2016-17 REL Dynasty League Update: Week 3

After spending $38 of FAAB last week, I imposed a cap of $5 for my bids for the Ezeli injury replacement. Thus we narrowly missed our desired target of Montrezi Harrell amongst others. The first player we had a hit on was Raymond Felton at $1, who was near the top of my many $1 bids. Whether he lasts the season for Yappers is debatable, but for now I am fine with him and his 17-18 mpg in the Clippers second unit as a stopgap injury replacement.

The big surprise thus far has been somehow winning FG% the first two weeks.  If you didn’t catch it in my daily notes, my opp had Emmanuel Mudiay, who chucked up 24 Pts in the first quarter shooting 9-10 FG, and briefly swung FG% Sunday evening.  But then he cooled off and D’Angelo Russell was D’Angelo Russell for him.  Whew!  My .451 FG% is actually middle of the pack thus far, so I’ll take it.  I thought it was my FG% that Westbrook would tank as my big offseason acquisition, but turns out I can’t absorb his TO!  I’m second-to-last in TO, and I even benched guys at the end of week 1.  Yuck.  Thankfully, I love being a FT% dominant team, shooting a high-volume 86.4% this week.  Nothing grinds my gears like a FT battle going into Sunday and your worthless players start missing their freebies.

I still think I can be competitive in most cats, except blocks are looking predictably putrid with Greg Monroe still cockblocking my Henson/Plumlee combo.  I managed 22 swats this week, but 6 were from Aron Baynes, and no other player had more than 2.  Ouch.

With that said, I get to play another FT-punt horde of 7-footers this week!  Yay!  I’m up against Hard-N-Tha-Paint, and I’m guessing I’ll lose FG%, BLK and TO right off the bat.  I should nab FT% (definitely that one), 3PTM, PTS, STL, and AST.  And despite my lack of swats, I’m second in the league in REB to only Hard-N, so that could be close.  Of course anything can happen, but hopefully I can indeed nab that cat and go 6-3.  Hopefully my add of Dorian Finney-Smith can provide that extra length and UMMPPFF for a few more boards, after overtaking Justin Anderson for playing time yesterday.  He’s a pretty lame 3-n-D guy, but 32 minutes of 5/3/0/3/1 Sunday night, and I need dem swats!  Playing time might go down the drain once Dirk is back, but since I own Dirk, that works for me.  Let’s do this, DFS!

Couple notes:

– Harden and Whiteside are doing their thing. Curry not so much, but he’s still elite even at 80% of last year. 6.9/74.7/24.5/19.1/3.3/2.9 between the big three. Less steals and blocks than I was hoping, but that’s all I can really complain about.

– TJ Warren: Looks like holding him the last few years may pay off- averaging almost 22/6 with over 2 steals and 83% from the line. He averaged 25 ppg in the ACC a few years back so there’s some historical support for what he’s doing, but still…wow. Lucky draw for my squad at $1.

– RoCo: Since opening night, his shooting lines are 0/5, 0/6, 2/9, 1/10. Glad he threw in that 2/9 night to bring up the average! He’s still getting run and is chipping in 2.5 steals and a block, but he’s gonna lose PT pretty quick if he can’t remember how to shoot.

– Montrezl Harrell: He’s the guy I was hoping to nab for my $1 budget at the auction, but that didn’t end up happening. So when he became available again I felt I had to grab him to see how his situation plays out in Houston. Strong rebounder and contributes some blocks and pts. Logjam with Nene, Capela and Ryno ahead of him (and maybe Montiejunas too soon), but he looked legit when he got run in the preseason and continued that on Friday night (17/10 w 3 blocks). Lottery ticket, double-double type.

– Bobby Portis: Averaged 14.2 ppg/11 rpg in per 36 last year in his age 20 (rookie) season. Now he’s not even in the rotation. Maybe he told DWade to stop shooting so much. That’s my explanation for why he’s not playing.

– Wes Johnson: Non-existent stats despite getting minutes in all but one game. Shooting 30%, two three’s on the year and only two steals. I’m gonna give it a little longer, but he’s looking not rosterable…

The core is the strongest it’s ever been, Lillard -26 (age), Reggie -26, Dunn -22 at PG, Gary Harris -22, Richardson -23, and Hayward -26 on the wing and Nurkic -22, Goose -21, Adams -23 down low at a combined total of $167 of $200, so all of $33 worth of “expendable” players. The first thing I have to accept is that my days of drafting top-5 real world draft picks is over, ok I begrudgingly accept it. Next I take a look at my $1 players, Marcus Morris -27 and JaMychal -26 stand out for their minutes and they were my 2 biggest bright spots on that abysmal Wednesday. The only other player getting good minutes is Sergio $2-30, probably not a keeper but pretty tough to trade in that he’s a starting PG and playing a bunch of minutes.
With those top players out of the conversation I’m left with Oubre 20-$15, Justin Holiday 27-$1, Dwight Powell 25-$1, Nicholson 26-$4, Nene 33-$1, and Juancho 21-$6. The top 11 guys all have a guaranteed role and minutes when healthy, these bottom 6 do not. Oubre went from preseason standout to Friday DNP, Holiday as their best wing defender is only getting 15ish minutes off the bench, Powell seems to only be playing backup center with Barnes playing more at the 4, Nicholson isn’t even getting up to 10 minutes a game anymore, Nene has been solid except for that DNP-rest day and his FT issues, and finally Juancho looks to be moving into the rotation and has looked capable in his limited run but it is extremely limited run. Oubre, Powell, and Juancho are hopefully pieces of my future with the potential of making it into my core, but they will need more minutes for that to happen. Holiday, Nicholson, and Nene are now waiver fodder. Holiday I’m willing to wait on since he has so much upside if they ever gave him minutes, I’m waiting…

I had a few bids up and managed only a few backups since I was unwilling to bid high for Temple and Babbitt. I added Lauvergne for Nene, and MBah Moute for Nicholson. With Ilyasova out of town Lauvergne appears to have a spot in the rotation, and with Nicholson barely playing and with limited upside I figured I might as well go for the guy getting more minutes.

