2016-17 REL Dynasty League Update: Week 9

Second: Some notable FG lines from yesterday:

D.J. Augustin: 0-4
Raymond Felton: 0-3
Joe Ingles: 0-1
Marc Gasol: 4-22

Nevertheless, Yappers hung on to win FG% .445 – .434 winning the matchup 8-1.

I will give MVP of the matchup to Mason Plumlee whose seven blocks were the difference in that category.

My one move was subtraction, punting my $4 investment in Spencer Dinwiddie last week as James Ennis was coming off IL. Unless someone I really like comes along, I don’t have an obvious drop at this point. Raymond Felton maybe, but that would leave me only three PG eligible. I am holding Chris McCullough for now. And Jarell Martin and Joe Ingles are actually now semi useful. So there it is.

Even with the big win though, it still feels like I’m not quite at that top-2 seed/bye-week contention level right now.  Luol Deng is looking OK, and I guess Isaiah Thomas only had half a week returning from injury and I only had 3 Kawhi games, but I still would like to dominate steals a little better.  I hope Dirk Nowitzki can actually deliver on his goal of returning by Christmas.  Would be a Christmas miracle!

So back to the whining (that didn’t last long!), I have to play the defending champ, who has been mired in horrific injuries all season, when he’s at his healthiest.  And to top that, he gets Nikola Jokic’s best game to kick off the week.  Smh.  Despite I Ain’t No Jokic’s record this year, this was a team I wasn’t looking forward to facing…  They’ve has a full slate tonight while I have a lot of off days, but I’ll be making it up with an absurdly lucky Christmas scheduling – I’m looking at nearly a full line-up, while Jokic might have no one depending on if Oladipo can play.  Just have to keep it fairly close until then, and hope for a Christmas miracle!  Good luck this week!

No players on the block right now, but pretty much anyone is available with the right offer!

No roster moves this week.  With Cam Payne potentially returning as soon as 12/29 (according to ESPN), I’m going to have to get rid of an active-roster guy to take Payne off the IR… which means its probably time to sever ties with Jarrett Jack.  If anyone is interested in a 33 YO back-up PG coming off knee surgery let me know– he’s only $1.  Payne ($3) and Portis ($7) are also available if a 2 or 3-for-1 is of interest.

TJ Warren came back at the end of this past week, but played only a few minutes and looked timid.  This next full week should be a good indicator on whether he’s going to spring back to the guy he was in the beginning of the year.  If he can back to what he was, and the new-old Robert Covington keeps hitting his shots, I’m liking my wings a whole lot more- which is an area I felt pretty deficient at compared to other playoff teams.

Now the question is what can I get for him.  Well I have had a couple of small talks with a couple of teams that I thought could use him and it’s been a mixed bag.  I hear all the rental talks and he’s old talks but he is still a top 15 guy (top 5 according to Yahoo current season ranks) and while 64 bucks is a nice chunk of change I’m not sure he’s going much, if any, cheaper than that in draft.  I think I would consider two cheapish guys with some upside and solid current production or one mid level star at higher but cheaper than Paul price.  I guess we’ll see if any of these top teams really want to win or just like finishing towards the top.  All offers will be considered so don’t hesitate to send them, if nothing else it will gives us the opportunity to chat some hoops.

I feel I like the benefit of this weekly post is to forecast who will become standard league relevant, as most of those players have to owned in a 20 team before that happens. So with that, I feel I have three such players currently.

Marquise Chriss had his first big week, since the preseason. Aided by a couple Len-less games, he managed a .435/.800/4/32/22/1/2/3/4 line in three games. The issue thus far with Chriss has been low minutes and high fouls, with the second affecting the first. Tuesday he double-doubled in 31 overtime fueled minutes, but avoiding fouling out. Thursday, he again played 31 minutes but with only a single foul. Saturday was 24 minutes, going 8 and 8 with only two fouls. I picked him up in my 12 team money league after the first game and will hold for now. In the short term, he is a 1/1/1 guy. In the long term, his upside is huge, capped only by Watson inexplicably playing Tucker and Chandler. Maybe because they got him the job…hmmmm.

The second guy, Speights, appears to have some short term value, but I’m not so sure. With Griffin having his knee scoped, they’re appears to be an opportunity for minutes for Speights over the next month. He is a usage whore, with averages of 11.7/6.8/1.0 points/reb/assists in under 16 minutes. The problem is almost all of those minutes are as a back up to Deandre, having played a total of 5 minutes with Jordan on the floor. Having said that I grabbed him in my RCL, because his per 36 over the last two weeks is 0.510/1.000/2.3/27.1/15.6/2.3/0/0.4/1.5. Umm… yes please.

The final guy is a bit of stretch right now, but could be getting close to relevance. Denzel Valentine is not just a popular actor from 70’s blaxploitation films, he is also the future backup and maybe starting pg for the bulls. Buried behind Canaan and Jerian Grant to begin the year, he seems to have leapfrogged the both as the the first guard of the bench. Or at least was this past week. While he didn’t shoot particularly well, he has the game to be the facilitator for a star laden Bulls team going nowhere. While no one will ever confuse him and Westbrook in athleticism, he is an “IQ” player. Getting twenty minutes twice this week at least warrants a watch list. If one of Wade, Rondo, or (gulp) Butler goes down or traded (please be Rondo), I believe he will have immediate and sustaining value.

