CLANK! Bring Out Your Dead! CLANK! Bring Out Your Dead!

November 7, 2016 | Fantasy Basketball Daily Notes | 134 Comments

The fantasy basketball world is like, “bring out your dead!” “Free up those IL spots!” “Hope you have some scrubs to drop with everyone getting healthy again!”

With a shot of rum and locker room pyrotechnics, Jobu has unleashed his voodoo magic and Jesus Christ can now hit a curveball! Or I guess in this metaphor, hit a jump shot. Well, except if you’re Stephen Curry and you’re behind the 3 point line… Break up the Lakers!

It was a Sunday resurrection around the association, highlighted (well, for me) by Chandler Parsons getting back on the court yesterday afternoon. Way to take the spotlight off my Panthers, NBA scheduling! But good thing I focused on the Panthers, as Parsons was horrific, pulling a Jamal Murray and shooting 0-8 from the field. “Is that goal regulation size, or what?!” At least chipped in 3 boards and got a block, but didn’t finish the game with the starters in a close one, playing ~5 minute sets and only 22 minutes. After that rough anticipation of waiting, seeing such a dud out of the gate makes CP25 an ultimate buy low. I actually left him in my IL in a few RCLs, predicting a rough one outta the gate. Frustrated owners might think the knee is to blame, but he’s been practicing in full since before the season, so I think it’s just a little gametime rust. Just ask Jon Snow, when you get resurrected from the dead, you’re not 100% right out of the gate! Here’s what else went down over the weekend in fantasy basketball action:

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2016-17 RCL Basketball Update: Week 1

November 4, 2016 | Razzball Commenter Leagues | 58 Comments

by: JB Gilpin

The REL season is back! And I’m still as lazy as Brad Pitt in True Romance with paying off my YouTube bet to Nick is Razzy! Nick, it’s coming my man! It’s on the docket! I have my food contest all picked out and everything…

With the season kicked off, we’re now 1.5 weeks in for our run at Hall of Fame immortality. If you started rough, one week certainly doesn’t sink your chances at glory, and the first week of the season wasn’t even quite a full week of action… So if you started with an L, keep your head high, and Keep Pounding! Oh wait, that’s my real-life football team…

Check out how your teams stacked up after week 1 in the 2016-17 RCL Master Standings Table table, and here’s some notable takeaways from the 1st regular season week across our 23 RCL Leagues:

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11/04/2016 – “It Might Be The Chin Though, It’s A Strong Chin, It Throws You Off”

November 4, 2016 | Razzball Basketball Podcast | 101 Comments

by: JB Gilpin

Finally with over a week under our belt, we’ve got some trends to start talkin’ about! On today’s show, Slim & I discuss the Jerami Grant trade, if this early-season run by DeMar DeRozan is sustainable, figuring out what to do with the Brooklyn Mess, and reaction to a few injuries. We then conclude the show with previewing tonight’s games by making our 30-point challenge picks, and wrap the week at the movies.

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Now That Baseball Is Finally Done, We Can Talk About TJ

November 3, 2016 | Fantasy Basketball Daily Notes | 130 Comments

by: JB Gilpin

Man, what a World Series! The Cubs win Game 7 – in extra innings no less – to end their century plus drought and have their fans become insufferable, like the Red Sox. Ugh. But congrats to the Cubs, and now we can solely focus on basketball!!! …until the football playoffs take over 45 minutes of every hour of Sportscenter…

Anywho, if it’s not my Brewers in the World Series, I could care less, and I was paying more attention to hoops last night anyway. Very depressing night, but I wanted to start positive! After singing his praises on the Pod Tuesday morning, T.J. Warren had a little bit of a down game on Halloween night, but bounced right back to lead the Suns to their first W in OT. 11-22 FG, love dat FG%, 5-5 FT, ditto, 27/7/0/2/1 with no TO. Dem fighting numbers! That gives him a 22.4/6.2/0.8/1.8/0.4 line on the season, shooting 50.6% from the field on 17.8 shots, 86.4% from the stripe in 4.4 FTA, and averaging only 1.0 TO. This is turning into a fantasy MVP! Of course, of course, of course it’s early, but Devin Booker was back after sitting one game, both Eric Bledsoe (hit the game winner) and Brandon Knight got their run, and I don’t really see any reason this can’t sustain. The Pts probably come down a tad, but he doesn’t shoot 3s so the FG% should be huge, and he doesn’t really facilitate much which will keep his TO mad low. On the Pod I compared him to DeRozan – with maybe even better FG% – and look at these floaters in traffic that are DeRozan-esque:

I’m very actively trying to correct the great injustice – with all my TJ love, I don’t own him on any teams. Hopefully owners think this is a flash in the pan or a sell-high moment. I don’t. So be like Warren, take a trip to Dr. James Andrews, and get yourself a nice year-long TJ! Here’s what else went down last night in fantasy basketball action:

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Round 3: Jamba Jus Gives Slim The W!

