2016-17 REL Dynasty League Update: Week 18

Trade 1 (2/16):

Send: Allen Crabbe ($3), Evan Turner ($4), Luol Deng ($12)

Receive: Nikola Mirotic ($5), Michael Beasley ($1), Derrick Jones ($1)

Looks really good right now!  I took a big chance here on Miro, as he was dealing with back issues, and the day I got him he didn’t play at all the night heading into the ASB.  Then some great fortune came my way with Taj and McDermott traded, and Miro has looked fantastic his first two games out of the break.  Beasley is just a scorer, but he’s playing well, and both will add rebounds that I’ve lost.  Kinda sucks to lose two keepers as well from those Blazers, but I really wanted to devest from those guys.

Trade 2 (2/25):

Send: Davis Bertans ($1)

Receive: Cristiano Felicio ($1)

Pretty low hanging fruit, but add more boards again, and while I love Bertans’ upside, I want to be a little myopic and go all out.  Plus Felicio is willing to nab boards for me, rather than give Wade tripdubs!

Trade 3 (2/25):

Send: Tyson Chandler ($9), $25 FAAB

Receive: Patrick Patterson ($4)

Continuing to deal with the gents at Stranger LaVines, after getting the sudden DNP outta the break, I sold off Tyson as soon as I could.  Thankfully he got another DNP and looks to be completely out, making this not look like a panicky move.  Patterson is pretty blah too with Ibaka now there, but if he plays 15-20 minutes like he’s done so far post-ASB, he’ll add more rebounds and chip in treys to keep that a dominant stat for me.

Trade 4 (2/26):

Send: Kevin Love ($37), Matt Barnes ($2)

Receive: Willie Cauley-Stein ($20)

The biggie.  Even though Love would fit my build beautifully as a keeper for next year, like I said, time to get myopic.  I’m likely not competing with the big boys in blocks, but I yet again add boards, add more steals to keep that dominant, and WCS is making his freebies now.  $20 is a little pricey, but hopefully he remains their starter heading into a rebuild 2017-18.  I know he’s off a rough game, but I’m really excited for his second half.

Aight, this is getting long, let’s wrap it up.  Nice 6-3 win last week, mayyyyyybe could’ve been a little more aggressive in benching guys to chase TO which I lost by 13 (Westbrook had 9 in the last Sunday games), but obviously still happy with the result.  Going up against a mostly dead team in The Nature Boy this week (might be looking for some REL applicants if anyone is interested for next year!) then a big matchup against Yappers to close it out.  Good luck this week to everyone, and may your dynasty leagues end the reg. season strong!

We are in second place, 4 games behind the first place team, and 1/2 game ahead of the third place team. While I would not rate us as strong as team JB, we are close enough that I think it is possible we can win this with just a little luck in in performance and injuries.

Regarding injuries, the only current one is Kyle Lowry, the #1 rated player on Yappers. Fortunately, he is only day-to-day and will probably return this week or next. When that happens, I will have a decision to make on whom to drop. Unfortunately, unless I have indication that he is in the Wizard’s rotation or unless another injury pops up, it will be Chris McCullough. Now I still really like him long term, but as a serious contender, I just can not keep a player who is not contributing now.

Regarding performance, this week another casualty unfortunately was James Ennis, who was my first pickup after week one. Now every year so far I have made substantial week one investments (starting with $60 Xavier Henry in season one), and so far none of them have lasted the entire season. Maybe next year I will learn from experience, but probably not. Anyway, with the Grizzlies becoming healthy, I have observed his minutes drying up to DNP-CD land. And looking at the available players list, I observed that Toney Douglas seemed to have more assured minutes as the new Memphis PG2, so he became my primary FAAB target this week. Now I only had $19 FAAB left, but most of the other contenders had even less, so I felt good about my winning $8 bid. So now with only $11 left of FAAB, I am thinking that might be good for another two or three moves should the opportunity arise (remembering Henry Sims and Maikel Brown of previous years wherever they may be).

