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In case you haven’t noticed I’ll go ahead and state the obvious, I don’t like to lose.  What’s that?  You don’t either?  Good, because it’s that time of year once again when we find out just what lengths we’ll go to to insure an early playoff victory.  Can you drop a player who’s been one of your most productive for months?  It’s easy when they’re injured but when you start to see your season about to end can you let the better player walk to gamble on a player with more games?  I can’t make that life altering decision for you but I can offer you a few words of counsel.

First, I ask that you confess your most shameful of fantasy sins, not to me but to yourself.  If you drafted Tristan Thompson and ignored all the warnings then you need to first come to grips with that before you can proceed.  This will be the internal struggle that not until you have accepted will you truly find peace.  Secondly, you must accept that none of us can do this little thing called life, or fantasy basketball, all by ourselves.  There was once and still are people there to guide me and as I write I pass this knowledge on to you.  I know one day you will continue this circle of life and pass the knowledge on to the next generation of fake basketballers.  And third, only you can make the decision to turn your life, or roster, over with this new found knowledge.  In other words, if you post your login/password below I will not make the move for you.  Now my apprentice go forth with this knowledge of weekend streamers and bring us back word of your glorious victory.

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Before this playoff roster post gets too out of control I have a few things to say that will hopefully help to put things into perspective.  Like how this is based off of daily roster changes, 9-cat, H2H, you know, like the RCLs.  First off, everyone’s playoff needs are entirely dependent on the makeup of their roster.  It should be noted that this isn’t just about maximizing games, it’s also about helping to make up for our deficiencies.  For example, If I had Chris Paul on my team then I’m only going to get 2 games in the first round.  If I want to win let’s say assists,  then I need to stream accordingly.  Second, I’m going to use the saying, “heavy day”.  While trying my hardest to avoid the feminine hygiene jokes I will be referring to whether or not that days NBA schedule has a lot of teams playing or just a few.  This is important because on most heavy days you usually won’t need to stream a player or you may have a player you won’t get much from.  For instance Boston plays Mon, Wed, Fri next week and Wed, Fri, Sun the following week.  Wed and Fri are always heavy days and depending on the rest of your roster you may only get 1 game each week from say… Jerryd Bayless.  That would make him just about useless.  Third, I’m going to use 3-letter abbreviations for teams and days of the week.  Otherwise this would get far too unwieldy to read and I would have to learn how to spell all of those cities.  That’s not going to happen, isn’t learning the names of players enough?

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We’ve all been guilty of it at one point or another.  Maybe the great ones, you know, someone like The Dude, haven’t been guilty of trying to look into the future.  For us mere mortals life isn’t so easy that all we need to do is throw on our best pair of Birkenstocks and face the day as it comes to us.  At this time of year in fantasy, it’s time to forget about the prospects and focus on the here and now.  There aren’t any September call-ups… wait, where are you all going?  Baseball hasn’t started yet.  Fine, go, be gone with you then!  Ahem…  For those of us still playing for a championship – ohhh *snaps fingers* out of the playoffs burn!  Excuse me.  For those of us still playing for championships, *smirk*, we can’t afford to worry about the what ifs, we can only concern ourselves now with the what has, so here are my weekend streamers of who wills:

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Razzball Nation!  We’re here on a special weekend wrap-up where Slim (this is JB speaking) got to the action and JB just snuck in the beginning.  And snuck in the end!  I’m like Brad Pitt at the Oscars.  “Wait, why is he winning best picture!  So confused right now…”  Tomorrow I’ll proudly illustrate what I did over the weekend, but a nice defining touch hoops-wise was another great one from my boy Mike Scott, who while posting great lines, isn’t helping the Hawks win…  And that’s a problem!  Especially with Paul Millsap assumedly back sometime soon this week.  But I thought Gravity mighta gotten best picture too!  After a really rough send-off last Monday, went bonkers on the Suns for 20/5/2/3/0 with three treys and not a single TO.  I bet Philly sports fans wish they had no TO.  BOOM!  Double sports joke.  The main number that got my emoji tats all excited was the 40 mins played.  Millsap is going to travel with the Hawks as they migrate on a 5-game road trip, but very easily could miss the first few making Scott a solid short-term add.  So beam him aboard, win a big week as we near playoff time, and don’t forget to yell over the music if those pompous mf#@*$ng PA guys at the Oscars wanna condescend you by playing the music.  And here’s Slim with what he saw over the weekend:

