Two weeks into our deep dynasties, and man, it’s tough after a loss not to go into immediate SELL NOW mode! But if you felt good about your roster, it’s not the time to do anything rash. Speaking of rashes, somebody get Terrence Jones some ointment for that eye! I don’t own him in the REL, but eesh, defending him in comments has been a chore! Stay true with your dynasty squads, and don’t make any of your rebuilding moves yet either. Teams up top feel invisible (cough, Slim), and teams in the middle are already contemplating selling (cough, me) as well. I know better, but it’s frustrating… Anyway, here’s how week 2 went down in the REL:
1. Slim – Razzball (15-3-0)
FAAB Remaining: $62 FAAB Moves this week: Dewayne Dedmon ($14), Larry Nance Jr. ($11)
Are you surprised I’m still at the top? Well I’ve had a pretty easy schedule to start so maybe you shouldn’t be. A 7-2 win and 15-3 overall is about as good as I could have possibly asked for. Although those aren’t the most surprising numbers. The surprising numbers are the minutes I’m getting early in the year that I thought for sure wouldn’t occur until the end, if then.
This past week I lost FG% and FT%. FG% is what I punt so that’s all good. Losing FT% is un-effin-acceptable but I don’t see any way to fix it so I can only hope it gets better, it should. Like usual Lillard paced my team in 3s and points. Galloway and Clarkson also chipped in a healthy number of 3s while Wiggins and once again Clarkson were my next top scorers. My top rebounder was my latest man crush Porzingis, who doubled my next highest rebounders in Steven Adams and Galloway. Assists weren’t too good with Smart and Beverley down but they should be back next week. Lillard obviously was top dog again but Burks is starting to help out in a significant way too, although no one else cleared double digit assists for the week. Marcus Morris was my top steals guy, how good has he been, while a tie for second is shared with Porzingis and once again Langston Galloway. Steven Adams dodged a back injury and paced my team in blocks, can you guess who was 2nd? There’s that man Porzingis again. Galloway and Porzingis are putting up top 50 value currently. Unbelievable… On Sunday I benched a few players and with a little luck actually managed to win TOs by 1. Did my 2 Knicks help there too? Porzingis had 4 TOs in a 4 game week, Galloway had 2, and I played both on Sunday and neither had a single one.
Everything looks ok now but on Wednesday I had Nurkic, Beverley, Smart, Adams, Henson all injured and with unknown return dates. The 2 bigs have already played and reports are saying Beverley and Smart will play next time out. Phew. That was a close call.
The bottom of my roster went through a bit of a remake today. Trevor Booker is playing well enough and even had a big game with Favors sick. Still a solid hold. Anthony Tolliver didn’t do a whole lot for me but he’s getting minutes over 20, hitting 3s, and even played all of the crunch time minutes in a big win Sunday. Another solid hold. Dante Cunningham is frustratingly boring and I was ready for a change. I didn’t think my $14 would actually get me Dedmon but I’ll take it. I don’t expect him to get 30 minutes when Vucevic returns obviously but he should be able to chip in 1.5 blocks and 5-6 boards with a 16-18 minute bench role and I suspect I’ll hold him for it. If I didn’t get Dedmon I would have gotten Justin Holiday back since he’s finally leap frogged Patterson for minutes. Not sure I made the right choice there. The other move I made was vastly overpaying for Larry Nance Jr., but I believe it was worth the upside. Nance was a fast riser on draft day and he has all the tools to be a SF/PF starter. Currently he’s getting 16.5 minutes only backing up Randle at the 4 and he hasn’t taken a 3 yet so I’m going to have to show a fair amount of patience. I could probably write this entire post about him but I’ll limit it to a few highlights. His Junior year at Wyoming started off really well, about 15/8 with 0.4 3s, 1.4 steals, and 2.1 blocks per game in 23 games, but then he tore his ACL. He came back after only 8 months and played every game his senior year and it shouldn’t be too surprising that his numbers comparatively took a dip. However he still won the Mountain West Defensive Player of the Year award and a part of the MW All Tourny Team. For Nance to really make an impact on my fantasy team though he’s going to need to play SF, it isn’t impossible and when the Lakers turn full tank mode he should get his chance. And who knows, I may be looking at the Lakers starting SF next year. It’s probably worth noting that he isn’t an 18 year old project either. He’s a 22 year old (soon to be 23) college graduate and 3 year starter, he should be ready. If it works out he’s got the potential to be a 1/1/1 3s/stl/blk type with good boards and even a few out of position assists. I dropped Archie Goodwin for him even though Archie finally saw non-garbage time minutes on Sunday. Problem was he was no good and he’s just so damn inefficient, which for my build is a major issue. If I didn’t bench him on Sunday, his 2 TOs would have cost me the category, that and he was 1-fer-4 from the stripe. We’re done.
