Fantasy Basketball Advice

Week 8 bangs and shimmies its way to a close with seven of last week’s 10 top teams staying right where we left them. Week 7 saw the bottom feeders remaining sedentary. This week it’s the top feeders. Also, I’m pretty sure “top feeders” is not a term for anything. I think it’s just something I made up to entertain myself because Lord knows, “The Office” is no longer entertaining me. And while we’re speaking about entertaining things, I like looking at a team’s rankings from one stat category to the next and get an overall feel for what kind of team they are fielding. Usually if a team ranks high on, say, 3ptm, FT% and STL, that team is probably not going to fare as well in the RBD, BLK, FG% category. Simple, right? Looking at a few of the RCL’s teams, the occasional squad sticks out as being quirky, clearly led by a couple players with unique skillsets that buck the system, go against the grain, and are constantly damning the Man.

Boom Boom Pau ranks in the top 4 in both RBD and STL, which are not usually two categories that pair together well. His solid rankings in those two categories are brought out even more by the fact that he ranks outside the top 21 in everything else.

chris kaman his pants ranks in the league’s top 10 in both PTS and RBD, so one would assume he’s got a platoon of elite big men. He ranks 52nd  in FG%, usually a gimme among PF/C-led teams.

Smokey McPots ranks in the top 14 in both FT% and 3PTM, suggesting his team is the opposite of ckhp. Smokey’s team is likely filled with trigger-happy guards and yet he ranks in the bottom 13 in AST, a common stat often tied to little guys with solid shots.

Coca sCola might be my favorite outlier. His team also ranks in the top 9 in both FT% and 3PTM and in the bottom 9 in RBD. None of this is surprising until you realize he’s also top 12 in blocks. What kind of team shoots accurately, blocks a ton, but can’t grab a rebound if it fell on the floor in front of him?

Take a look at your own team. Some of you have very obvious weakness/strength correlations, some of you don’t. Considering these things might help you form some trade ideas or strategies going forward. Or not. Here’s the spreadsheet.

Week 7 finds a few grazing gazelles dying from hunger near the bottom of the league. What? That odd and perhaps inaccurate metaphor doesn’t make sense to you? Mon Dieu! Basically, we’re starting to see the bottom of the league level out a bit as they slip farther and farther out of contention. In another couple of weeks, the gray lines signifying no movement will appear more like flatlines on a heart meter. Now that I’ve used a weak metaphor and weak simile in the same paragraph, let’s look at who’s doing what and when and to whom in this week’s RCL recap.

I noticed an intriguing pattern among the category leaders: seven different teams lead the league in at least one stat category. Of those seven teams, five fall somewhere in the bottom 10 in at least one other category, suggesting that in order to succeed in one, they forfeited the other.

SmokenTrees StrokenThrees leads in FG%, but has the sixth worst SPG average in the league.
Hired Goons leads all-comers in both FT% and SPG, but ranks third worst in BLK and fifth worst in 3PTM.
Our PTS leader, Teach Me How To Gortat, has the no. 50-ranked 3PTM in the league.
Significant Otter is the league’s best rebounder but shoots the eighth fewest threes.
Bleu Waffle House leads in assists but ranks 51st and 54th in FG% and FT% respectively.

Only Shock the Monkey (BPG) and The Basset Hounds (3PTM) lead the league and managed to stay out of the bottom 10 elsewhere.

What’s even more interesting (and lends itself a little to my theory that it’s better to be balanced everywhere than stacked in a few places) is that our league’s overall leader One Piece doesn’t the lead the league in a single category, but he’s top 8 in six different categories and no worse than 33rd in his weakest category.

Anyway, find your own damn patterns if you’re into it. The spreadsheet is here … wait. No. I moved it. It used to be there, then I moved it here. And now it’s here. I think?

Yup. Yup, it’s here.

At the close of Week 6, One Piece has remained bulletproof atop the standings. If he were streaking toward the end zone, he’d be watching himself on the Jumbotron and considering whether to start high-stepping now or in another 10 yards. Because of this, I thought it might be interesting to look at how many games are left in the fantasy season and try to show the league activity through the prism of games played.

At this point in the season teams should be hovering somewhere between 200 and 210 games played (215-225 as of Thursday night) of their 660 total games available for the season. As it stood after Tuesday’s games, only two teams were under this target, eight were somewhere in the 200-210 range and 50 of y’all are over, including Games Played leader Team Joniuscaesar, who’s played 271 games in six weeks (45.2 games played per week). If he continues with this pace, he’ll max out halfway through Week 15 (April 4-ish), leaving him with about 21-22 days left in the season. What I’m saying is, maybe pump the brakes a bit.The league-wide Games Played average as of Tuesday night’s games rested at 228.9.

Unsurprisingly, all five league divisions are ahead of the pace led by All-Star Dance-Off ’08, who are collectively averaging 241.5 GP. Wall’s Dougie is second, averaging 239.2 GP. Next is Dream Shake (227.6), Chili Shimmy (223) and the slow ‘n’ steady Big Ball Dance League with 213.2.