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Just like I was telling JB a few days ago, there just isn’t enough time left.  He doesn’t have enough time to prepare for the coming zombie apocalypse just like I don’t have enough time to tell you a story loosely based on fictional people and places.  My goal is to ensure everyone reading this makes the playoffs in their leagues and there isn’t enough time to talk about underground bunkers and if George A. Romero was really a psychic time traveler who had come from the future to teach us how to stop the coming apocalypse.  Instead here are 12, wait, 1,2,3… yeah, 12 widely available weekend streamers that I think could swing a close match in your favor.  Who you need all depends on how you’re doing against your opponent and be they a Romero zombie, a 28 days later zombie, or even Billy Connolly, then maybe an add from this list can help you survive one more week.

Please, blog, may I have some more?

I can’t for the life of me remember why we went to Walmart on a Sunday.  It was probably for something pretty important but me and JB can get sidetracked pretty easily.  Anyway, I don’t want to be there any longer than necessary so when we go I insist we shop by the method we have fondly been calling The Heely Derby.  It’s just like the 80’s style Roller Derby, daisy dukes and all, only with Heelys instead of roller skates so we are slightly less conspicuous.  I remember it was early in the race, we were gaining speed still, weaving around the blockers when out of nowhere I was caught with a forearm shiver that sent me flying.  When I was able to finally free myself from the shirt rack and locate my adversary I was astounded by what I saw.  She couldn’t have been more than 8 years old, decked out in Hello Kitty paraphernalia and still locked in her Kung Fu like pose.  Even in my shock I could tell something was wrong.  Her kitty doll which no doubt was her most prized possession had been knocked to the ground.  Still locked in her pose she slowly turned her head toward me and calmly demanded, “Say you’re sorry”.

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Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.  A Priest, a Rabbi, and an Imam walk into a brothel.  The Priest says to the Rabbi…   Wait, why are you laughing?  You’ve heard it before.  That’s probably a good thing anyway because I might have been banned from the internet if I repeated it here.  Witty punchlines and non sequiturs aside the point remains unchanged.  No matter what our age, sex, or religion happens to be, we can’t just hope things are going to get better.  We need to prepare for the future.  For myself that means maintaining my perfectly quaffed facial hair with treatments of only the finest oils and herbs from the orient.  For JB, and he might get mad at me for telling you this, but he has this pink rubber bowl looking thing.  It has a wooden handle at the top and after about 5-10 minutes with that in the bathroom I swear he comes out looking taller.  Definitely more confident.  Still though – even the giants will shrink to the size of us mere mortals one day.  In fantasy basketball – as in real life – we can’t sit back and hope we are the next giants to be.  In a dynasty league, when our season is lost, that means selling off our older, declining players, and buying stock in the future.  Since we here at Razzball endorse insider trading, here is my take on a few future blue chippers:

Please, blog, may I have some more?

I could tell what JB was thinking just from the look in his eyes, or what I could see of them, but he had to verbalize it, “Come on I really don’t want to do this.”  I’m sure he didn’t but a lost bet has consequences.  It was time to go play some 2-on-2 tournament basketball and he looked ready.  He was carrying his basketball in one hand, his sandals in the other, and sporting a bright orange and pink spandex leotard, which can you believe has to be special ordered.  I thought the big and tall store would have a couple to choose from but they don’t.  Anyway where was I, oh yeah, and a matching blindfold with a couple tiny holes poked out.  For safety.  At this point there was no escaping our fate, JB knew that what he wanted was no longer relevant.  When we finally arrived we were ready to ball.  I knew we needed to make an impression so in a show of intimidation I threw my shirt off revealing my shiny black Tom Selleck-esque body fur, pulled my socks up high and tight, and mean mugged those fools as hard as I could.

