2016-17 REL Dynasty League Update: Week 19

While I didn’t quite make the win-now deals Greg Kite made, I did make one last deadline deal, and one that hurt.  I dealt Jae Crowder ($1) and Anthony Tolliver away ($1).  Absolutely love Crowder, although his best attributes really don’t fit on a Westbrook team – he’s a wing that hits good 3s while maintaining a good FG%, and never turns it over.  FG% and TO drains are Westy’s calling card!  So decided to embrace my strengths, and brought back Will Barton ($1), Evan Turner ($5) and Nemanja Bjelica ($8) in the deal.  Crowder is the best in the deal, but I added great depth and a few more dimes, while fully punting TO.  Plus Bjelica has looked great the past week, and helps add that mix of rebounding and 3s to play to my strengths.  Hopefully it’ll lead to a dominant playoff run in the semis and finals.

Can’t wait for the playoffs and to see how the #2-#5 seeds unfold this week.  Good luck to everyone, and this is the most joyous time of the year…  REL playoffs, baby!

Now the one difference between the two cases was that the $17 price tag of Kyle Lowrie made him an extremely valuable keeper target, should I decide to go for it. This I needed to sleep on.

Now my two criteria for making any type of “go for it now” trade is “Will I eternally regret this if it does not work out” and “Will this really make a difference”. After having slept on this, I decided that one trade offer met both trade criteria. Thus the trade with Kap of Kyle Lowrie for George Hill and Andre Iguadola was made. The inclusion of $1 Andre Iguadola is what made the difference in my mind.

On a side note, accepting this trade meant I finally had to say good bye to two players, one of them sadly being Chris McCullough (whom i had planned on floating a few offers for this week). I expected that at least one person smelling the opportunity for a good $1 keeper would be all over this, and that in fact was the case. Oh and I also had to part with one more player, and my debate was between Salah Mejri and Joe Harris. Since I decided it would be Salah Mejri on the basis of minutes, of course it would be Joe Harris coming up injured this week. Since the 17th player on our depth chart is perfectly replaceable, our, target replacement was that dude with 5 parts to his name (Luc Richard Mbah a Moute) on the basis of steals being an important category for us.

So of course we went on to get our butts kicked by Jokic 2-7. Truth be told, I have not had the time or energy to go back and figure out whether this butt kicking was a bad omen or just something fluky like a schedule difference. And at this point I am not sure it is worth the bother. I do know that the schedule has me playing #1 JB this week, and a similar butt kicking could mean we slide as low as fifth place. Not the way we want to end the regular season for sure.

Mejri replaces the roster spot that Jarrett Jack occupied for the last 14 months- Jack contributed a total of six points, five assists and two steals over that time period before spectacularly tearing his meniscus.  So hopefully Mejri can improve upon that stellar line.  While his minutes are speculative, he’s gotten 10 per in each of the last three and contributed a block and some boards per contest.  And he’s only a month removed from a 16 pt/17 rebound outing, so there is upside if he gets PT.  The real value here of course is the morale factor, though.  I’ve landed my 12th man (or 17th man I guess), and now I’m poised to make a run.

Oh, and in other news, I also traded for LeBron.

Save for some epic collapse during this last week of the season, it looks as though I’m going to secure the six seed for the REL playoffs.  Made it to the dance baby!  Feeling good about my chances if guys stay healthy, but it would be a tough road to get to the finals.  The #3 slot appears to be a toss-up between Scurry, Yappers and Slim.  Any of those three would be a really tough win- and even if I am able to make it past the first round, I would have a matchup with clear #1 JB in the semis.

As for my trade deadline moves:

– Traded TJ Warren ($1) for LeBron.  Obviously a game changer, and gives me an added top-10 guy for the playoff run.  Hate losing Warren, who I drafted for $1 as a rookie, and is a very solid play rest of season. However, the opportunity to bag LeBron was there and I felt I needed to take it.  The DNPs will be frustrating.  Has a four-game week in the first playoff week, three-game week in the second round and a four-game week in the finals.  Assuming he sits every back-to-back, that gives me 3-2-3 games/week in the playoffs.  Still a big upgrade over full time TJ Warren.

