2016-17 REL Dynasty League Update: Week 8

*Not including the brothers Hernangomez.

As with any fantasy basketball team at any depth life begins with the PGs. Obviously Lillard does his thing, it’s reliable and just outside the top 12 in nearly 36 minutes per game. He currently sports career highs in FG%, FT attempts, points, and boards but also a career low in assists. OK fine. Reggie just came back and looks to me like he’ll repeat last years stats without issue. He’ll get his 32 minutes and I’d gamble that happens sooner rather than later. My 3rd PG is Rubio, I know it’s been some rough sledding but at least he’s getting 30 minutes per game again. TOs are down lately but so is everything else, there’s still a sliver of hope but I’d take the under on the over/under of last years stats. Sergio finishes off the point and he’s been particularly good lately with about 30 minutes sans Bayless. Obviously I can’t drop Sergio while he’s playing so much but when/if Bayless returns and if/when Simmons returns there’s a pretty good chance Serge will fall back down to 20ish minutes and could very well be droppable. I don’t think anyone else has 4 starting PGs so obviously this is a big advantage right now, there’s nothing currently to do with my PGs but coast.

The wings are where I’ve had a few issues lately. Hayward does his thing, currently registering career highs in scoring, FT attempts, boards, and assist:TO ratio, his 36 minutes are locked in and he’ll easily finish inside the top 50. Fournier isn’t quite living up to expectations and Meeks seems to be siphoning off a couple minutes dropping Fournier down to about 30-32 nightly. It’s plenty and he signed a massive contract in the off-season, there’s no need to worry about his role as he’s also got career highs in FT attempts, scoring, and assists, but the TOs are too high and the steals are too low. I’m expecting much more than his current 100ish ranking. Next up is Marcus, don’t call me the other Morri. He’s been about on par with last seasons numbers with the only real takeaway being that he’s cut his TOs nearly in half, and his 33ish minute role is as secure as can be. After those 3 we start to see a falloff. Richardson and Harris shook off their initial preseason injuries only to go down with a different one upon returning. Everything sounds minor and both will play 30 minutes when they finally get back to full strength. For now all I can do is wait it out and I’m not even remotely considering trading either. My final wing is Thabo, who all of a sudden is a 30 minute per game starter, he’s a bit of a metrics whore but the 2ish steals per game fits my needs perfectly. I’ve almost dropped Thabo 2 or 3 times now but I guess those days are behind me as long as he’s getting these minutes.

My bigs have been extremely inconsistent to date. The Geese gets his, sure his FG% has plummeted with his prolonged shooting slump but the 20 PPG is a nice bonus and everything else is exactly where you’d expect it to be with 34 minutes per game. I get that Adams isn’t a top-50 guy and probably never will be, I say probably because he’s still just a youngster at 23 years old. But he’s reliable in 30 minutes and has even turned around his FT% which was always his biggest issue in fantasy. Taj is having a really good year in 29 minutes per game. His career high FG% and rebounding has really helped to pace my big man stats. Nurkic… I don’t know what to say at this point. He’s struggling to find consistency with the lack of minutes and Jokic’s failure at PF has directly effected everything Nurkic does. So frustrating but whatever, I’m strong enough down low that I can wait it out. I haven’t entertained the idea of moving him at all. Next up is my boy JaMychal, once again a little metrics whorish but with 30 minutes he contributes enough across the board that I can’t ever remove him from my starting lineup even on a full slate of games. He just contributes way too much. My last big man is DPowell. The minutes are up to about 26-28 per game, he contributes in both percents, doesn’t turn it over, there’s lots of dstats, plenty of boards, and even the scoring is climbing. He is really starting to take off and like JaMychal is incredibly metrics friendly, something very helpful in a league so deep.