After pulling up the rear all year last season it’s nice to, at least for a day, feel like we might be headed in a positive direction. I have no illusion to my teams strength as I’m still in full rebuild mode but if we could finish somewhere towards the middle it would feel like a real success.

I am a little worried if my drafted players are going to be worth their prices. Baldwin has been OK when he plays so his price tag (13) should be alright and Hill at 6 doesn’t need to do a ton to earn his price so OK there but OK is just OK. Jamal Murray (36) and Justin Anderson (24) have been fairly awful to this point. I paid up for both guys and neither has shown much promise to this point. Hopefully Denver trades Barton before the season gets too far along and I get an extended look at Murray.

HateUsBecauseTheyAnus is up this week and while they are sporting a 6-11 record compared to my 9-9 they will be the favorites. Nance getting the concussion last night will hurt me as well. Still I hope to be able to steal a couple of categories and see how we measure up. On to week 3!

After thinking about holding off on FAAB this week an injury and Razzball reading got me to take the plunge again and this time I actually got my guys. I was pondering picking up another young pg since my hope that Mudiay and Russell would be you know…point guards and be getting me more than 4.9 and 3.2 asts a game hasn’t been working out (thanks for the big game last night though Mudiay I was starting to get worried…here’s looking at you Wiggins aka young Derozan 2.0). So after hearing Fridays pod I was reminded that Isaiah Whitehead exists and would be an excellent pickup to see what he does since, and if i’ve learned anything from last year its that you have to be proactive with picking up players in this league since rarely does a player breakout that is still on the wire. Didn’t feel bad dropping Glenn Robinson III for him since he looks pretty buried in Indiana right now, I put up $20 at first which would have been enough with the second bid at $18 but after getting beat out on James Ennis I felt that if I went $28 I should be able to get him for certain. Bozic’s Dynasty Deep Dive column convinced me that since I already have Ante as a stash I should pick up the Celtics other stash Guerschon Yabusele, yahoo had him available as well so I tossed in a 0 bid figuring no one else would be thinking about him right now and dropped Derrick Williams who I am massively disappointed with…screw you Luke Babbitt. And I don’t lose anything with Yabusele playing in China since Williams hasn’t played all season so no lose of production there.

Went 2-7 against JB with wins in blks and to’s like I expected, a poor week shooting from Wiggins in particular killed me in fg% this week which I think if he had repeated week 1 I would have had a chance there. So I’m 6-12 going into week three and the schedule gods are favoring me since I go up against Cigar Smoking Monkey this week and he’s a rebuilding team with a few injuries. I would have gone 7-2 against him this week so looking at the schedule I’m thinking our teams will both put up repeat stats giving me a 7-2 win with obvious loses in fg% and to’s. I hope things go that way since it will put me at 13-14 going into week 4 which is a nice place to be at that point with so many long term prospects on this roster.

On top of the DNP-CDs, injuries, sporadic minutes, and illnesses from over half my team, there was also complete and total ineffectiveness. Oladipo is currently ranked at 196 by Yahoo, which is right beside DeMarre Carroll at 194. Carroll has been a disappointment but, how Oladipo can look this bad is beyond me. I mean, this is with him actually shooting 49% last week. I can see my new pet peeve this season is going to be staggering minutes. As in why in the world isn’t OKC staggering the minutes of Oladipo and Westbrook more? Have Oladipo out there for the 15-20 minutes that Westbrook isn’t, and then have them play together for the other 15-20 minutes. While we’re on it, I know the Jokic / Nurkic front court is a nice idea that may work but, why isn’t one of them out there at all times manning the center spot? I’m dumbfounded when I watch them run someone else out at center when they have 2 stud young centers. Currently they play almost all their minutes together and then one or both come out. I don’t get it. Jokic at the 4 is working about as well as Noel at the 4 did with Okafor at the 5 when Philly tried that experiment.

Just about the only guys meeting expectations this season so far are Paul George, DeMar Derozan, and Tim Hardaway. That’s it. That is the sum-total of guys on my team that are even close to their expectations so far. Somehow, with essentially the same group of young up and coming players that won the REL title last year, this team is currently in……19th place. 19th place! WTF. As such Papa G had to go for someone that may play more than 6 minutes a week. I hate to do it but if I don’t do something now this is gonna be completely out of hand soon. In comes another Beasley, this one being Michael. I’m not expecting the world, but I’m hoping for around 20 productive minutes a night. With the opportunity for more if things break right, though I’m not sure why I’d expect that to happen at this point. I’ll give notice to the other Beasley that though I love you, I may have to move you. Same goes to you WCS since Joerger seems to want to play Koufos 20+ minutes for some reason. At some point Sacramento is going to trade Cousins and actually rebuild. I can feel it just like I can feel that at some point Philly is gonna trade Noel. The only question is can I wait that long…[/salt]