So this week my matchup wasn’t ever in doubt, and for once it was because I was so far ahead rather than so far behind. Decent performances in both percentages, though not great, along with solid 3’s, points, assists and steals pushed me over the top. There were quite a few bright spots this week. Dennis Schroder continued his recent run to make me really glad I didn’t trade him away last year. Tim Hardaway got some starts while Kent Bazemore recovered from injury, and played pretty well in his opportunity. WCS managed 20 minutes in one game, AND, he actually put up a few stats to boot! Aaron Gordon exploded for 33 points one game, and then came back to earth the next.

Mike Malone was so impressed with Nikola Jokic that he said he needs to find a way to get him more minutes. Hooray! That was promptly followed by games with 20 and 19 minutes. He is hands down the best player on that Nuggets team though, what a passer that kid is! Nerlens Noel came back from injury again, and played a 8 whole minutes in his return. Coach then said he won’t be in the rotation unless another big gets injured, so he was a DNP-CD the next time out. That’s straight from the book on “How to completely tank an assets value into nothing”. The Philly tank continues apparently. In Memphis, Troy Williams sadly fell out of the rotation on Sunday, playing just 5 minutes. I’m hoping for more injuries so he can give me more (good) Andre Roberson lines. Nothing serious, just some minor nagging injuries, or maybe an outbreak of the flu in the locker room or something, haha.

This week I get JB. Always a fun matchup and usually one with some sort of meaning. Perhaps a little less so this year given my teams situation. Though, I’m practically healthy at this point. Sure, Middleton is still out, Oladipo can’t use one of his arms, Evans sits on every back-to-back, and Yabusele is out of the country. Yeah Noel, Luwawu, Beasley and T.Will are no longer in the rotation. But, other than those 8 guys I’m at full strength. Bring it on JB, bring it on!

Oh yeah, and a special shout out to my REL Football team Cam You Diggs It. In the championship game for the second consecutive year. Here’s hoping they can come closer to the 149 points they scored last week than the 118 they scored in the finals last year. Lets do this Geezers!

Some big positives for my team this week was Mudiay shot over 50% for a whole week while still getting 2.3 threes a game and getting minutes again which is a big change from last week. I  forget sometimes that he is only 20 and goes against some of the best players in the league constantly by playing pg so I should be less harsh when looking at his production and play. Curiously this improvement in his play seems to be (small sample size) related to the benching of Nurkic for Jokic and return of Gary Harris to the starting lineup.. As Slim and JB have mentioned on the pod the Nuggets frontcourt and rotation in general has been a bit of a mess so far this year. If Malone has settled into this rotation going forward and that the inconsistency has been the real issue for Mudiay up to this point, well lets just say I’m adding, consistent Malone, to the Christmas list.

Wiggins also stepped it up this week to help bring my team back from defcon 1 by averaging 7.5 boards, 4 asts, 2 stls and a blk for the week, the shooting was terrible but WIGGINS ACROSS THE BOARD STATS!!! He’s still just 21 for 2 more months and Thibs has been continuously positive about him and we all know he has the talent and athleticism to be capable of being more then a scorer so he’s brought me back from the ledge. That should be his new years resolution, across the board stats, a resolution all his fantasy owners can get behind.

I added Isiah Whitehead back to the team because of Lin having a back issue though he seems to be moving past it, however Isiah has still shown some solid play still with Lin there and looks like the first pg off the bench if Lin gets hurt or shuts it down later this year since the Nets stink. I’m glad I got him back since as I thought about those reasons it was clear I was way to hasty dropping him for such a speculative add in Reggie Williams. I also let go of Derrick Williams for being in Spo’s dog house so much despite the heat having so many hurt players at the time, with most of them coming back and Spo having a preference to slide Winslow to Pf it seemed like a waste to hold him.

I added Malachi Richardson in his place, I’ve been seeing him play by following Skal in the d-league and he’s been an aggressive scorer who’s shot the three well, the Kings really are a a roster just waiting to be demoed and if they resist on moving Cousins that wing needs to change with Afflalo getting dnp’d and getting more dnp’s by being upset about those dnp’s, McLemore looking like a bust for the Kings at least and Garrett temple now as the main sg it looks like there will be an opportunity for him  in the future.

As for the rest of my team Embiid and Saric suffered from the Okafor is the C move Embiid to the PF listen to him grumble about the move off the court while chewing out Okafor’s shitty D on the court every possession….. and then watch Noel drop f-bombs about minutes and not getting traded yet post game, we all knew this circus was coming at some point this year once everyone was healthy. After two terrible games trying to adjust Embiid killed the Nets to the tune of 33/10/1/2/3 with 2 threes and 70% shooting in 27 minutes, He’s going to be such a huge factor in my team winning match ups once he gets unleashed. Russell looks good as he’s being worked back into minutes with the Lakers, there treating him with Philly gloves but better safe then sorry. Everyone else besides minutes disappearing MKG is about the same as last week.

I’ll likely lose again next week to High as Greg Kite but it looks like I’ll put up a good fight in stls and blks with a chance to win ft% and to’s so I’m hoping for at least a repeat performance of this week for my team.

And Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays to everyone, enjoy the weekend coming up, except Morey…he can have all the lumps of coal for now deciding to release D-Mo to unrestricted free agency after all… such a disaster I feel compelled to see through now after putting up $55 FAAB on him.