This week I’m up against the buy/sell man himself, Dan A. He’s got a winning record and a team getting solid minutes from almost all of his players. We’ll see if my retooling pays enough dividends to give me another win, and if I can survive another week of health scares. That is one of the best things about such a young squad, that youth tends to be fast healers.
2. Kap’s Team (14-3-1)
FAAB Remaining: $100 FAAB Moves this week: n/a
3. I Ain’t No Jok(ic) (12-5-1)
FAAB Remaining: $97 FAAB Moves this week: Mike Dunleavy ($1)
I’m sure JB will have a different spin on our matchup but, if it wasn’t for KCP tying his career high in steals during the final game of the week it would have been a 7-2 victory for me. As it was, I will have to settle for a 6-2 victory instead. With that though, I have to give out a special thanks to Tina Fey Mozgov for putting up his seventh career three on Sunday. I joked with JB at the time that it would be pretty epic if I won 3s by one, and, as it turns out, I did win it by one. There were three “in question” categories going into Sunday, 3s, steals, and assists. Despite JBs final day proclamation that he would win assists I held on there, as well as the aforementioned 3s, and a tie in steals thanks to KCP4. Victory is mine!
For waivers I didn’t have anyone that I was thrilled with other than Marcus Thornton, who was no doubt going to go for more than the sizeable amount I was willing to spend. And he did. My third choice was the guy I ended up getting for $1 I think. There aren’t many less sexy pickups, but Mike Dunleavy should have a sizeable (20+ minute) role when he returns in the next couple weeks. I can wait, especially since he will provide the threes that I crave.
As for standouts this week? Everybody was great (except for the Rockets reluctance to play Harrell). Green even gave me a double double with a couple 3s and steals off the wire. The real star was obvious though. Paul Mother F’in George! Welcome back big guy.
4. HateUsCauseTheyAnus (11-7-0)
FAAB Remaining: $82 FAAB Moves this week: Richaun Holmes ($6)
5. Martyball – IFBL (11-7-0)
FAAB Remaining: $100 FAAB Moves this week: n/a
6. Scurry to the Left (11-7-0)
FAAB Remaining: $100 FAAB Moves this week: J.J. Hickson ($0)
7. Hardenoutherr4apimp (11-7-0)
FAAB Remaining: $94 FAAB Moves this week: Metta World Peace ($6)
8. Heat Apologist (10-8-0)
FAAB Remaining: $82 FAAB Moves this week: Lavoy Allen ($1)
9. Foreign Affairs (10-8-0)
FAAB Remaining: $93 FAAB Moves this week: n/a
10. JB Gilpin – Razzball (9-7-2)
FAAB Remaining: $1 FAAB Moves this week: n/a
Yeah, yeah Mr. Green, you literally called your own fortune with Mozgov hitting a 3, and winning 3ptm by 1. Read comment here. KCP gave me an epic 4 steal finale to tie steals so I had some fortune there, but he had two more wide open 3pt shots once I was within one 3ptm that he barely missed. Then a loss by 7 AST on yet another slow MIN week (getting 3 games from my Rubio/LaVine combo), while Paul George is playing MVP ball with likely a career-week for No Jok(ic) and a fluke 7 assists from Middleton on Saturday and my guards choked Sunday (4 AST from Knight/Ellis). While DeMarre Carroll sat a game and Mr. Green is waiting on on Motiejunas, a healthy Wilson Chandler wins me 3s and certainly gets one steal which would’ve made it 4-5 instead of 2-6-1 right there. Ugh.
Frustrating loss, but I am salvaging it with the thought I was in place to win a 5-4 week against a vastly superior team, and I didn’t even win %s. Just a few bounces didn’t go my way Sunday, and I don’t think I have a bad %s team. So keep on keepin’ on, and I’m hoping to bounce back this week. Only waiver I attempted was grabbing Lavoy Allen, so of course a $1 bid would give him to my opponent this week. Awesome. My pickups all had dramatically worse weeks in week 2, but they’re still in the rotation and chipping in, all that matters.
