: Anybody Can Pass… Ditch the Point Guard
With seven of the Top 20 fantasy players being point guards, it seems like point guard is a premium position this season. Getting a guy like Chris Paul, Steve Nash, Jason Kidd, or Deron Williams should give you a distinct advantage in the assist category. However, assists can be very deceptive to most fantasy teams. You shouldn’t be drafting just big name players for the sake of filling up your roster with a team of stars (ask Larry Brown how that worked out for Team USA in 2004). You should be drafting a lot of players who give you at least some significant numbers in six or seven of the nine standard categories. For the most part, if you can get a good number of players who can rack up a minimum of 300 assists per year, that will give you solid enough assist numbers as a team. There were 43 players last year who had at least 300 assists for the season, and I guarantee a lot of them were not big name players. In fact, only 20 of those 43 players are Top 50 fantasy guys, which means that over half of them are guys you can get much later in your drafts.
What this means is that you can draft plenty of shooting guards, forwards, and big men (we’ll get to this next) early on because you can get plenty of 300-assist guys later on in the draft. To make this system work in a roto league, it makes sense to grab at least four of these guys. If you can draft someone like Kobe Bryant, Tracy McGrady, or Andre Iguodala and surround him with three more 300-assist guys, then you’ve set yourself up to be in the mix for the Top 3 spots in your league in the assist category. You should be able to get a well-rounded team thanks to your drafting big men in a few of the first five rounds, which will give you a good number of rebounds and blocked shots.
Step 3 in Drafting: The Big Man Theory
“The Big Man Theory” is something I came up with over the past couple of years. It isn’t necessarily an original plan of attack I created, but I did round out the strategy with a couple of tweaks and give it the cool BMT acronym. If you have enough discipline to draft according to this theory and enough savvy to find the role players later on in the draft who will round out your team, then often you can dominate both head-to-head and roto leagues with this style of drafting. The BMT is fairly simple in its application. Big men typically give you good numbers in five (field goal percentage, rebounds, blocked shots, points, and low turnovers) of the standard nine categories. By drafting guys like Chris Bosh, Kevin Garnett, Yao Ming (you know, the healthy version), Jermaine O’Neal, Tim Duncan (often an afterthought until late in the third round), Carlos Boozer, and Rasheed Wallace, you can round out a pretty solid frontcourt that will help you dominate in those five categories.
The key to the BMT is being smart with role players (we’ll get to those guys next) and knowing how to find statistically specific players in the later rounds. Last year, you were able to grab Jose Calderon deep in most drafts (his average draft position was after the ninth round), and if you did, he gave you a great number of assists. This year, somebody like Earl Watson (the starting point guard in OKC who averaged 6.8 assists per game last year) could be that Jose Calderon figure and provide a significant number of assists for such a late pick. Last year, you could take big men early and draft guys like DeShawn Stevenson, Raja Bell, J.R. Smith, Rafer Alston, and Juan Carlos Navarro after the ninth round. All five of those players ended up hitting at least 143 three-pointers and finished in the Top 25 of that category. This year, players like Raja Bell, Mike Bibby, Rafer Alston, and J.R. Smith should be taken after Round 9 and will be capable of producing in the same way.
As you can see, you don’t have to necessarily take the best guards early on to win your fantasy league. You just have to follow the Big Man Theory, draft pertinent role players in the later rounds, and be quick to the waiver wire when those one or two anomalies show up in the first couple of weeks who can contribute in the assists, steals, and three-pointers made categories.
Step 4 in Drafting: Role Players Over Stars
Speaking of role players, you need to take a second look at those who can give you virtually the same key statistics as the bigger name players who owners often mistakenly take much earlier in the draft. It’s easy to get swayed if big names like Dwight Howard and Michael Redd are available because these are household names. It’s easy to want someone like Andrei Kirilenko when there is an unknown like Jamario Moon available. Often, these stars aren’t worth the high draft pick you have to use to get them when role players can give you equal value much later in the draft.
Last year, Michael Redd was drafted on average in the fourth round. He is regarded as one of the top three-point shooters and a very valuable commodity in long distance shooting when it comes to fantasy basketball. But did you know that you could have gotten a much better three-point shooter five rounds later? Michael Redd connected on 130 three-pointers last year, which happened to be 46 fewer threes than Raja Bell hit. Raja Bell’s average draft position was in the 9th Round. And if you wasted a pick on Michael Redd that early, you probably missed out on drafting someone like Caron Butler in that 4th Round instead.
With someone like Dwight Howard, you probably picked him for rebounding and shot blocking. You picked him on average in the 2nd Round to get those important stats. But you could have had Tyson Chandler in the 6th Round instead and only lost 2.5 rebounds and 1 block per game (as well as 1.5 fewer turnovers per game). Not to mention that you could have taken Josh Smith, who was often the pick after Howard, and more than made up for those lost blocked shots. This year, most fantasy owners will draft Andrei Kirilenko in the 5th or 6th Round when they could have Jamario Moon in the 8th Round. They will take Jason Richardson in the 4th Round instead of taking Mike Miller in the sixth. You have to be mindful of the role players who will equal the star players while giving you more flexibility early in the draft.