The real life trade deadline did me zero favors. The only trade that seems to have effected me was Taj going to OKC and losing a couple minutes per game. He should still be playable with 24ish minutes though so it isn’t a total loss. With our trade deadline looming I need to once again see where I can improve, either for now or later.

PGs – Lillard, Rubio, Reggie, and Delon Wright. Other than Reggie’s recent struggles the top 3 are as good as anyone’s. Delon continues to get minutes with Lowry down but there’s no guarantee that continues once he returns. I may have a tough decision to make if he goes DNP-CD but for now the upside alone justifies the hold.

Wings – GHarris, Hayward, Marcus Morris, Parsons, and the aforementioned JRich and Thabo. This group isn’t as strong as it was earlier in the season but the top 3 are still playing well. Parsons is more for next year than this year but I will need more out of him if I’m to win in the playoffs. He’s a tough guy to trade but at 28 years old he still has plenty of good years left once he’s fully back from all his injuries.

Bigs – Goose, Zeller, Adams, Willy Hernangomez, Chriss, JaMychal, Taj, and the newly added Vonleh. When healthy this group is dominant, but without the top 2 it drops down to average at best. In the long run though there’s nothing to worry about, the ages alone for these guys makes my drawers wet. In the above order the ages are – 21, 24, 23, 22, 19, 26, 31, 21. Can anyone else boast 6 starting PF or Cs under the age of 25, with JaMychal making it 7 total starters? Granted maybe Willy is just a temporary starter but he’s so much better than Noah, and maybe Vonleh shouldn’t be a starter, but ya know, besides that.

There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of places to improve, the only guys I’d even consider trading are Rubio and Delon but I would need a very good PG back, Parsons and Thabo, and JaMychal, Taj, and Vonleh – not exactly the cream of the crop but as I see it there’s something there for everyone. I guess in my ideal world I would lose a big for a PG, unfortunately I can’t seem to find a decent PG to rent.

– Okafor didn’t get traded, but between the Noel trade and the Simmons news, I don’t see the Sixers playing Embiid much if there’s an inkling he’s hurt. Giving Okafor minutes makes a lot of sense to accomplish the Sixers near-term goals: namely secure a higher draft pick while re-establishing Okafor’s market value. Posted 28/10 on Saturday night and had nights of 6-6 and 10-11 from the stripe over the last few weeks, so there’s some optimism for this season. C’mon Jahlil- let’s show the world why I prioritized you over Embiid!

– My wings, TJ Warren and RoCo, both seem to have taken it up a level post-deadline. Both getting close to 40 minutes in each of their games this weekend. RoCo posting an incredible 7-45-21-5-7-2-4 combined, while Warren gave 1-40-13-3-3-0-2.

– Bogdanovic’s situation got worse with the trade to Washington, but he posted 15 pts last night over 30 minutes, so it might not be as bad a situation as I assumed.

– Jarrett Jack finally got on the court, and is hoping to stick around ROS with New Orleans—25 minutes in his first game, DNP in his second. At least its not an empty roster spot anymore.

– The SA backups (Lee and Simmons) are unspectacular, but they could get serious PT for games here and there down the stretch as Pop rests his starters for the playoffs.

While the runaway frontrunner JB continues to assemble his dream team, I feel like the trade for Ibaka and Rose at least puts me in the conversation. First goal is to just make it to the friggin’ playoffs, and then let luck take-over from there. After all…

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”
– Wayne Gretzky Michael Scott High as Greg Kite

While I think WCS has Nerlens Noel like upside, I’m just really worried that for some reason or another he’s not going to reach it. If he does then $20 is a solid deal. If he doesn’t though that money will be a bit of an anchor around my team, and since he’s young and full of upside he’d be tough for me to let go of. So despite telling myself I wasn’t going to spend more than $31 on anyone (Paul George is my cut-off point), I dealt him away for a $37 Kevin Love. At least with Love I can feel pretty confident that he will be a top 30 player, so it won’t be completely sunk money. I will miss the blocks, or at least the potential blocks, but it will be good to finally have someone who is a good rebounder after trading Jonas away earlier this season (Jokic aside). I grabbed Matt Barnes in the deal as well, though if anyone wants his surprisingly good stats (top 90 player in the past month) and thinks he’ll land in a decent spot with a new team I’m open to dealing him.