There’s my top 16 players, and everyone but Nurkic is hovering around 28-30 minutes per game or more, when healthy. The final 2 guys on my roster are the brothers Hernangomez and as long as I’m winning I really don’t see a reason to move either. The big Irish KOQ is playing really well lately so Willy has been relegated to mop up duty only. It’s sad but in his 15 minutes in the blowout loss to CLE Willy went 9/7/0/1/0 with no TOs, a 3pt made, and continues to hit all his FTs. Yeah he’ll be a starting center one day. When one brother goes down the other seems to go up and with Faried in Malone’s doghouse Juancho is back in the rotation. He isn’t seeing big minutes with Arthur starting at the 4 and since Arthur got paid you kind of imagine his 20ish minute role is safe, but that doesn’t mean his starting job is safe. Juancho plays with the kind of energy coaches love and if anyone would EVER pass him the ball he’d start putting up offensive numbers too. It’ll happen, I just need to remain patient and with the kind of minutes my team is getting having patience is pretty easy.

There you have it and as I see it the places to make moves are 1.Trading one or both of the brothers Hernangomez. Eh, not right now. 2.Drop Sergio. Not today. 3.Drop Thabo. Can’t do that. 4.Trade away non keepers (Rubio, Taj, Sergio, Thabo). I’d like to obviously but there’s really no need to since not keeping those 4 means I have about $50 to spend on next years draft. You read that right, I’m going to have about 14-15 keepers next year (no one over 27 years old) and 1/4th of my budget to spend. I think it’s safe to say I’ll be better next year even if I don’t make another move this entire year.

Matchup Results: 7-2 victory. Losses were in blocks and FT%. Losing FT% while winning FG% is out of character for this team as is winning Turnovers. Blocks is a known weakness of Yappers.

Matchup MVPs: Tie between Marc Gasol (out of position threes and assists) and Joe Ingles who led Yappers in steals and second for threes. Yahoo says Joe Ingles is now the 137th rated player after his good week last week. So far the $3 investment is not a bust although the boost in minutes is because of injuries. I will be surprised if he last the whole year.

Injuries: Raymond Felton (returning this week) and James Ennis. Not a factor.

FAAB moves: In – Spencer Dinwiddie ($4). Out – Aaron Brooks who was useless this week. The FAAB market seemed very weak to me this time, but I decided to make Dinsiddie my highest bid because of upside. I think at age 23 it is do or die for him, and I think with Brooklyn he should be given a fair shot. I figure that best case is we have another bargain $1 keeper, say D.J. Augustin 2.0. The worst case at some point we move on with only a $4 loss.

Greg Kite had some injuries of his own and had a brutal 2-game run from Whiteside, but got healthier as the week went on, and I went in with the depth advantage that evened out through the week.  I’m just thrilled I avoided a skewering against 9 games of Harden/Curry.  End up with losses of 8 treys, 48 points, and 20 dimes – all 3 of which a healthy 3 more games of IT2/3 could have swung for a massive 8-1 win.  Alas, not to be.  I barely sit in the playoffs at 5th despite STILL not losing a week.  Smh.

So gotta get things going this week, and have a non-playoff contender to go against, and have a 4-week stretch against teams outside the top-7.  I just need to get my guys to slowly get healthy, and maybe – just maybe – get Dirk back for SOMETHING this year, and hopefully I can pad my standings for the playoffs.

I decided to drop a few bucks on Christon – I owned him previously as my Westbrook handcuff but he lost some run to Oladipo playing second unit PG, but then Oladipo took a hard fall last night and took a while to get off the court, and Christon played well (100% FG 9/0/2/2/0/0 with a trey) and played down the stretch.  Might give me some added guard run, which could be needed with IT2/3 (and possible KCP) missing games.

Our reward is number overall team Scurry. I feel like we just played the number one team a few weeks back… which we did, but he has since slipped to third… at least partially because of us. With Barton back we are finally at full strength. We have been really happy with the performance of our end of the bench guys, Sauce, Meeks, Harrison, Ed Davis. Our value guys have preformed decently as a whole also, but we are still open to add another star on a good contract. With the $1 players we have there should be a deal out their if anyone is hunting for one.

As for Scurry when we play top 8 teams we really just want to keep it close 5-4 either way is a victory and keeps us in the picture as long as we take care of business when we are supposed to. Good luck all!