Step 5 in Drafting: Death of the Center
While players like Dwight Howard and Tyson Chandler are two of the top performing centers, the center position is much more versatile then it used to be. With more players eligible at both power forward and center, you no longer need to waste early picks on the likes of Dwight Howard (kills your FT% and turnovers) and Yao Ming (missed an average of 28 games over the past three seasons). Taking players like Amare Stoudemire, Carlos Boozer, Tim Duncan, Al Jefferson, Chris Bosh, and Pau Gasol is much more valuable because you can rotate them among your power forward, forward, center, and utility positions as opposed to just having Howard and Ming available at center and utility. The other guys can give you stats just as good as those of the pure centers without the roster-crippling limitations.
Of course, there are always exceptions that can give you some incentive to take the pure centers. Obviously, Ming can give you great, efficient numbers and Howard is the best rebounder in the league. And guys like Mehmet Okur can give you added three-point shooting while Brad Miller can give you a few more assists than a lot of other forwards. And then there is the prized and most underrated center in fantasy basketball – Marcus Camby. Camby, for years, has been drafted in the third and fourth rounds even though he ends up being a Top 10 fantasy player. He is the best player at the block/steal combo stat and shows his value there. What’s the block/steal combo stat you ask?
Step 6 in Drafting: Block/Steal Combo Stats
The block/steal combo stat is something I came up with to show a player’s true value in fantasy basketball. Since blocks and steals are by far the most difficult statistics for NBA players to get, the ones who can do a good job of collecting a solid number of each are that much more valuable in fantasy basketball. Combining the steal and block in one category is not typical in fantasy scoring, but it’s something you should take note of in your mind. Best-case scenario, you want to have a guy who totals over 200 blocks and steals combined. Someone like Marcus Camby, who is an exceptional shot blocker and a decent thief, topped out at 369 block/steals last year. The next closest player was Josh Smith with 350 block/steals. After that, nobody topped 250 block/steals, and very few players cracked 200.
So when factoring in the rebounding ability of Marcus Camby, it’s easy to ignore the lack of scoring and see why he’s so valuable. It isn’t just the rebounding and it isn’t just the shot blocking. It’s when you add in those steals that he becomes one of the top players in fantasy. You should value players like Marcus Camby, Josh Smith, and Kevin Garnett more than the Yao Ming, Dwyane Wade, and Allen Iverson’s of the basketball world. You should value someone like Jamario Moon (188 block/steals as an un-drafted rookie) over the Luol Deng and Josh Howard’s of the NBA. Keep that combined number in mind and shoot for a minimum of 160. It will pay off in your final standings, whether it’s roto or head-to-head.
Step 7 in Drafting: The 20 PPG, 1 Steal, 1 Block, 1 Three-Pointer Club
With players being bigger, better, faster, and stronger (cue Kanye West) these days, it’s clear that they are more versatile than they have ever been. Big men are shooting threes and handling the ball like they are 6’5” players stuck in 7’0” bodies. Last season, LeBron James was the sole member of the 20-1-1-1 club. He averaged 30 points, 1.84 steals, 1.08 blocks, and 1.5 made three-pointers over the course of 75 games. No other player could crack the 20 points, 1 steal, 1 block, and 1 made three-pointer level of versatility. But this year could be very different.
There are three players who could join LeBron James in this club and put a whole new twist to my block/steal combo stat. Kevin Durant scored 20.3 points per game as a rookie but missed averaging 1 steal, 1 block, and 1 made three-pointer by 3 steals, 5 blocks, and 21 threes. He could easily get into the club by making up for those minor discrepancies and turn into a young fantasy basketball legend. Rudy Gay is another player who just missed out this last season. He was only 2 blocks away from completing the necessary criteria. It’s safe to say that he is a complete lock to get into this club and join King James. And finally, Danny Granger is another player who came up short. He had the steals, blocks, and threes but was unable to get the points and missed out on the club by 33.
Parting Words for Having a Successful Draft
Unless you’re playing for money (which obviously nobody does, since gambling is a very bad thing), you should not take a fantasy draft too seriously. Too many people get caught up in hateful e-mails because of questionable trades and weak trash talking. If you are just doing this for fun, you should take the players who are fun for you to follow and who will give you a good team. Everybody wants to win on some level, but the most important thing is to be competitive and having fun doing so. Fantasy sports allow us to be the GMs that we feel Kevin McHale and Elgin Baylor aren’t cut out to be. So enjoy your draft and enjoy your season.
And if you end up in a league with me, forget everything you just read in this article.
Check out more commentary and analysis from Zach Harper at TalkHoops.net. |
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