Bye Week

So, this week is the start of fantasy playoffs in Yahoo. If you rocked your leagues (like me) and got a top 2 seed, then you've got a nice and relaxing bye week ahead. To be honest, I only rocked it in one of my three leagues this year. I'm riding high in first in my keeper league and my roster is stacked (Paul, Boozer, Roy, Kidd, Iggy, etc, the list goes on and on!) and I'm feeling really confident about it. My other two leagues... eh... not so much. I'm 5th in both leagues and with mediocre teams. At least my fantasy playoff streak is alive, 20 h2h and counting.

My "expert" league though, I'm especially proud of. The league has 15 man rosters (10 active, 5 bench) and I have ZERO players from my original draft. That's right, every single one of my guys had been either dropped or traded. I rebuilt that team on the fly when my team was under performing. At my worst in early December, I was actually dead last in the league. And as few as a month ago, I was stuck in 9th and nearly 14 games back from 6th place. But some timely trades and pickups (McDyess FTW!), I dominated these last 4 weeks, going 41-11, and secured myself a 5th seed.

I think this shows that no matter how bad your team might be, you can still make the playoffs if you're willing to make the adjustments (trades, drops). The important thing is to recognize your problem early (don't wait until February) and stay active on the FA lists. I'd say if you were over 1.5 full weeks behind 6th place around December/January, it's time for a major shakeup. For standard Yahoo leagues with 9 cats, that'd be ~13-14 games behind. And when it's time for a major shakeup, don't get too hung up on your major names that might be slumping/injured. When you're behind, it's important to get your games played. Even scrapping my 5-4 or 4-5 is better than consistent 2-7 beatdowns. You don't want to slip too far back in the rankings.

FWIW, here's my original roster and their current replacements, obtained either via trade or pickup.

	Drafted	Current Roster
1	Carlos Boozer	Steve Nash
2	Deron Williams	Jason Kidd
3	Chris Kaman	Antonio McDyess
4	Gerald Wallace	Andre Igudala
5	Andrew Bogut	Kendrick Perkins
6	David Lee	Chris Anderson
7	Derrick Rose	Mike Miller
8	Raymond Felton	Raja Bell
9	Monta Ellis	Jason Terry
10	Kirk Hinrich	Anthony Randolph
11	Rudy Fernandez	JR Smith
12	Grant Hill	Ronnie Brewer
13	Tyrus Thomas	Thabo Sefolosha
14	Luke Ridnour	Ramon Sessions
15	Quentin Richardson	Darius Songalia

And on a semi-related note, I'm also dominating my March Madness Bracket too. 42/48 correct picks and I still got every team going to the sweet 16. Yes, that means #12 Arizona and #5 Purdue. Go me! I rock at fantasy. Somebody should hire me to be a real gm/analyst ;-)

And now, here's a couple random new Shaq videos. Cuz you know, I'm all about the Diesel.