11. Greek Freaks (9-9-0)
FAAB Remaining: $60 FAAB Moves this week: Marcus Thornton ($35)
12. Yappers (9-9-0)
FAAB Remaining: $58 FAAB Moves this week: Joe Ingles ($3)
This will be quick. Last week HateUsCauseTheyAnus kicked the Anus of Yappers 2-7. At this point it seems to be a stretch to try to find a silver lining in that dark cloud so I ain’t trying.
I still ..think.. I have a team that should make the playoffs, but at this point I am not totally convinced of this. The back end of my roster is a mess from Mason Plumlee’s .240 FT% (yeah I knew this was a problem area for him but this bad .. sheesh) to my brilliant move of spending $26 FAAB last week on Ryan Kelly only to see him now in DNP-CD land.
So my strategery at this point will be to hold tight for now. At an appropriate time I will make an “in it” or “out of it” decision, and if the decision is “out of it” there will be a veteran or two or three or four on the trading block.
Unless there is someone out there I really, really like long term, my FAAB bids will be $5 or under for short term replacements. So I was not surprised that my bids for Dedmon and Thornton got Donald Trumped, but I was actually kinda surprised my $3 for Joe Ingles went through. Apologies to Chase Budinger, but if you do not contribute at all when you have the opportunity with CJ Miles out, you are booted off the island.
13. Hoopus Alleyoopus (8-9-1)
FAAB Remaining: $98 FAAB Moves this week: Charlie Villanueva ($2)
14. No Glove No Love (8-10-0)
FAAB Remaining: $96 FAAB Moves this week: K.J. McDaniels ($0), Tarik Black ($0)
15. Breaking Batum (6-11-1)
FAAB Remaining: $100 FAAB Moves this week: Justin Holiday ($0)
After our worst start in league history we have plenty of ground to make up. In week 2 we took a step in the right direction. We would have beat 10 teams and lost 4-5 to 4 additional. These numbers are nowhere near where they need to be, but our team is far from a finished product at this point if we plan to contend. We also nearly made a huge tactical error by leaving Allen Crabbe in our lineup for the night cap. We were winning and tied in blocks and turnovers with our opponent done for the week. Luckily, he managed to block a shot otherwise this would have been a loss. Growing up watching Andy Reid manage the late game clock has resulted in some unforeseen consequences.
Looking at the waiver wire this week we knew Thornton’s winning FAAB bid would solve the Greek financial crisis, but we were not the ones willing to foot that bill. He is a near perfect fit for what we need in points, but this seemed like drowning FAAB in a short term solution early in the season in a panic move. If he keeps this role all year we will surely regret not getting involved. Not wanting to spend, we sought to replace Varejao with a free player. Having several bids in we felt confident would produce more than the nothing that Andy was. We ended up with Holiday which makes us a little wing heavy, but will give us something while we seek a more permanent solution.
Speaking of permanent solutions how about our new heartthrob TJ “call me Steve Nash” McConnell! That add could not have gone better and lead us a top assist and steal week. Now, this will likely ended sooner than later, but will be fun to ride until it does. We will need another solid week from him if we are going to have any luck against Mr Green. We believe he is the team to beat this year and would have beat us 6-3 easily last week. Good luck to you sir and I look forward to more self loathing next week after the thrashing that is in store.
URGENT LATE BREAKING NEWS
There has been a missing persons report filed for an African-American male. Approximately 6 feet 4 inches tall weighing about 215 lbs. Goes by the name Jenkins, John. If anybody has any idea of his whereabouts please email the anonymous tip line[email protected]. Thank you in advance for your assistance in solving this mystery.
16. The Nature Boy (6-12-0)
FAAB Remaining: $100 FAAB Moves this week: James Anderson ($0)
17. Cigar Smoking Monkey (5-13-0)
FAAB Remaining: $100 FAAB Moves this week: n/a
18. High as Greg Kite (5-13-0)
FAAB Remaining: $98 FAAB Moves this week: Dakari Johnson ($0)
19. Pete Nice – Razzball (5-13-0)
FAAB Remaining: $83 FAAB Moves this week: Glenn Robinson III ($0)
20. The Chosen Ones (2-16-0)
FAAB Remaining: $98 FAAB Moves this week: n/a