In individual team news, both of this week’s biggest dropoffs come from the Big Ball Dance Division. Carmelo Square Garden fell 16 places from 26th overall to 42nd. Coca sCola fell 10 spots from 14th to 24th. CSG had a bunch of strugglers last week who either missed a game or two or struggled enough that owners wished they had just sat out (Caron Butler, Stuckey, Rudy Gay, Shump). Coca sCola was forced to continue on without Deng, while also losing Batum and a couple bad performances from Hedo and Monta. None of that is going to help take some of the shine off of fellow Big Ball Dancer, One Piece.

Meanwhile, over in the All-Star Dance-Off ’08 Division, The BETTERANS saw a nifty 12-spot rise from 18th to 6th despite also still being without Luol Deng and Nicolas Batum. The biggest difference between sCola and this team is that this team got monster minutes out of Andre Miller, saw the return of Stephen Curry, with a Bayless/Farmar kicker. Most importantly however, the BETTERANS are using the games played smartly (203) and not wasting games on underachieving players. That will help his per game averages and probably his season totals. The biggest rise of the week goes to Count to a Trillion from the Chili Shimmy League. Trillion rose 15 spots from 28th to 13th. Dude simply has a team humming on all cylinders right now. Andre Miller, Kemba, Millsap, Terry … these are some of the hottest name of the last week. It’s hard to top a guy when a lot of his secondary players are playing like primary ones.

Week 6 spreadsheet here.

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Week 5 is as dead and buried as the Bobcats’ playoff chances and in the RCLs, we’re seeing some more leveling offt and a few teams falling off. One Piece remains about as untouched as the hors d’ouevre plate we all saw the hostess sneeze on and Marty McSuperfly had a McStupefying drop. Bleu Waffle House / Onions, Baby! Onions have each played 162 games in the first five weeks (32.4 games per week) leaving me to wonder if there’s anyone still driving those cars or if Jesus has, in fact, taken over their wheel. On the flip side (or Flipcide, if you were in the Wizards’ front office this week!) Team joniuscaesar has played 218 games in the first five weeks (43.6 games per week) and should finish out his fantasy season sometime around mid-February.

In the interest of pitting entire divisions against one another, Wall’s Dougie League and Big Ball Dance League both have five members in the league-wide top 20. Chili Shimmy only has two, suggesting that perhaps that league is the most well-rounded and competitive. Below are the league leaders, only one of whom leads in both total and per game average (Significant Otter, despite having played the 12th fewest games in the entire league has grabbed more rebounds than all other teams and is averaging 1.1 boards more a game than the no. 2 guy. I don’t remember ever seeing a guy slaughter a category the way he is slaughtering rebounds).

California Defenders, Dream Shake League – .4787 FG%
One Piece, Big Ball Dance League – .8224 FT%
Andray the Giant, All-Star Dance-Off ’08 League – 210 3ptm (1.050, 2nd overall)
Smokey Mcpots, Dream Shake League – 3,158 pts (14.896, 8th overall)
Significant Otter, Chilly Shimmy League – 1,327 rbd (7.540, 1st overall)
Fear the ‘Stache, Wall’s Dougie League – 739 ast (3.502, 9th overall)
Fear the ‘Stache, Wall’s Dougie League – 268 stl (1.270, 3rd overall)
SmokinTrees, StrokinThrees – 163 blk (0.803, 5th overall)

Week 5 spreadsheet here.

Click for full graph.

One Piece looks to be an unstoppable juggernaut after the first four weeks of the season, having never spent a week outside of the top spot in the RCL averages ranking as well as the top of his division’s league ranking. Fear the ‘Stache can’t say the same thing, as for the first week, the team fell from second to third.

Team Rich climbed an RCL-high 26 spots from 51st last week to 25th this week. This becomes all the more impressive when you look at his steady incline from Week 1. He started at 59th, improved to 54th, then 51st and now he’s just outside the top 12.

Team Thiele fell the hardest dropping from 18th to 44th. He, like Team Rich, are both in the All-Star Dance-Off ’08 Division. Thiele’s had a string of bad luck. First with Derrick Rose missing most of the last week with turf toe, Boris Diaw going from hero to zero and, of course, Stephen Jackson doing what Stephen Jackson seems to be best at doing these days.

You’ll notice (if you click the pic above) that things are starting to settle. Ten teams remained in the same position this week as they were in last week. The previous two weeks only saw three teams stay put. There’s still plenty of time, but it’s going to be increasingly more difficult to climb the ladder or stay off the chute as the weeks go by. If you’re low, start figuring out where you’re weak and work on tweaking those categories by FA adds or trades. If you’re on top, start looking at who’s behind you and play defensively. It starts becoming more about strategy and less about luck. Although, there’s still a ton of luck involved.

Below is a slope graph of this week’s movement. All RCL scores and averages are stored on this spreadsheet here or download the full thing here. All scores and stats count up to and including Wednesday’s games (Jan. 18).

Good luck in week five.