2016-17 REL Dynasty League Update: Week 2

I was encouraged that all four 2015 draft class players at least some run. Sam Dekker and Jarrell Martin seem to be rotational players of about 16 minutes apiece. Chris McCullough and Jordan Mickey seem to at least be garbage time players. I expect McCollough will get more run by the deadline, but I am unsure about Mickey.

I expect FG% will be a problem this year. I am fine with this if FT% compensates for this. But a .363 FG% now seriously, particularly since FT% was only .778. But meh, that was good enough to win one ratio last week. And winning turnovers was a bonus, since that is a category I typically punt.

Marc Gasol with 6 threes?!? wowww.

C.J. Miles and D.J. Augustin I expect will will be fine as $1 players. But Greivis Vasquez and Corey Brewer were giving about 15 minutes per game of bleh production. We should be able to do better. So Plan A was to go all in on James Ennis. First was $23. Hmm. might not be enough so up it to $28, Hmm. I could see somebody going $30 so up again to $32 final offer. Which ultimately won by $2. No, I do not expect him to continue to receive 30 minutes per game.
But I am expecting decent production at 20 minutes per game which would be comparable to C.J. and D.J. Welcome to Yappers Mr. Ennis.

And plan B was to pick up one more big that could give me at least 16 minutes and about a block a game. In other words John Henson
lite (Blocknoff ??). And there on the waiver wire was Festus Ezeli (who conveniently is also a Mason Plumlee handcuff). I still remember last season’s auction of bidding on him up to I think $8 before bowing out. But given his injury, I couldn’t imagine anybody going more than $5 on him in FAAB. So I bid $6. Welcome to Yappers Festus.

Anyway we are down to $62 in FAAB money, but I hope I have these two slots nailed down once Festus is healthy. And I sort of figure that any FAAB left at the end represents resources wasted. So I am fine with it. And all we need now is a $0 Festus injury stopgap, which will be the first order of business next week.

TOs were paced by Lillard and Adams, the 1st is acceptable but 10 TOs from Adams needs to remedy itself in a hurry. Blocks were pretty low this week and only the Goose (3) had more than 2 but fortunately another four guys chipped in with the aforementioned 2. Steals are going to be a problem while four of my top 5 or 6 contributors are injured but Adams (7) and Powell (4) went a bit above and beyond expectations to get me the tie. Assists are my biggest issue with my injuries, Reggie, Hayward, Gary Harris, and Josh Richardson, and unsurprisingly Lillard and Sergio were my top two. Not to toot my own horn too loud but my $2 Sergio is looking like the steal of the draft, at least as far as win-now guys go. Since my injuries are to PGs and wings I had no issues rebounding the ball this week, Adams of course was 1st but look at Lillard pulling down 24 boards in 3 games. Scoring isn’t a strength right now but thankfully Lillard wants to win an MVP, 35 PPG is a good way to start. I have alot of injured 3s but ya know, Lillard followed by Marcus Morris and the Goose in only 2 games, this was always one of my biggest strengths when healthy. Ugh Nene (.588) and his FT shooting is going to be a problem, Goose had a poor week (.643), but .731 for the week isn’t acceptable, I need to figure this one out sooner rather than later. And finally ever since my 1st pick in the draft (Lillard) I’ve considered myself a punt FG% team, but that was 3+ years ago and since that fateful day my team has matured by leaps and bounds, and maybe, just maybe I don’t need to call myself a punt FG% team anymore. Lillard more than likely won’t continue to shoot .549, but if Goose (.500) and Nurkic (.591) can continue to be positive contributors then my .481 FG% for the week may not be a mirage.

It feels really strange not to have a rookie big man to talk about anymore. Year 1 was all about Steven Adams, year 2 was the rise of Nurkic, and year 3 was the year of the Goose. Juancho isn’t getting any minutes so there isn’t much to talk about there yet, not a surprise though considering Denver’s depth this year. Since I went with a rookie PG in the draft in Kris Dunn now seems like as good a time as any to talk about him. If we just look at his final 2 years in college Dunn averaged about .460/.690/1.0/16.0/5.4/7.0/2.6/0.4/3.8 in 33 min. FG% is good, FT% is not, solid counting stats even though he isn’t a big 3pt threat and of course way too many TOs as a result of always moving about a million miles per hour. In only 2 summer league games (34 min) Dunn was a one man wrecking crew – 24 PPG, .543 FG%, 2.0 stls but also 3.0 TOs and only .600 FT% on 7.5 attempts per game, but ultimately Dunn was forced to sit out the rest of the summer with a concussion. In one word Dunn’s preseason was atrocious – .226 FG%, .636 FT%, and 2.6 TOs in only 23 min per game. Maybe that had something to do with his $35 draft day price tag. In the very early going Dunn has done exactly as expected, FG% good, FT% not, scoring and 3s aren’t great, and he’s an absolute menace defensively. The good news though is through his first 2 NBA games he sports a 5:2 ast:TO ratio, and if that continues to improve then it’s going to be increasingly difficult for Thibbs to keep him on the bench.

