2016-17 REL Dynasty League Update: Week 11

Still no major injuries to core players.

And then there is this.

FG% record: 7-3
FG% value: .443 – 17th place

Both of these pieces of luck were major factors in my 8-1 victory.

Still, I am beginning to like my team. Maybe it is because there is no useless veteran like Carlos Boozer occupying space and salary. Or maybe it is because my three FAAB acquisitions so far (James Ennis, Raymond Felton, Joe Ingles), while unspectacular, have been useful. Or maybe that one FAAB rookie from last year (Sam Dekker) is providing good value now. But at any rate, I think we are serious contenders.

So I decided that a serious contender should only stash one player on my roster for future value. And I made the decision that in our case the stash would be Chris McCullough. So after sending out a couple of trade proposals that I was sure would get rejected, I decided to cut ties with Jarrell Martin. Since I had free space on my IL, the IL stash would be Lance Stephenson, and that the Jarrell Martin replacement would be next week.

Which may or may not have been a smart move, since my matchup this week is second place Scurry to The Left. Comparing teams, I highly doubt that my good luck in FG% carries over this week. Looking forward to a competetive matchup.

Not a great week from my squad, but I got only 1 Kawhi game and he was a little rusty, and I benched one of Westbrook’s games chasing the TO cat (so he only gave me 2 games).  Serendipitously it was Westbrook’s worst game of the year with the 6 TO and no dimes when he got ejected against the Grizz, but it wouldn’t have changed anything.  IT2/3 had the game of his life, and I’m still hoping to just bludgeon teams in the playoffs with FT%, 3s, Pts, Ast, and Stl (43-7 in those cats).  Of those, steals keeps coming up as a little suspect, so there’s still work to do before the postseason.

With a good team this deep into the REL season, it’s never good to have to replace 3 players though…  The baby giraffe Salah Mejri had both Bogut and Dirk come back so is barely playing, but he was a key contributor to wins by 1 STL and 1 BLK a couple weeks ago.  Nice work for me Salah, well, minus the smack talk to Ariza…  Aron Baynes was such a good fit for my team being a big who can make FT, but only had one start behind Drummond who is a rock, then Baynes got a kankle last night and might miss time.  And even so, probably should’ve been cut a long time ago.  Then my big blunder was indeed buying Jonathan Gibson for so much…  Sigh.  I really thought he could’ve been a fun piece for the horrible Mavs, but they kicked him out for Pierre Jackson.  Oh well.  My main target was Thomas Robinson, but he went for a smidge more ($17) than I wanted ($11 bid).  I actually had some higher bids behind that at first, but seeing several waiver options had me scale back the bids.  I ended up being very happy with my adds for a combined $4: $2 for Beasley who is playing well off the foot injury in a nice per-minute bench role (DNP Saturday would’ve been 4th game in 6 days so pretty sure it was just a rest game), $1 for Brandon Bass as the Clip might have lost Wesley Johnson for a bit and need a PF band aid (played well in junk time on Saturday), and then the surprise – only $1 got me Jordan McRae!  I thought he would be pounced on given the pedigree of such a prolific D-League scorer off a 20 point game and Kyrie a little banged up, but he doesn’t fit team needs so I didn’t bid much.  Happy I got him though!  If anything, if he can carve out usability off the bench until March and pick up starts when guys get DNPs, it could be a huge playoff boost.  But we’ll see, he might not make it on my roster until then…

Whew, long post from me this time!  Good luck to Martyball this week in what should be a tough matchup.  Marty is killing the league in 3PTM which is a cat I usually dominate, so I don’t think my slanted wins are going to continue.  Good luck to my guys – hit me some 3s, McRae!

First was a trade, I gave Nurkic $16, Juancho $6, and Willy $1 for Chriss $28 and CZeller $6.  As a win now team I can’t really afford to wait on these guys and still have a shot at winning, plus I needed to open up a roster spot to bring Gary Harris back.  The main thing I wanted in a trade of Nurkic was to still have youthful upside but youth with minutes now.  Zeller I’ve been trying to get for a while and paired with Chriss gave me what I was looking for, sure I added a couple of dollars to my keepers in next years draft but that’s ok since I cleared up some room in an earlier trade.

Second is all the injuries that hit me this past week, including my top 2 players.  Marcus Morris missed a game with a knee but he’s back and gave 30 minutes, crisis averted!  Sergio is down with an ankle and his return date is still unknown.  The Poison Goose is nursing an Achilles and could very well miss more time.  Fournier has missed the past 4 games with a heel and could miss more.  Lillard has also missed the past 4 games with an ankle but luckily it sounds like he should be back soon.  Obviously that’s alot of missing stats but this week I’ll probably be ok against the 18th place team.  The 2 weeks after though I play the top 2 teams in a row, and I will need to be at or near 100% to have any chance.