After Last week’s flurry of waiver activity definitely died out this week, and I’m going trying to conserve what little budget I have left for later on. If any rebuilding team is interested, I’d be willing to deal Austin Rivers ($1) to add another contributing vet to my squad. I’m pretty happy with where my team is at though. Time to let them do work. Shoutout to Thad Young, for the epic statline with 6 treys the other night. I didn’t need it, but it was awesome! That’s it for me this week, fingers crossed on this matchup.

Speaking of injuries, I got Nerlens Noel back on Sunday for his first game of the year! Hip hip hooray. He managed 8 points and a steal in his first 10 minutes which was great. He then promptly got injured and left the game which was less great. Because, my team cannot have nice things this year. Either way, I’m thinking that by the end of next week I will have Noel back (again), and I should have Tyreke Evans back (after his post injury recovery injury). I should also have Rodney Hood back from the re-aggravation of his hamstring injury. Anyone else sensing a theme here? Perhaps Oladipo too, since it sounds like he passed his concussion tests and he’s just got a sprained wrist. That would leave me, fingers crossed, with only Khris Middleton injured. Wow, that would be a miracle at this point.

Since I’ve got so much extra production coming, I swapped out KJ McDaniels for Guerschon Yabusele. He’s a guy I really liked prior to the season, and would have drafted had I not been trying to win it all again this year. I was still sort of hoping to turn it around this year when he got plucked from waivers a while back by Foreign Affairs. Then he got dropped and I’ve decided to take the plunge and waste a spot on him the rest of the year. I’m really hoping he impresses overseas this year and can bring some of what he’s shown to the Celtics next season.

I’m still open to offers from contenders, though as I said last week, I’m less motivated to deal my big names at this point so you’ll have to bring your A offer. Oh, and I’m no longer in last place. So, that’s awesome!

There’s nothing to new going on with my roster this week, Bender and Bennett have been starting to get more consistent rotation minutes, the Heats never ending injuries have forced Spo to give Derrick Williams some burn and made McRoberts useful though I let him go to bring Russell off the IR, besides a spurs mauling Kilpat($1) who I don’t think is going to be negatively effected by Lin returning, looks even more of a fantastic pickup late last year, especially since I grabbed him to replace Bojan($1) who I moved with Ryan Anderson($14) to help get my Embiid($11) trade done. I could wax on and on about Embiid but to keep things short that minutes limit is up to $28 now and besides maintaining those ridiculous per-36 numbers the 76ers have the best defensive rating in the league of 97.9 when he’s on the floor and the worst at 109.4 when he’s off it so health permitting he’s going to get all the minutes he can handle sooner then latter.

Russell is back now so I’m hoping he can quickly get back up to speed and start showing more then he was before he got hurt to go along with Wiggins…looking…better? So that I can start to pull back from the panic button that I opened up by putting Russell/Mudiay/Wiggins on the block this week and trying to move them all for an already elite pretty cheap young talent. There combined $99 out of my budget continues too look like it will be a thorn in my side in next years draft, I think I need to be patient still though because there value feels so low right now and in Russell and Wiggins’s cases it doesn’t take much (just do something other then score Wiggins) for there fantasy games to make a jump. Mudiay……well it’s looking like I’ll be lucky if he gets back to last years value at the moment.

I swooped in just before the buzzer cutting Isiah Whitehead(don’t like his outlook with Lin back and Dinwiddie there) to add Reggie Williams on a 0 bid (thanks waver priority). I had a good laugh seeing that the bid went through and Reggie put up stats for the Pelicans today because I once added Reggie Williams wayyy back when he was on Don Nelson’s Warriors during Steph’s rookie year for a glorious 24 game run that helped me win a deep roto league. He’s 30 so not past his prime and the Peli’s are about as injured/meh on the wing (sorry Buddy) as that Warriors team was so I’m rolling the dice Nelly style.

Heat Apologist would have also skunked my team last week so things aren’t looking to good for the this match up but I’m hoping a healthy Russell and 3 games out of Embiid will net me one category this week and we are not to far off in season totals in some areas so I hope it’s not a day 1 loss this time.