November 1, 2016 | Fantasy Basketball Daily Notes | 161 Comments

by: JB Gilpin

Ahhhhh, our epic Jusuf Nurkic vs. Nikola Jock Itch debates. 16-17 might become remembered as the year of the Nuggets big men Civil War. I wanna be on Iron Man’s side!

In a gutsy battle with the Craptors, the Nugs almost pulled out a great road win, putting together a huge 3rd quarter and getting a lead for most of the 4th. We the North still ended up notching the W, and so did Slim and the Nurk > Joke contingent! I still feel like I have to remind everyone that I ranked Nurk ahead of all experts, and was middle-of-the-pack-to-slightly-below-consensus on Jokic. But alas, I did think Slim was a little crazy saying he wanted Nurk over Joke outright, and after last night, it’s looking like it’s going to be a coin flip any given outing. The real head-scratcher is Nurkic lead the team with a preposterous 38 minutes. Lunacy! Ended up going 13/18/1/1/5 in a great line, but did struggle with the %s, shooting 5-14 FG and 3-7 FT. He’s just so big out there… Look at poor Pit-Pat trying to block him, what are you doing Pit-Pat?!

I think this matchup made sense, as Nurk is a good fit to D up The Luminescent Lithuanian, and with his size and D presence, can help out on the Lowry and DeRozan iso drives. Erstwhile, I thought Nikola Jokic looked pretty good, but only played 22 minutes, going 12/4/1/0/0. Shot 6-9, but 4 TO?! The Nugs only had 8 TO as a whole, so friggin’ Jock Itch had half their giveaways, plus had 4 fouls in that limited run. Just wasn’t his night.

So what to do with these guys? I think you gotta just deploy them as usual, and hope the coin flips your way any given game. As long as it doesn’t pull a Watchmen and land standing up. I think that was Watchmen, I know it was in the dumb movie Ed too, about Joey from Friends teaching a monkey to pitch. Hahahaha, how terrible. I just had to link the trailer, because I watched it for 30 seconds to be sure I was citing the right movie, and holy crap. This is the most fantastic 2 minutes of my life:

If that doesn’t make you laugh, nothing will! I’m all over the place this morning… To wrap that metaphor, I guess Kenneth Faried would be if the coin landed straight up, and at least he only saw 15 minutes. I wouldn’t be shocked at all if Nurk gets 22 minutes next time out, Jock Itch 35, and Jock Itch has the big game. Going to be frustrating game to game. But for last night, Slim gets to gloat! Here’s what else happened last night in fantasy basketball action:

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11/01/2016 – “Aight, We’ll Just Stick With The Bird Flu… If We Have To…”

November 1, 2016 | Razzball Basketball Podcast | 38 Comments

by: JB Gilpin

Whoa, it’s November already! Where hath art time gone?! On today’s show, Slim & I discuss panic levels on slow-starting fantasy studs, the mess in Brooklyn, and JB notes his biggest surprise of the year thus far. I don’t want to give it away, that’s what we call a tease! We then wrap the show with previewing tonight’s games, and make our 30-point challenge picks.

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2016-17 REL Dynasty League Update: Week 2

October 31, 2016 | Fantasy Basketball Daily Notes | 20 Comments

by: JB Gilpin

REL Basketball1 The first week is in the books! I hope everyone out there in the deep dynasty landscape had a strong first week, saw their rooks get into the rotation a little bit, and avoided the old dinosaurs like Dirk giving them early DNPs… Smh.

If you’re still unfamiliar with the REL, I wanted to give a quick format recap for this first in-season look-in – it’s a 20 team league, 12 starting roster spots, 5 bench, 1 IL, standard 9-cat H2H. You can keep an unlimited number of keepers (well, up to roster size) up to the auction budget of $200. Whatever cash you don’t keep, you use to buy up the younguns outta the draft. Then arguably the most crucial aspect of the league is the waiver wire. All pickups are $1 keepers for life, so our $100 FAAB budgets have a dramatic impact on roster construction. Expect to see some big buys for young guys who break out!

Enough with the league rules recap JB, we get it (says 99% of readers, who have seen these before)! Here’s how week one in the 2016-17 REL went down:

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Brook Is Apparently Dunn

October 31, 2016 | Fantasy Basketball Daily Notes | 161 Comments

by: JB Gilpin

Save your horse, and ride a… Justin Hamilton?! As we coined on the Podcast, the coach of the Nets has officially changed his name. It’s even on his newly issued Birth Certificate! It’s no longer Kenny Atkinson. While Brooks wears his giant cowboy hat, Kenny literally wears his ass on his head. He is forever more: Kenny Asshat. I’d love to make that my Halloween costume!