Anyway, my team looks exciting as hell.  Deep.  Scores.  AST.  And Russell/Kawhi might both very well be a tandem of top-5 players in a 20er dyno…

Nice to see some owners opening up their wallets early again this year.  Last year I infamously spent $99 of my FAAB to address my horrific lack of depth in week 1, but had a lot more restraint this time.  It also helps I really only had one player to drop, and one need: a big man.  So I may have overspent a tad on Baynes and his awesome haircut, but he was really the only “true” big I liked.  Other than Speights (nice add) and Ezeli (injured, but I’ve always liked him, not really looking to stash though), no other bigs were added.  Baynes isn’t a big swatter either, but should help boost my boards when I play the big man teams.

Any time you’re benching guys to chase %s, it’s a pretty good start to the season.  I have a deeper opp this week vs. Mr. Affairs, so I might even make a run at TO.  Good luck this week!

Kevin Love- Welcome back big guy. We are glad you are healthy and that BronBron is trying to average a triple double so there is ample scoring opportunity for you.

ZBO- The move to the bench has proved beneficial early on. The second units cannot handle what the Bo is bringing.

Iso Joe- plenty of opportunity with the injured Jazz. His production will diminish as the year goes on, but we will take all of it for now.

Otto, Niko, Buddy- we are going to need you to make some of these shots. Specifically more threes.

Looking ahead we have Mr. Green a perennial contender. Looking at team stats is not going to provide much insight this week, but we like our team overall and believe we can be competitive on a weekly basis. We opted to hold Sauce Castillo instead of making a move on the waiver wire. His minutes have been there hopefully he can continue to capitalize and earn a few more over the next week.

Good luck to all!

I expect to be lamenting a 1-8 loss next week, but I’m still holding out hope when Collison, Parsons and Okynyk are back. Conservatively, that’s 120 points, 30 rebounds, 30 assists I’m missing.

Unfortunately with the good comes the bad. Wiggins has started the year as an even higher scoring barely anything else guard, I was expecting a more well rounded game with Lavine and Towns letting him focus on other things then scoring but it’s early so i’ll be patient, though his high volume 12ftg but relatively low % of 72 is more of a hindrance since it traps your team in the 70s. Derrick Williams has been benched behind Luke Babbitt of all people for the last 3 games not sure what Spo’s thought process is but I’m not thrilled with that hold. Russell and Mudiay have started out a little rougher then I had hoped and aren’t exactly doing the pg thing of giving me assists with only 20 assists between them in 5 games getting less then my opponent’s Ty Lawson. And it looks like I’m still going to have to suffer Jordan Clarkson being very up and down with Nick Young and Lou Will getting significant run so far. MKG fell off fast after his opening game that got me all excited after holding him in my IR spot all year.

The key theme of my team this year is patience as it’s a young team with the oldest player being 26 and I don’t want to jump the gun on any of them during these years before they are at their prime. I put down $30 on James Ennis this week which is a dramatic shift in FAAB strategy from last year were I was very frugal with my bids and ended up with a lot of wasted bidding money at the end of the year. I felt like I had gone higher then anyone else would this early in the season which was partially true with Slim and Hardinthepaint below me at $8 but, alas I wasn’t aggressive enough as Yappers beat me with his $32. Ennis had a good run in April last year and I wasn’t confident in Parson’s or Tony’s ability to stay healthy so Yappers got a great player given the state of the waver wire.

Up against JB this week, I had to wait till the final week of the regular season to face him last year so it will be interesting going against him so early, I won’t have the advantage of games played given my dnp or almost dnp rookies. I would have gone 1-7-1 last week against him so it doesn’t look good but I have a chance to win blocks and if Wiggins shoots better on his high volume fts I could take that putting me in a 3-6 loss which will be a win in my books given JB looks like one of the contenders this year. Just got to Trust The Process.

To top it all off I had so much going on this weekend that I completely forgot about FAAB bidding and didn’t put a single claim in on Sunday. Whoops. I’ll try not to make that mistake again, haha. It can only get better from here, right?

On the plus side, and thank goodness there’s a plus side. Nikola Jokic had a 23/1/17/2/4/1 game. Hello! DeRozan managed to score 72 points in 2 games, including 40 in the season opener. Schroder already has an 11 assist game and shot 50%+ in both his games. Oladipo had back-to-back solid games after a slow opener. Paul George did Paul George things, even if they were a little subdued for him. Aaron Gordon did some stat stuffing across the board showing his immense potential. Jonas played 30+ minutes in both his games (thanks coach), and put up 32 points in one and 17 boards in the other, seemingly continuing his playoff play from last season. Tim Hardaway was on fire in the Hawks opener with 21 points and looks to be a 20 minute a night guy at the moment.

Looking ahead, this week I get Niko-Cola and I’m not sure I’ll have any better luck there. I can only hope that somehow I keep it close and get a little lucky I guess.

If anyone that’s playing for next year wants to move a vet for some youth, I’m open to trading WCS, Papa Giorgio, Omri Casspi, and Malik Beasley for some current production. It’s so early though that I’m not sure which teams might be looking to next year already. If you are just send me an offer or a message and we can try to work something out.