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Making a trade in fantasy basketball can be a daunting task.  We all want something for nothing but that’s only a reasonable expectation if we want a month-old fruit cake leftover from Christmas or an STD.  But unfortunately for us, neither can blocks shots; they both do however require one.   For me there is a psuedoscientific method to follow when formulating a trade.  A simple step-by-step process that when followed should accomplish two things.  Firstly, the process helps us determine a player’s value in the eyes of our trade partner.  This is crucially important for the second part, to help prevent us from selling our players for less than they’re worth.  Here before you today I present my ‘get rich quick‘ guide to trading.  Fantasy basketball players I mean, not STDs.  Because that’s what ChristianMingle.com is for.

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JB really made me proud a few days ago. I guess it’s become kind of a ritual for us now. I know laser tag in an arena is fun and all but we needed real world experience. We decided the best place to hone our skills was to play at our local mall… at high noon. Of course we dress up in our best urban camouflage, for me it’s a simple business suit, that way I can stealthily weave in between what I’ve come to call the ‘zombie horde’. I never know what to expect from JB. He got me a few times with his police uniform but it hasn’t worked well recently so he adjusts. On this day he wore his most villainous of camouflage, the stripper schoolgirl, we have the mall security footage to prove it. But that’s neither here nor there, we were celebrating a match well played at the Candy World when two kids started rap battling in between the Pop Rocks and the Laffy Taffy. I thought they both played the role better than Jamie Kennedy, they’re accents were especially spot on. The hilarity of the situation wasn’t lost on anyone except of course, the two kids.

Please, blog, may I have some more?

I’m sure we’ve all experienced a day in our lives that through some kind of grueling experience we somehow came out victorious.  On the inside all we cared about was the instant satisfaction of winning but on the outside we appeared broken and defeated.  Not so long ago I had such a night.  It’s not the shame that makes it so difficult to talk about, but the shame that there’s a sense of glory and accomplishment that goes with it.  JB and I decided a few drinks were in order one night and we decided, while watching some NBA action, to have ourselves a little drinking game.  Sure I thought, I’ve had a few already how bad can this be?  The deal was that we would pick a player and for each assist that player had the other person would have a drink.  JB wanted it to be field goals made but I managed to talk him into assists, or so I thought.  “Chris Paul“, I said without hesitation.  Looking back I probably had a really stupid smirk on my face.  JB calmly ordered himself another, then he ordered me an appetizer – which looking back may have saved my life.  With a perfectly calm demeanor I got to hear words that will still cause me to cringe, “Kendell Marshall“.

Please, blog, may I have some more?

If you’re like JB and myself, then you like your fantasy basketball to be Head-To-Head.  The ability to talk smack to a new opponent every week keeps the intensity high.  And unlike Roto or NCAA football, we get The Playoffs, where heroes are made and injures decimate championship aspirations.  A nasty little side effect however is a shortened regular season.  After this week we will have played 10 weeks.  Marking the halfway point of the regular season.  If you’re in the bottom 3rd of your league then sacrifices must be made.  Injured players may need to be traded at less than face value or flat out dropped.  Streaming takes priority over upside.  There is still plenty of time to make up ground and sneak into the playoffs but it’s safe to say something isn’t working.  If you’re in the middle 3rd then you should take a long hard look at who on your team is on the way up and who is on the way down.  We all had our favorite sleepers coming into the year, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope was one of mine, Archie Goodwin was well liked around these parts too.  They weren’t giving enough so we had to move on to the next opportunity, c’est la vie, life goes on…  If your in the top 3rd of your league then you need to ensure you stay there.  You can be much more risky and shouldn’t pass up any high upside guy who is getting big minutes.

Please, blog, may I have some more?