After that shockingly low-run debut, Brook Lopez persevered in game two with a 25/5/1/1/0 line in only 26 minutes on Friday night. Maybe the most shocking aspect of that game was the Nets actually won an NBA game! Then on Saturday afternoon, we get word Brolo is going to get a healthy DNP-rest. Mother F Asshat! Because of course after 2+ healthy seasons including playing 33+ MPG last year, Brook is an injury risk. This is a ticking time bomb in Brooklyn… Asshat wants to chuck as many 3s as possible; through Saturday night’s game, Brooklyn’s 37.3 3PA were second in the NBA, only to the Mavericks who had an OT game then played Houston. 42% of their shots are treys, which leads the league thus far (small sample of course). Even in that “good” game from Brolo Friday night, he shot 0-4 from deep, giving him 6 3PTA this season. His career high 3PTA?! 14 last year for 0.2 a game. 3.0 thus far in 16-17. A big part of his value has been game-to-game reliability and FG%, and now we’re not going to get either. Asshat really wants to pound Brook’s square peg in a round hole, and we all know Asshat has a big round hole! What a mess this team is. Hopefully you don’t have too many shares of Brolo, and if you do, you’re really forced to hold as best you can. No one is giving you anything for him… But at least it opens some opportunities, with Hamilton now a streamer even in 12ers, and you know the rest of your Nets are all going to have ThrAGNOF streamability. Asshat playing his team like Duke. Shooting nothing but 3s… So annoying! No UNC bias there… I don’t think Asshat got the memo that the NBA perimeter is further out… Smh. Here’s what else went down over the weekend in Fantasy Basketball action:

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Official Razzball 2016-2017 Fantasy Basketball Rankings

October 28, 2016 | Fantasy Basketball Daily Notes | 904 Comments

by: JB Gilpin

[10/21 – Final Update! Complete with all of Slim’s stat projections, a few final tweaks, and hopefully a list that’s 95% accurate! I’m going to try my best to keep our ranking’s post active throughout the whole regular season so commenters can give me some love for the calls that went right, or slam me where it went all Wiggins-ish. Good luck this year, Razzball Hoops Nation!]

Oh. My. God. It’s here!!!

Not too be all Sapper (I love Millsap!), but this post is the pinnacle of everything I’ve worked for through the years at Razzball. Taking over hoops in 2013 and building a community with you awesome commenters has been unreal. And is anything more important in fantasy hoops than ranks?! As Zoolander would say when clowned for having one look, “I DON’T THINK SO!”

Enough melodrama, this is where it all comes together! Our one-stop rankings page where we will be continually updating the top 200 until opening night, complete with Yahoo position eligibility (where we’ll be playing in 16-17 RCLs – sign up now!), my short-form blurb (you can read further on everyone in the rankings posts linked below), Slim’s ranks projection (if a rank looks wildly wrong compared to Slim’s projection – it’s a player we wildly disagree on!), and the comments section below that I dare say was the best in fantasy basketball last year. In 15-16’s ranks, we got to 1,572 comments complete with rankings disagreements, breaking news, draft strategy, draft reviews, and general Razzball hijinks that can’t be topped. Let’s go for 2,000 this year!

Here’s our 2016-17 Razzball Fantasy Basketball Rankings:

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Kawhi You Ruining Moving Day For Us?!

October 28, 2016 | Fantasy Basketball Daily Notes | 152 Comments

by: JB Gilpin

So if you haven’t listened to this morning’s Podcast yet, you wanna know what’s fun when you run the world’s awesomest Fantasy Basketball blog?! Coming home to no internet! And your ISP having no way to fix it until the next day! It just makes you think about how we in the fantasy basketball world rely on the internet, when so much of the world is still without it… I’m over here stressing like a madman wanting to be sure Razzball Hoops can still deliver our silliness, when the world at large still has a long way to go. Even though it’s not even Thanksgiving yet, I want to tell my family at the Razzball Nation table that I’m just thankful to be here, and thankful for everyone reading! …and thankful I can get to work a few hours early to bang out today’s recap… Without the internet, I wouldn’t have a job with a software company, Razzball wouldn’t exist, I’d be working at some factory or some ish, fantasy basketball would likely not exist…. Imagine calculating fantasy hoops by hand! Ahhhhh! Awful! I’m very fortunate to merely exist at this point in time and space. And to wrap up this sappy open, I want to say I’m the bigger man and certainly wouldn’t ousT What Cable provider I use… Crooks.

