2016-17 REL Dynasty League Update: Week 4

Reality check 2.0. We have had zero, nada, null injury issues with Yappers so far. This is not sustainable, although giving Deron Williams his walking papers probably helped.

Reality check 3.0. Given that I am contending, in the long run I will not be able to keep two of my four cheap bargains from last years draft class unless they start getting minutes at least like Sam Dekker and Jarrell Martin are. But given the phenomenon of NBA heavy schedule days I probably can keep them indefinitely. Patience in this league is a virtue.

Yes I won the matchup 5-4. Maybe (since I have incentive to do this every week) I can choose an most valuable and least valuable player of the matchup in these write ups

MVP is easy this week. C.J. Miles Ignoring for the moment his contributions are carrying a cost of $1, in a week where out of position blocks won me the category, CJ Miles had four of them.

Least Valuable player was Wes Matthews. Part of it was a two game schedule where he left early one game. But still Sam Dekker contributed more than his .400 FG% with one trey and nine points.

Since I have spent $39 already of my FAAB (btw I am so far happy on where it was spent), it will take either an injury or a major, major buy opportunity for me to spend more at this point in the season. This week there were neither of them.

So to those dimes, and I directly won the cat by making a pretty low-end trade, but a win is a win!  Especially in a league as tight as the REL.  One win could mean a playoff spot or maybe if I’m fortunate enough, a bye week spot.  Sent Anus $3 Courtney Lee and $1 Cory Joseph for $1 Patty Mills and $1 Semaj Christon.  I still love the upside for Cojo, but he needs an injury to Lowry or a chance to start on a new team.  He’s from Canada, and signed on an extremely cheap deal for this day and age, through 2018-19.  I just don’t see it happening… Courtney Lee is kinda “whatever filler” on my team – I should win 3s and steals most weeks anyway.  I said most!  Christon might not last the whole season, but gives me an all-important handcuff for Westbrook until Cameron Payne is healthy.  Temporary, I know, but Christon might somehow stay in the rotation.  He’s been playing well, and picks up a few minutes next to Westbrook too.  I was mostly happy to get Patty.  He’s playing great PG behind Tony Parker and will start on his DNPs, and gives me dimes with a sub-1 TO rate.  He’s a free agent next year, so hopefully he re-signs with the Spurs, but we’ll see what happens.  It was low enough end to just take the pluses I get for this season.

All that said, I got 14 dimes from the pair at the end of the week when the trade went through (Friday), and I haven’t fact-checked it, but surely Cojo and Lee got under 12, which won me dimes.  Wooooo!  Nothing doing on the waiver front, just hoping everyone can get healthy/have their extreme sad off the court issues worked out.  I’m up against Hardenoutherr4apimp this week, and I think I can keep the good times a-rollin’.  They made a “play for the future” trade with Slim (which he reviews), so I’m going in with a much more win-now team.  Good luck to all this week, and let’s hope my guys learn how to steal again!

Unfortunately I am now very wing heavy with only 3 PGs, Lillard, Reggie, Sergio,and only 4 bigs in Goose, Adams, Nurkic, and Taj. We’ll count JaMychal and Dwight Powell as bigs too for now but they aren’t the most reliable options. The wings are Hayward, Fournier, Gary Harris, Richardson, Marcus Morris, Oubre, Wilson, and Thabo. Yeah sure I got older but that’s what I always do – draft youth then sell off whatever pieces aren’t fitting long term for something to help me win now. That’s the thing about this league, mostly due to only 6 of 20 teams making the playoffs, if you have youth you can always and I do mean always find a buyer.

With all the extra minutes added my FAAB add last week of Mbah a Moute, who has played very well with heavy minutes and will probably get FAABed for a pretty penny next week, was no longer needed. Instead I keep up my routine of picking up youthful upside. This week that was $36 for the other Hernangomez, yes that’s right I traded Juancho early in the week and added Willy late. Juancho is going to be a really good player, I think the better of the 2, and I will definitely regret moving him one day, but at least I won the consolation prize – his brother.

So is Willy any good? In his 2 games this past week that he saw over 10 minutes he posted lines of 14/6/0/1/2 in 15 min and 8/12/3/2/1 in 24 min. That’s some saucy per-minute production. After that last game (a blowout loss) Hornacek claimed that Willy had supplanted O’Quinn as the 1st big off the bench and he was true to his word, however Willy only managed a meager 4 minutes (1 board, 1 TO) while O’Quinn played 14 minutes of 10/4/1/0/1. This might not look like a good thing for Willy but at least he got the first crack at it and that Saturday dud might have scared some win-now teams off from bidding high, I only won my $36 bid by $5 as it stands. Needless to say, I’m excited for the possibilities Willy presents and production right this second isn’t something I need. He’s a good shooter, capable of blocking a shot although not really a shotblocker, and a high energy guy who will get his hands on many a rebound, and as long as he keeps getting minutes his trade value will only increase as more teams start to look toward the future.

The good news is that there is room to improve. With a team as young as mine is we are hoping that guys continue to improve. Booker, Lyles, Parker, Nance, Len, and Kaminsky are all getting solid minutes and should continue to improve as the year goes along. I’m hoping that Holmes and Murray will be able to keep a role on their teams as they get more healthy. Both guys need some sort of a trade to free up minutes.