– Traded Joe Johnson for Mike Muscala.  Muscala fell out of the rotation, so it was either drop him or find a non-keeper/veteran type to trade for, which I found in Johnson.  Of course Johnson pulled his groin and has sat the first two games I’ve owned him, but that’s as valuable as DNPs from Muscala would have been.  Maybe he gets healthy and gives me some 3s/pts.

Couple these trades with the trade for Ibaka and Rose last week, and I’m liking the squad moving forward:

PG:  Steph Curry, Rose

SG:  Harden, Bogdanovic

SF:  LBJ, Covington

PF:  Ibaka, R Anderson

C:  Whiteside, Okafor

B:  J Johnson, B Jennings, D Lee, M Harrell, T Daniels, S Mejri, J Simmons

I think my top 10 guys are as good as anyone’s- for a 20-team league not too shabby.  The elite core of Durant-less Curry, Harden, LBJ, Whiteside and Ibaka should give me a solid start in all categories (save TOs).  Covington has been playing like a top-30 guy over the last few weeks, and Bobo’s moving the needle in Washington, averaging almost 20 with over four 3’s in his last four games.  I’ve said my piece on Okafor plenty of times- he looks absolutely horrible out there in real life, but the Sixers are trying to boost his value so I think he gets the minutes.  Unless of course they think he’s playing so poorly that rolling him out there will hurt his value even further (in which case this “sore knee” will turn into a season-ender).

We traded a $5 Joe Johnson for $1 Mike Muscala – Nothing major, but we weren’t keeping JJ, so Muscala could be a cheap source of blocks next year.

We traded $4 Evan Turner, $8 Nemanja Bjelica, and $1 Will Barton for $1 Jae Crowder and $1 Anthony Tolliver – This one hurt a bit, as Barton has been our boy since he broke out a couple of years ago. He and Crowder are basically the same age, so the main question is, Who is better? Crowder is more consistent, and could be great if moved next summer. Barton may get a chance at some point, but who knows when Denver will move their other wings. We like getting Crowder back (we traded him in a win-now move when we placed 2nd a couple of years ago), so it was worth Turner and Bjelica, as we have enough cheap “meh” guys.

So heading into next season, our core is $1 Crowder, $9 Otto Porter, $1 Tyler Johnson, $6 Zach LaVine, $20 Demar DeRozan, $29 Jonas Valanciunas, $3 Allen Crabbe, $29 Elfrid Payton for a grand total of $98. Then we have several $1-5 flyers, of which we will probably keep 3-5. So around $100 for 4-6 roster spots going into next years draft, with a very strong core, and hopefully we are back in contention after missing the playoffs 2 years in a row.

Good luck to the JB Gilpin-Cola’s (since he now has like half of our team), make us proud!

Last week may have been the most satisfying victory of the season so far. It’s not often a team outside the top 10 beats the #2 team 7-2. The only downer was that Bebe played a total of 1 minute as he fell out of the rotation post-Ibaka trade. That one hurts as he was really providing some good per 36 stats, and that front-court in Toronto is just so crowded now. I wonder if the Raptors finally realise they aren’t using JV to his potential and deal him in the off-season in order to open some cap space for all their free agents? If they do, Bebe could fill in as the 25 MPG starting center if they need it.

My general goals on a week-to-week basis for my team are to put up somewhere close to a .475/.800/60/600/225/140/50/30/70 line. I’m a well rounded team and that seems like a pretty well rounded line. I think if I can do close to those numbers in this league then I’m in pretty good shape. This week I hit on the first four, and was somewhat close on a few of the others. The only losses were in assists (against the #1 assist team by a mile), and turnovers (again). That said, my team obviously needs more assists, steals, and blocks. Those are the biggest weaknesses, and that’s where some of my draft budget will go next year. I’ll need to find myself a third point guard to go with IT2/3 and Schroder. I’ve got some options for blocks depending on how the NBA off-season shakes out with Bebe and Henson, but I imagine I’ll need a slight boost there as well.

