With no (pro) games last night, a true fantasy killer* likely spent the entire evening alone in a dark room, with a mason jar used primarily for urine (primarily) plotting nothing else but how his final nine fantasy days are going to go. Eighty blocks ahead of the next guy? Serge Ibaka becomes less potent. (mason jar break). Down by a point in field-goal percentage? Tyson Chandler, I need you now more than ever! I effin’ need you now more than evah! (paint the walls with some finger blood). Need nothing but threes from here on out? Gary Neal, you’re getting the start over Tim Duncan. And San Antonio is stunned! (yank out some hair!) You get the idea. This thing is still winnable, whatever that thing may be. The championship, reaching third place for the first time, not being in last for the first time. Don’t quit, but also, don’t continue trucking along the way you have been (unless the way you have been has put you far head of the next guy), in which case you should probably rethink spending so much time in the dark not watching Butler and UConn. You’re not being strategic, you’re being weird. For the rest of you, start targeting the categories that you can’t really catch up or be caught on. Focus on the statcats you’ve got a realistic shot at beating the next guy in. Sure, you’ll find yourself benching some of the guys that helped get you this far, but so what? You’ll mail them a piece of your $20 fantasy winnings in two weeks. They’ll get over it, then they’ll thank you. Because there is a lockout coming and many basketball players don’t have applicable life-skills outside of a child’s game. Pity them! And pity you if you come this close to winning a fake games incorporating that child’s game and sputter out in the end. Now dim the light and start etching tomorrow’s roster into the palm of your hand with a rusty shiv!
* Another different but equal fantasy killer? Imagine Phil Jackson naked. All elbows and knee joints. Fantasy. Dead.