With the toughest part of my schedule upcoming and all of my injuries, plus an open roster spot with Fournier on my IL, I decided I needed to add current production over upside.  I kind of wanted to see what Thomas Robinson ends up doing when Nance returns but alas my $11 bid wasn’t enough.  My 2nd choice, Dante Cunningham, probably should have been my 1st though.  He’s played 32+ minutes in 4 straight starts (all NOP wins) with 6/3/5, 3s/stls/blks in those 4 games, and that comes with only 1 TO and no missed FTs.  And as strange as it sounds this is happening on a 100% healthy Pelicans team with Asik and Ajinca picking up DNPs lately and Brow starting at the 5.  There’s a chance a few people were scared off by the news the Pelicans were going to probably sign DMo but hopefully by the time he’s up to speed I’ll be fully healthy and past the toughest part of my schedule.

The 7-2 win helped us climb the standings to 8th only 3.5 games back of a playoff spot. With the 17th place team on the schedule this week we look to cut into that lead a little more. Our top concern at this point is Yappers however, he is on a blistering pace and is nearly impossible to beat while performing as he currently is.

We are still actively looking to improve our team. We have been fortunate with a few young players stepping up and providing decent stats so far this season (Andrew Harrison, Nik Stauskas, Otto Porter, and Tyler Johnson. Johnson and Porter are pretty untouchable at this point, but we will always listen.

Good luck to The Nature Boy and hopefully everyone has a GREAT New Year!

This week, I managed a win against a fellow rebuilding team. FAAB bidding went as expected, though I couldn’t participate as I don’t have an obvious drop, at least to me. Little dog is still getting minutes, even with Monta back, and has been producing. Valentine may be one step closer to being the Bulls PG with the Rondo situation. Jerian Grant and MCW stand in the way, but I believe MCW would be an excellent guard off the bench.

I’m still not getting what I’d expect out of almost anyone, though. The best performance, no surprise, comes from Paul George with a so-so (for him) 13/99/15/16/4/0 line. Beyond that Jokic was pretty good putting up some monster assists, Schroder continues to impress, and Evan Turner was solid.

Since this is a deep league look, I’d love to help people out with some low ownership goodies, but, unfortunately my team doesn’t really have any at the moment. I guess Luwawu-Cabarrot is back in the rotation at the moment, though he’s not doing anything with it yet. Maybe he will though. Tim Hardaway played horrible until Sunday when he went off with 6 threes and 29 points (shooting 85% from the field). More of that please.

I also picked up Kay Felder with some of my FAAB, losing Malik Beasley. Felder has looked good, really good at times, when he plays. The problem is he’s behind Kyrie Irving, and for whatever reason he plays 20 minutes one night, zero the next, then back to 20 again the next. I’m not sure I understand what they’re doing with him yet. He’s got some nice upside though clearly.

This week I get Foreign Affairs who are coming off a 7-2 win which broke a 6 game losing streak (10-44). I’m holding out hope that I can make it 4 wins in the last 5 weeks. Too bad there was an 8-1 loss sandwiched in the middle.

As I noted in my trade block, I’m looking to get a big to add to my keepers, and I’ve got some decent guys available. Hit me up.

Since its the start of the New Year I thought I would write out some expectations/hope or “resolutions” for the players on my team for the remainder of the season.

D’Angelo Russell: 20-4-5 with 2.5 three and 1stl a game by years end and cementing himself in the top tier of the young pg’s of the last 4 drafts

Emmanuel Mudiay: 15-4-4 with over 1 three and stl a game on 45% shooting and for the last two weeks not to be a mirage. Outside of two duds against the Clippers Mudiay has looked great with the Nuggets new starting lineup and was a top 150 player last week I don’t expect the 50% shooting and 2 threes to continue but it would go a long way for me if he keeps it up.

Jordan Clarkson: Just keep plugging along at some point Nick Young, Deng and Lou aren’t going to be getting 26/27/24 minutes a game. Like Dieng last year he does enough in the minutes he gets at $1 to be roster worthy and I think he’s a top 100 player when he’s not restricted which feels like when and not if to me.

Alex Abrines: If he’s done enough to stay on my team by the end of the month that will be a success for a guy I was just picking up since Oladipo got hurt briefly.

Andrew Wiggins: He’s been showing more flashes of a well rounded game over the last few weeks with stronger reb numbers and close to 1.5 threes and stls a game with 50% high volume scoring.  His ft% is surprisingly volatile which is annoying since he single-handedly kills strong ft% weeks for my team with his high volume which is a bad fit for my bigs strong ft% game. I want his game to evolve enough to be a top 75 player by years end otherwise that $38 is going towards a certain do everything college pg that looks fantastic.

Michael Kidd-Gilchrist: Just get me big man stats like Slim talked about on the Pod Friday. 10-7 with 1/1 stl blk on solid shooting fg%, while keeping that ft% at average 75% is all I need from him. For my build I don’t need him to hit threes when Saric,EMBIIID and Bender all hit them at a nice clip.

