Fantasy Update

So, I haven't done one of these in a long while. Since I'm just sitting here, refreshing realgm, and waiting for some new trade rumors... I figured it would be a good time to catch up on my fantasy teams. So here we go...

1) Yahoo Keeper - 8 teams, standard 9 stats, h2h league. By far my best performance in fantasy this year. I'm sitting comfortably in 1st place and 9 games ahead of 2nd place. Credit mostly due to my keepers Chris Paul and Danny Granger. Also I made some timely pickups of David Lee and Al Harrington right before the Crawford trade (both picked up on 11/21) and they've been excellent ever since. I've also been fairly lucky with injuries. The only guy that's been consistently out for me has been Chris Kaman and I actually just gave up on him this week. I've also held Greg Oden all season too but I've been winning DESPITE drafting him in our 2nd round (after 3 keepers). Actually the keeper format is what really saved me (from myself). While holdovers Paul and Granger were nice, the keeper system really prevented me from going with my original draft strategy of Jazz and 76ers. No Boozer, no Brand, no Deron. They were all kept by others. I did take Igudala with my first pick but that's about it. So their disaster seasons have impacted me minimally.

2) Yahoo Public - 12 teams, standard 9 stats, h2h league. I'm currently in 6th but 9 games ahead of 7th place, so I'm looking good for the playoffs. Drafting Boozer in the 2nd round hurt me quite a bit. Having Oden and AK doesn't help either. I was also jittery enough to drop Jameer Nelson in the 2nd week and missed out on all his good stats. At least he's out for the season now so I don't feel too bad about it. Going forward, assuming Boozer and AK both come back relatively the same (and soon), I should be able to make some real noise in the playoffs. Pickup wise, my highlights were Rodney Stucky earlier in the season (though he's cooled somewhat) and Ramon Sessions two weeks ago. Sessions has averaged 20 pts, 3.75 rebs, and 7.5 asts in his last 8 starts and his numbers are actually IMPROVING from game to game. Insane. The guy can seriously ball. I saw his 44 pt game against AI and the Pistons and he was just straight dominating. He just go to the rim at will... and not like a super fast Parker/Barbosa way. Naw, it just looked smooth and controlled... kinda like Roy where he just lulls you into complacency. I don't know about the interest from Milwaukee fans and front office, but I'd totally be interested in a Charlie V, Sessions, and Jefferson Deal for Amare + filler in real life.

3) Yahoo Expert - 12 teams, 13 stats, h2h league. This league adds FGM, FTM, 3PT%, and OREB as competitive stats and expands the roster to 16 (+3 bench). I played with these guys for the first time last year after finding a challenge on the Yahoo message boards. On top of the settings this year, last year they also tracked DREB for 14 stats total and it was CRAZY active. 9 of us had over 70 moves, 6 of us had over 130 moves, and the top guy had 330 moves! It was just insane. I was tied for 6th highest with 134 moves by the way and ended up taking 2nd place overall. Anyway, this year it's been a lot tamer though still lots of vets and fairly active.

This is my disaster league by far and I'm doing about as poorly as possible. I'm currently 9th and 12 games out of the playoffs. I'm scrapping by week by week. My draft was a disaster in that I picked Boozer, Deron, Kaman, G.Wallace, and Bogut in that order. I know, I know, Cave Man in round 3? WTF was I thinking. On top of that, I also took Ellis and Hinirch in rounds 9 and 10, respectively and made zero good sleeper picks in the last rounds (going Tyrus, Ridnour, and Q-Rich in rounds 14-16). Bah!

To say that I had a bad start to the season was an understatment. After the first 7 weeks, I was a woeful 0.367 winning percentage and dead last in the league. I made a small trade of Bogut for Terry earlier but with my injuries mounting, I made a desperation trade of Rose, Ellis, and Kaman for N. Robinson, Brewer, and Bogut. The reasoning was to trade away slightly better talent for more games played. I even dumped Boozer for DJ Augstin right after Boozer announced he was going to get surgery only for Augstin to go down on the SAME day the trade went through. What luck, right? But the "games played" strategy was working for a while and I was active on the add/drops and the following 7 weeks I managed a respectable .549 record (.458 overall) and crept up to 7th place. But then the injury bug came around again and I lost Bogut and G. Wallace and have now fallen back to 9th place. If you notice my first trade, that means I've now lost Jason Terry as well. I think I haven't had a single week with less than two injured on my bench and my highest was 6 injured in a week. All in all, I've made 5 trades and 59 moves and I have just TWO of my original 16 draftees left. If I make the playoffs (and that's a BIG if), I think I would have proven that there is some skill in fantasy and that there's never a reason for anyone to quit. Keep playing and keep trying!

4) CBS leagues... not much to report. 3 leagues, all public, all fantasy point based, h2h. Remeber "fantasy points" is a single composite stat (pts, rebs, stls, blks = +1, asts = +2, to = -1) and averaged over games played per week. Rosters are also weekly, so really, there's not much to do except set your rosters on Mondays and that's it. Maybe a pickup during the week, but like roto, because there's 3 bench spots... it's pretty hard to find anybody to crack your rotation on the FA wire. Esp. with the fantasy points, there's no reason to try and focus/balance certain stats, it's either one player has a higher fantasy point or not.

Result wise, I'm doing okay. Each league is 12 teams broken up into 3 divisions of 4 teams. Each division leader and a wildcard (best record that's not a div leader) makes the playoffs. A bit tougher than yahoo and a bit arbitrary because it's not necessarily the 4 best records that make the playoffs (also you play your division more), but I guess that reflects the reality. I'm currently a division leader in one league (10-6 record, next guy is right behind at 9-7), 2nd place in division in another league (8-8 record, right behind 1st guy who's at 9-7), and totally out of it in the third league. All in all though, I find the whole setup/leagues at CBS to be fairly boring and I would NOT recommend it. Stick to Yahoo people!