Friday, July 13, 2007

Fantasy Hoops - Initial Installment

One of the other things that I'm going to write about (and may even launch a separate blog once the season starts is fantasy basketball. I've been in a fantasy league for almost 20 years, and quite successful, especially recently, having won it all 3 of the past 5 years. I feel that the insights and projections from the many national writers aren't any better than mine, so I will contribute my own info.

Anyway, the NBA season never really stops. We had the finals end last month along with the NBA draft (one of my favorite days of the year). And this month is began the Vegas and Orlando summer leagues. But yesterday started the official free agency signing period.

Only a few major moves so far:

Rashard Lewis to Orlando: While Otis Smith has been blasted for overpaying for Lewis, at least he used his cap money to get the best player available. There are so many years where GMs get killed for hoarding all their cap money only to have no one take it, that I'm glad to see someone be aggressive and get the player they targeted. From a fantasy standpoint, this doesn't really help Lewis' value tremendously. His scoring should increase slightly to the 22-24ppg mark, but all else should stay about the same. The real beneficiaries should be man-child Dwight Howard who will now get a little more spacing down on the block because there is a shooter that needs to be guarded. Jameer Nelson might see his assist numbers increase as now there's someone who can actually put the ball in the basket on a consistent basis.

Darko Milicic to Memphis: Can't talk about Lewis without following up directly with Darko. I haven't seen an agent blow up like Cornstein did in a while...especially when the result is that his player becomes an UFA which would ostensibly allow for a bidding war and let the player choose the opportunity that they think will be best for them. Anyway, Darko teased us at the end of the 2005-6 season and again in last year's playoffs. But 12 & 7 are not truly great numbers in any case. Add to the fact that Darko couldn't even beat out Tony Battie for the starting job to begin the season and never averaged 30 mpg. Now I understand that Memphis has a coach in Iavaroni that should put in a system that should be good for Darko, but I still don't expect much. Yes there's no other true center on the team, but I have a hard time thinking that Darko will average more than 28 mpg on Memphis either. Too many athletic energy guys like Warrick, Kinsey who will earn their minutes. Gay and Miller (if he can stay healthy) will eat a lot of minutes too. So look for Darko if you need blocks, otherwise, he's not going to have much impact.

One last guy I want to mention has yet to sign -- Mo Williams. Mo (who I astutely drafted in the 8th round last year) seems to be leaning to the Heat even though all he can get is the MLE instead of bigger money ($8M+/year) from the Bucks. Defintely would be a huge upgrade from Jason Williams, but he goes from a second option with the Bucks to a third option behind D-Wade and Shaq (other than during Shaq's normal 40 game vacation in the middle of the season). I think would help Miami's chances of going deep in the playoff's, but probably modestly hurt Mo's stats in fantasy-land. The Bucks were all perimeter and Shaq will need the ball. Also Wade will handle the ball much more than Redd did, and is a much better rebounder so it should bring down Mo's assists and rebounds slightly.

2 comments:

Rudy said...

this guy's won 3 out of the last 5 years???

That's a tremendous indictment on the rest of the league

Anonymous said...

Well said.