Then bad news… Number one is Mario Hezonja. Super Mario has not been super and has started getting DNP-CD and he deserves them. He does not look good when he is on the floor. Wade Baldwin is also not getting any playing time. He is currently losing time to Andrew Harrison. Luckily for him Harrison is not doing much with his minutes. I’m still optimistic with Baldwin and I think he will eventually carve out a role. Dion Waiters is still Dion Waiters so that’s not great. He’s been a percent killer.

This week we have the Heat Apologists. Hopefully we can pick up a win for our 3rd straight week.

I was pretty furious after seeing the FAAB results come in this week after giving in to a moment of weakness last week letting Derrick Williams go I scrambled to try and get him back this week but held back from breaking the bank and not dropping $40 on him, with only a $28 bid that got crushed by HateUsCauseTheyAnus $37 bid. Chilled out by watching some EMBIIIID highlights, hard to stay mad for long when you have some one who looks like Hakeem 2.0 with threes for $11 hahaha.

I almost had a few trades occur this past week but the timing never lined up perfectly to get a deal done and as the week went on my opinion on two of the guys on my roster changed. These being Wiggins, partially as a result of my lack of sf depth (starts looking at wings available in the 2017 draft) and Kilpatrick having elevated himself on my team pecking order. I’ve been a massive Canadian Homer and fan of Wiggins ($38) potential since seeing his highschool footage years ago but he’s been a massive pain since I traded Butler($17) and Hayward($22) for him and Clarkson($1). That empty scoring with no threes and no supporting stats for his cost had been making it hard for me to keep him despite his young age of 21. I was starting to think the best he could become is what Derozan is doing right now but that three point shot is coming along nicely averaging 1.9 so far this year from .7 last year with his fg% having gone up still and in his last 4 games he’s 5reb and 3.5 ast with all reports of Thibs being all in on him. My advice for anyone in keeper leagues is to see if any of his owners are still frustrated and haven’t bought in yet because I think he’s turning the corner.

Kilpatrick ($1) has gotten himself promoted off my trading block with his play this year. I grabbed him off the wire last year because I traded away Bojan($1) with Ryan Anderson ($14) for Embiid and I felt that the Nets were so terrible on the wing with no chance of getting better there anytime soon why not replace Bojan with there high scoring d-league pickup. I kept Kilpatrick going into the season thinking he would play well enough I could flip him for someone who would be cheap and be a more permanent fit on the team and had been shopping Kilpatrick alot before the draft this year and had him on my block after that. Turns out Kilpatrick has ended up turning into the kind of player I was hoping to buy low on with him as the bait. 1.8/15/2.5/1.9/1.4 with great ft% at solid volume at $1 is a massive asset in a league this deep. He’s done this in only 27 min a game this year he’s gained pg eligibility thanks to Lin’s injury, the Nets look like they have no one that can threaten his role on the wing now or anyone coming soon and at age 26 with only 44 nba games under his belt there’s room for growth here. So he’s earned himself a nice little promotion to my teams core to pair up with Clarkson to form the very safe(both proven bench scorers now), very productive and very cheap (combined $2) shooting guard/backup pg tandem.

I What I did see this week from my team is potential. Jimmy butler looks like the alpha in Chicago and is also their best point guard. Popcorn stats will be popping. Tyus Jones showed what could be if unleashed, with a 18:5 assist/TO ratio in essentially two games. He needs a trade so badly. Chriss put up 15 shots (making 7) in just 18 minutes on Saturday. He’s gonna be fun to watch in the second half of the year. But the player I’m most excited about is Norm Powell. In a spot start for the still-hobbled Demarre, he went .400/1.000/3/19/5/2/1/0/0. Yes, please. At this point he is better than Carroll. Hopefully, the Raptors agree with me before too long.

I put in a couple token bids this week, not really expecting to get either player. Now that D-league has started, I can start scouting there. Hopefully if the next whiteside comes up, I won’t lose him to waiver priority again.

At this point, I’m debating a possible rebuild around my core of Hood, Jaylen, Capela, and most likely Knight. If the contenders are interested in Lamarcus, Carmelo, Wade, Bogut, etc. then let me know! I may also be willing to trade some young blood, if it helps me into contention, so I’m down to trade either way!

So last week was a 2-7 loss to a team, despite having KAT and Giannis, I really feel I should be able to beat. Let’s be honest though, other than FG% and TO I wasn’t even close to winning any other categories besides points where I was still 33 back. That was really the closest I came. Sad.

If things don’t start to turn around quick, I’m gonna have to start looking to next year. We’re only 3 weeks in and I’m already 9 games out of the last playoff spot, with 14 teams to leapfrog in order to get it. Another massive loss and that could easily be 15 games out. I still like my team, but this just isn’t going well this year.

Guys that I may have to start considering my options on are some big names like Victor Oladipo, Paul George, Jonas Valanciunas and DeMar DeRozan. As well as lesser guys like Carrol, Mozgov, Casspi, WCS, and Livingston. If I get to that point then freeing up some salary cap space will be a bit of a priority for me, as well as getting some upside youth who haven’t yet proven they can do it.

What a horrible start to the season that I’ve been looking forward to from the day last season ended. Damn.