While I was shaking things up I also grabbed rookie Alex Abrines who’s looked good over the last couple weeks for the Thunder, as well as picking up Briante Weber since he just signed a 10-day deal with the guard depleted Hornets. Someone needs to give this kid a real shot since his d-league numbers are gaudy (.455/.778/1.2/16.5/7.5/7.3/3.3/0.1/3.1). Just look at those steals! Maybe he will be lightning in a bottle, and at the very least he should get a bigger shot here than he did for the Warriors.

Obviously I’m playing for next year, so I’ve got lots of guys I’m open to moving like Love, Tyreke, Henson, Barnes, Weber, Luwawu, Yabusele, and Abrines. I’d prefer to consolidate and do a 2 for 1 to open up another roster spot, but I’m open to other ideas too. This week I get #2 Yappers, so I’m preparing myself to have my first lopsided loss since week 12. It may shock you (it did me) that last week my guys would have made him work for it and I’d have only lost 4-5, losing turnovers as the deciding category oddly enough. Not only did I lose turnovers, but my team shockingly set the all time single week turnover record with an epic 118 TO!!! In the record book again! Imagine how many turnovers I can put up when I have a full group of guys in the rotation, haha!

I’m up against Slim this week and while I was hoping at the start of the year I would be a tough matchup thanks to what I am getting from the guys I’m going to talk about this week, solid Gorgui and MKG years and Wiggins turning into a scoring machine without Lavine 34.5 on 54% it hasn’t quite worked out as planned for the other guys. Bender sounds shutdown instead of getting the Chandler minutes like I hoped, Mudiay has been a massive disaster that’s getting hard to watch and team Captain EMBIIIID has gone from half mast to full flaccid for the rest of this season. Still think the door is a bit open for me against Slim though since the Goose is hurt, Parsons is more Instagram model then basketball player at this point, Reggie is still in his long funk and Richardson is getting eased in so in the words Rocky 4 “he’s cut”.

For my team Ghostface Ily getting dumped along with Noel getting shipped out for peanuts and operation tank commencing in full force with Simmons and likely EmbiiD ☹ shut down is going to do wonders for Saric. He’s been 16.6/8/2.5 with 1.5 threes and a stl in February on 29 minutes and should be close to 36 min a game the rest of the way. I have to say I was glad to have Saric on the team as a $2 euro stash when I took over the team last year because I figured he could turn into a solid role player but this is way beyond my expectations and projections for him, amusingly he really is looking like he could be the kind of player Bucks fans hoped for all those years ago that Ily would turn into and I can see him being a 15-7-3 guy still with everyone healthy on Sixers, hah.

My biggest relief has been my team being freed from the tyranny of sweet Lou now so Walton has no excuse but to finally run Russell and Clarkson like I had been expecting when the season started and what do you know there producing the kind of numbers people were projecting them to have before the season started, 17 weeks late but it’s happening. Wish Zubac was starting but he’s already finished off health care.Mozgov (enjoying that contract Laker fans?) so he’s one step closer now and new el Presidante Magic likes him.

The last trade affecting my team is the DeMarcus trade, D-mo now is close to done for me with this move but, just as I started to smell the burning faab again Cousins goes and gets a silly tech and is suspended again so I’m he might still hold some value as long as Cousins keeps being Sheed 2.0 with those techs. And after stashing him all year after drafting him for $5 the way is clear for Skal to get into the rotation and boy is he starting to show his potential. His skill set fits well as the PF right next to Willie or Papa and looking at the rotation his only competition is Tolliver at PF going forward. He was in the same category as Simmons and Ingram entering college last year, by all accounts has been working hard and cares and Calipari has even said that they played him the wrong way last year. From what I’ve seen his ceiling looks to me like it can be Chris Bosh, not sure if he can get there but watching him reminds me a lot of Bosh’s rookie year were you see the jumper and the effort, just the frame and experience are not quite there yet.