Anyway, so with limited hoops watching last night due to an inconsistent 4G stream, I didn’t get to watch the Celtics game and two of my REL rocks, but had a little better service to watch most of the first half of the Spurs/Sac game. First off, have you seen the new Kings arena?! The Golden 1 Center doesn’t look real! It looks like where they’d play football in Starship Troopers, ya know, with that silver football? Wasn’t there talk that this team could move a few years ago? Geez! Well for as bad as the Kings manage their personnel, they certainly can hire some Star Trek architects, that’s for damn sure. But for as cool as the new arena looks, Kawhi Leonard looks better. Sleeker. Sexier… “You are ruining moving day for us!” 30/3/5/5/0 last night, giving him back-to-back 30 Pts/5 Stl games for the first time in NBA history. Ok, don’t fact check that, I’m sure it’s happened before… [edit – Rotoworld must be reading us, because about an hour after this posted, they put out this latest news blurb on Kawhi this morning…]

I feel like he’s one of the birds from Finding Nemo. “Mine! Mine mine! Mine!” But what an absolute superstar, and maybe he belonged right next to KAT a tier below the big-4 in my ranks. Maybe even within the big 4! 7-7 FT last night, giving him a 22-22 clip to begin the season. He only committed 1 TO last night too! If you watched any of this game, the Kings actually started pretty hot, and the other starting 4 Spurs looked horrific. It was all Kawhi to open the scoring, putting in San Antonio’s first 9 points. It was Kawhi 9 to Sacramento 16 halfway through the first… With the rest of the Spurs struggling a bit out of the gate, Kawhi put his team on his back, and absolutely looks like he’s in the MVP discussion. Makes you pretty happy for having a later-round pick in standard snake drafts! Here’s what else went down last night in Fantasy Hoops action:

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10/28/2016 – “Which One Of Us Is A Robot?”

October 28, 2016 | Razzball Basketball Podcast | 77 Comments

by: JB Gilpin

Ughhhhh. Today’s podcast… Brought to you by the magic of 4G hotspots and free internet at Starbucks! Due to internet issues at the Razzball Podcast Studio, Slim’s audio is a little funky, but as eager fans of Serial would say, “better a crappy Podcast about a deserter than no Podcast at all!” On today’s show, we review all of the big news and notes from the first two nights of action including Anthony Davis‘s huge game, Sergio Rodriguez as a pickup, and Joel Embiid‘s debut. It was a very sturdy debut, for sure! We also make our 30-point challenge picks, and catch up on what we’ve been watching at the movies.

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300 Pound Hams!

October 27, 2016 | Fantasy Basketball Daily Notes | 239 Comments

by: JB Gilpin

What an incredible NBA Opener for big men! Maybe the Sixers aren’t as crazy after all…? But the bigs across the league went absolute ham; they were big hams! It’s why in Supermarket Sweep the people would always go for the hams first. Why did they never go to the wine section?! Just nab the best ish there and start a party!

Myles and JV go for 30, Embiid has an epic debut, but it was Anthony Davis who takes home the best line of the openers thus far, going an absurd 50/16/5/7/4! I mean, it could literally be the best line of the season… Double rainbow, 7 steals?!, shot 17-34, and hit 16-17 FT. After taking a little flack keeping him #1 last year, Brow started the 15-16 season going 18/6/2/0/3 shooting 4-20 (420!) and 10-15 FT. Dude, apparently the Pelicans medical staff – in all of their immense glory and wisdom – should’ve taken a hammer to his ankle before last season! Hard to believe a mere 1.5 weeks ago his status for the opener was in question off a kankle, but we’re seeing the ups and downs of what it’ll be like to be a Brow owner. Especially the dread of seeing him play 41 minutes in a loss… I nabbed him in one league, and might try some preposterous sell highs. But the allure of lines like that are tough to ignore. We just all know we’re one horrific Pels medical staff decision away from this happening to him walking out of the training room. Here’s what else happened on our first major slate of NBA games of the 2016-17 Fantasy Basketball Season:

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Author: JB Gilpin

Read some of JB Gilpin's 860 posts

CLANK! Bring Out Your Dead! CLANK! Bring Out Your Dead!

2016-17 RCL Basketball Update: Week 1

11/04/2016 – “It Might Be The Chin Though, It’s A Strong Chin, It Throws You Off”

Now That Baseball Is Finally Done, We Can Talk About TJ

Round 3: Jamba Jus Gives Slim The W!

11/01/2016 – “Aight, We’ll Just Stick With The Bird Flu… If We Have To…”

2016-17 REL Dynasty League Update: Week 2

Brook Is Apparently Dunn

Official Razzball 2016-2017 Fantasy Basketball Rankings

Kawhi You Ruining Moving Day For Us?!

10/28/2016 – “Which One Of Us Is A Robot?”

300 Pound Hams!