Going into next year this is what the foundation of my team looks like.

PGs: I.Thomas ($14), Schroder ($3)

Wings: George ($31), Middleton ($1), A.Gordon ($15), Hood ($4), Hardaway ($1), T.Evans ($13)

Bigs: Jokic ($12), Love ($37), Noel ($12), Bebe ($1)

In addition to these guys that are a lock, I’ve got a bunch of wait and see guys too like Henson, Barnes, Yabusele, and Luwawu. After the WCS/Love trade I’m looking at around $50 leftover for the draft, which is less than I’d like but probably more than enough in the end. While I’m a firm believer in depth in a league like this, it’ll be pretty nice to roll out a starting 5 of IT/Middleton/George/Love/Jokic. Depending on how Middleton finishes the year, could they all be ranked top 30 next year? They’ve certainly got a shot to all be top 40. My next 5 has the potential to be pretty good for a 20 team league too, with Schroder/Hardaway/Hood/Gordon/Noel. Though all of them are pretty risky.

I couldn’t come to a point were I felt comfortable finalizing any trades at the deadline this year and some poor play since new years or not enough play out of some of my players definitely hurt their market value, its going to leave me with a tough few choices come next years draft, im not in too much of a bind though because Mudiay is definitely getting cut before the draft so his $31 will put me at $64 in space which is very tempting to just dump almost all on that on the best rookie or best veteran available and run it back with the rest of my young squad.

The major developments for my team over the past week have been the continued upwards swing of Russell and Clarkson, there’s rumors now that Clarkson might be moved into the starting lineup at sg which is exciting because if he succeeds there it takes his long term value to a whole other level, while Russell giving me that 20-4-6 with threes and stls an looking a real NBA pg really helps after the Mudiay disaster this year, glad I bought low on him when he was in Byron’s doghouse last year. Skal got a start against the Nets which is a pretty big deal since he looked good offensively even if Lopez bullied him pretty bad on defense, all the reporting i’ve read is that Skal is working really hard and was upset at being to weak to hold position on Lopez so fingers crossed this stash works out, helps that Joerger doesn’t like Willie at PF, for good reason and the more I see of Skal the more he reminds me of string bean Chris Bosh back in 03-04.

I finally got some free agents added to my roster this week, one of whom in Larry Sanders I went to add a few weeks ago when he was still not on Yahoo but forgot about checking back lol. Luckily the wire priority was in my favor, and dumping D-Mo and his massive waste of FAAB contract was an easy choice after the Pelicans got Cousins. I was burned in fantasy by both Sanders broken hand/broken face season and I’m quiting basketball season but he was a fantastic shotblocker and offensive rebounder when things were going well and if he has sorted things out for himself personally he could be a Whiteside like pickup for me which is worth the gamble when the best thing anyone can say about my center crew right now is that Zubac, “may” start at “some” point this year.

I’m also glad I was willing to toss $1 of my little $4  FAAB budget to outbid for Derrick Jones Jr. Let go of Edy which is fine with Larry replacing his spot on the depth chart. The Suns look like there finally starting to go with a youth movement there’s a spot as a backup wing open for him and while his shooting isn’t very good and his offensive skills are lacking his speed and athleticism are fantastic and he just turned 20 last month. It’s a gamble but on a team that needs to prioritize development with Chriss, Bender, Booker and Ulis if they want to be good at some point, it feels like the right kind of environment to take a gamble on the athletic wing lacking basketball skills.

Im hoping I catch the Chosen ones on a bad week so with a little luck I can jump up to be King of the bottom 5 to end the year but at worst i’ll just take not being in the bottom 2.