Donatas Motiejunas: Make my $55 FAAB not a massive waste. It looks like he’s signing with the Pelicans which is hilarious because the we have the 2012-2013 Houston Rockets frontcourt reunited in Asik, Terrence Jones and Domo, the Pelicans never stop surprising. So much has gone on with this guy that I hope he’s immune to the Juju down in New Orleans and just gets a solid role and considering Dante Cunningham and Solomon Hill have been the main “bigs” next to Davis recently I’m hopefully optimistic about Domo in 2017.

Dragan Bender: Lets make 2017 the Year of the Dragan Earl Watson, This week has been really encouraging as around 30% of Benders minutes this season have come over the past week and he’s solid and capable of being a over 1/1/1 threes stls and blks guy. Chandler and Tucker aren’t the future for this terrible Suns Team despite how much they get played and Im ready to stick a fork in Alex Len. Even without a trade I think the Suns start mass dnp’s as this season goes on and we get see a Bender Chriss frontcourt get significant time

Joel EMBIIIIIIIID: Oh Jojo, he doesn’t have to do anything extra for the rest of the season as he already has blown past my overblown preseason expectations that had me arguing in the comments to articles about him being a top 150 player at some point this year even with the restrictions. But already 47 on yahoo with 46/77 1.2/18.9/7.3/1.9/.8/2.4 in just 24 min on the season, stop my EMBIIIID can only get so erect. The only thing that needs to happen now is the back to back restriction lifted and him playing into the 30s.

Gorgui Dieng: Just keep up that under the radar super efficient with solid 2nd Center across the board stats production going in the new year. Interestingly I’ve gotten the impression from some of the games where he’s gotten more usage that Dieng might be in that early Utah Millsap mold right now and could get even better with a bigger role. For now though with him and Embiid as my only

2 bigs that can break 200 I rather nothing dramatic happens for him in early 2017.

Anthony Bennett: Get a solid bench role on the terrible Nets, he’s riding the pine again but considering how close to being out of the league he was at the start of the year he’s made solid strides. I still feel like the tools are there for him and think he will get more run once the Nets throw in the towel, though maybe I’m just biased by being Canadian and him getting selected #1 overall the day before my wedding.

Sean Kilpatrick: Keep up the production and prove you’re not good stats on a bad team kind of player. That type of player still helps for fantasy a ton but I really want Kilpatrick to be the real deal and the Nets permanent SG going forward so I can pair him with Clarkson for a $2 combo at that spot, it really gives my team a ton of flexibility moving forward that way.

Malachi Richardson/Skal Labissiere: My Sacremento Kings stash, Joeger said he might start a youth movement and play his younger guys more starting this month and moving forward so im hoping these two become locked into the rotation coming off the bench before the season ends. There is a chance with solid play both could challenge for starting gigs late with next season looking promising, especially Malachi as the guys in front of both of them are Barnes, Kosta, Rudy, Omri, Tolliver and Mclemore and Temple not exactly a blockade of can’t bench players there and most of those guys will be moved/want to leave as soon as they get a chance.

Ivica Zubac: Lock down the backup C and no longer get shipped back and forth between d-league and the team every week. It’s been annoying seeing him yanked around so much but he’s been handling it well and I think at some point before the year ends the Lakers are going to want to give him some solid burn against NBA competition to see how his development has been going.

Dario Saric: Not get negatively impacted by Ben Simmons return(if that happens this month according to rumors) and assert himself back into the starting lineup at PF or SF, would like it to be SF for maybe a game so yahoo can give him that SF eligibility Kilpatrick pg style (don’t worry Slim Richardson will get it someday…maybe). For stats I would like if Saric can keep up his recent play were he’s assisting more and hitting three’s so he’s not such a boardnof.

Ante Zizic: Keep up current rate of development and play in Europe and come over next season. Also if the Celtics could not add any new bigs (ala Cousins) that might be a threat to his playtime that would be nice. Right now I see him easily taking over Amir’s 20 min role next year which I think would be a good start for him.

Isaiah Whitehead: Continue riding my IR lol, he still hasn’t shown much despite the fairly large opportunity he’s been given with Lin’s hammy’s acting up but for now Im fine holding him in the IR and not adding anyone in FAAB (not that I really can…thanks Domo). I hope that he develops and shows alittle something something before the season ends if not his and Abrines roster spot is probably going to go to my big $33 draft splash next year with the cap room I still have.

I am against defending champs I Ain’t no Jokic this week, after a rough start he’s been trending up so I’ve got my hands full if I want to keep from falling back to bottom place. Were pretty close in ft%, 3’s, rebs and stls with me beating him solidly in blks up to this point so im going to need Bender, Saric and MKG to carry last week into this one with Wiggins not killing my ft% this time if I have a chance to win two in a row.