Post Mortem

We had the fantasy nba draft yesterday and it went pretty smoothly. i'm very satisfied with my team. i felt pretty giddy at the start of the draft, running around madly a few minutes b4 the draft started, trying to find my list of "steals", printing out the yahoo list, and making sure everyone knew the draft was on.

My strategy going in was to take the best players available and then build around them. I picked last (7th) in the first round and then I got to pick 1st in the second round (8th). For my first pick, I couldnt' believe T-Mac was still available at pick 7, so that was a good pickup. THen with the next pick, i had a bit of trouble deciding: Elton Brand/Peja/Kirilenko/Ray Allen. I was leaning towards Peja because of the shooting % and our league has three of those cats. However, I thought Kirilenko would fill up the stat sheet in steals and blocks. In the end I went with the solid but unspectacular Elton Brand. He's 20/10 player and throws in 2.2 blocks per game. I deliberately went big even though I originally set out to draft regardless of position for the first couple of picks. I might regret not taking one of the other two.

For my next pick, I also couldn't believe that Baron Davis fell into my lap with the 21st pick. He's ranked 15th but I thought he's going to western conference, he has to do to much on this team, sometimes injured. But i thought last season he was just a fantasy beast at the start. He's one of the multi cat players that I drool over.

I guess my strategy going into the draft was to take guys that could contribute in a lot of differnt categories. So my first three picks were pretty consistent: T-Mac, Brand, Baron Davis.

My next pick was kinda unexpected by most people i suspect. I really wanted zach randolph even though he's not rated highly amongst the autoranks. I felt that he was a solid 20/10 guy that shoots 50%. He doesn't do that much more but I just like him. He's just very consistent. Plus I feel that he still has the potential to improve. I took him over amare stoudemire/pau gasol/kenyon martin/walker. it was like a smorgasboard of PF but each one had their weaknesses. Stoudemire might play centre, plus he's a little raw. Gasol doesn't get enough minutes to be real effective but is very efficient. Martin is on a loaded frontcourt. Walker has terrible shooting percentages. In the end I went with one of my favourite players.

With my fifth pick, I kinda remeber taking a look at what's left and remembering that I wanted Donyell Marshall pretty badly. Last season he just killed it and yahoo calls him the "most underrated fantasy player". I wanted to take Michael Redd, but hoi took him (prolly on the advice of that stats book he has). Donyell was typical of the kind of player that i wanted. can shoot 3's, score in the high teens, rebound feriously, blocks, steals. He's one of the best pickups i had all nite.

At this point, i thought what are my other needs? I've got a top flight backcourt with B Diddy/Tmac, loaded at the PF spot with Brand/Z-Randolph/Marshall. I figured, i'd take the next best player and wanted to fill a SF/SG spot. So I took Corey Maggette. I like him as a player and he gets 20 points/6 rebounds/shoots a ton of free throws. but the problem is like randolph, he doens't do much else. But hoi had him last time, and i remembered that Corey went quite well. See Maggette and Brand were overlooked by a lot of people because they play on lesser known team: the clippers. Their points and stats should increase with Q-Rich gone to the suns.

By this point, i thought "crap, i need a centre". I had two consecutive picks, so i figured I'd take the best center availabele. There wasn't much choice as Shaq was gone in the first round (by Ken), brad Miller was taken (by Bucky), Yao Ming (by someone). the next best was jamaal Magloire. I wasn't keen on this pick, but i thought i don;t want to be screwed with a crappy centre like dan gadzuric. So i deliberately avoided the Big Z and I feel that I mgiht also regret this as well. I had him last time and just wsn't too impressed. but the thing is he might play better this semester with Lebron and two point guards starting...essentially there are three PG's on the squad, so there's gonna be a lot of sweet passes to Big Z. But i thought i'm gonna try something different and take J-Mag. But he's going to western conference, so not sure how this will pan out.

With the very next pick, I thought, might as well get another centre b4 they all dry up. so i went hmmmmm...who's left, and took Marcus Camby. Still, maybe i should have taken Big Z. But I like camby but he's often injured and with Kenyon martin, a lot of his rebounds are gonna get soaked up. But camby contributes in blocks and steals as well as rebounds. Still, can't really justify Camby over Big Z.

By now, the top 30-40 players was pretty much gone. I reverted back to my original strategy of taking the best players available combining with a need to fill up the guard spots. I didn't want to end up like last time when I only took bigs and had no guards except for P squared and Mike Bibby. I really wanted to fill a need, so I took Brent Barry. What???? He only scores 10 points. But he's a excellent three point shooter, and he's what I wanted because he also contributes assists, and steals. I figure with tim duncan throwing out of double teams, he'll only be more accurate and garner more assists and points. Barry is very underrated as a fantasy player but he contributes to several important cats.

Next pick, I went with Jamal Crawford. I like him except he's got a terrible shooting %. I figure the change to NY should do him some good and Houston not coming back soon anyway. Not too sure about this pick, but i figure i could trade him if need be.

At this point I dragged several players into my queue box, which allows you to select several players your interested in. but something happened and my computer froze. I was panicking and tried desperately to log in, but to no avail. But because i had a queue box thingy going, I got who I wanted. well sort of. I got carlos arroyo and jalen rose. Arroyo i like , because of the olympics play. But rose? Not sure. He's pretty much the same as crawford and Arroyo combined, except for the rebounds. I actually wanted to take Grant Hill but it wasn't to be. But in the end, i predict grant hill will at best average jalen rose type numbers - 16 points/5 assists/6 rebounds. so either way, it's not too bad and rose is proven. With Hill there's a massive question mark.

For my last pick, I realised that there was so many quality players left over, hence the advantage of being in a 7 team league. I wanted to take a risk on an unknown player, a gamble, a roll of the dice on someone. There was one player that i was sweating over all night but wanted to take at the the very end cause i figured most people didn't know about him and his pre-season emergence. I had read up heaps on fantasy Bball and checked out preseason stats and knew this guy stood out. Who was this blockbuster player? PRIMOZ BREZERC!!!!! Everything indicates that this guy will blow up. I was so delighted that no one had touched him and was the very last pick in the whole draft. Primoz Brezerc, welcome to Ho's Allstars. He's a centre with the Bobcats, and was killing the preseason with 15 points and 8 rebounds. I'm predicting that this continues. THe only problem is, i have 3 centres on the team now, bit of an overload. I might trade one of them, but i want to keep this guy, because he's my "project". I want him to pan out, so I can saying something similar to "who's your daddy?" , but twisted into this "who's the GM?".