I wrote this blog for the boys over at my other favorite site. But it's been a few weeks and they've yet to do anything with it, so here it is for your viewing pleasure. Starting tonight I'm going to try to post something every week about this league (called Saus Town) that I'm absolutely obsessing over. Right now I'm 50 - 22, four games up on the closest competition and I'm just gettin' warmed up.
Side Notes: I was kind of depressed at the end because at the time I was struggling a bit and possessed nowhere near the same glamorous record I currently boast and LeBron wasn't stunning the league by shooting 80 percent from the line. I sound confident about my drafting ability and was disappointed for not doing better because I'm way more into this hobby and this league than anyone else in this draft likely comes near.
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I finally got my friends and neighborhood mates together for a basketball league this year. It took repeated reminders and many phone calls the day of the draft to wrangle the last few participants, but I got it done. Now all that stood between me and season long bragging rights was that night’s 8:45 draft.
Sitting in class that warm Monday California evening with my teacher lecturing on about capitalist inequality, I started tooling around with first round rankings. After a few minutes of internal debate, I concluded that CP3 was clearly number one, LeBron was two, Amare three and Kobe four.
With the initial issue of the top tier of players under my belt, I moved on to the other tiers and began game planning by taking a brief analysis of player combinations to strive for and to avoid. The one I most
wanted to visit was the punt FT and TO strategy in which your ideal first two picks are LeBron and Dwight
Howard, which in a H2H league are pretty hard to pair, as I would soon find out.
Fast Forward to 8:00. I’ve had about a half hour to relax at home and get my head ready for the night’s expedition. No research necessary because this year, my first as a blogger and columnist, I’m more on top of it than ever. No beer for me this time, although that 24 oz of Sierra Nevada in the fridge is calling my name. I need to go into this thing and cruise through clear-headed.
I get settled in downstairs on the couch, or the converted lawn furniture where a couch used to be a few years back before my mother impulsively dumped the old guy without plans for replacing it. I open up the Yahoo! draft, which, because of new and supposedly improved software, takes forever to load. After the window goes black and the lights come up I see I’ve got the first flag and am somewhat disappointed. My second and final live draft of the bball season and once again I have the first pick. Not exactly a great opportunity to try new things. Anyway, time to strategize.
In my other draft, a roto league, I took CP3, then Rudy Gay and Joe Johnson at the first turn—not a bad foundation. I conclude for sure I’m taking Paul because his fantasy game is so flawless that it would give me the freedom to go in a number of directions in the following rounds and just let the draft come to me. An excellent strategy for a pro like myself.
At this juncture, I should mention that my closest friends, the ones the league was really built for, were big fantasy baseball guys, new to the bball game.
Now, one of them is on and has mockingly accused me of rigging the draft. After I shrug that off he says, “Who you taking. LeBron?” Ha, this newbie obviously hasn’t heard of Chris Paul, newfound fantasy stud, I think to myself. Then my memory takes a trip back to class and my fantasy of building around LBJ. This along with my friend’s uneducated assertion combine to form one big neon “LeBron” sign in my mind and, without recalling why CP3 was such a good fit, it’s all made up. “I’m not sure yet,” I respond, knowing that in this game under any circumstance the closer you play your cards to the vest the better.
8:44: Everyone’s in and gabbing up a storm. No one’s paying any attention now but a few have wanted to talk about my pick. I remain tight lipped.
3, 2, 1: The screen freezes and my heart almost skips a beat. I’m prepared for this sketchy part of the Yahoo! draft experience, but it’s still unsettling. After a few seconds everything reappears and within moments King James is a member of “The King of Klutch” and then things get moving. I’m hoping futily that Dwight makes it down to me and the prospect seems possible as his name is way down on Yahoo’s draft list. As I am preparing for life without Dwight Howard, I am reminded of a mock draft strategy, jumbled now in my memory, in which the “expert” took LeBron and tried to build around him with good free throwers…might have been Brandon Funston. Did it work, I ask myself, momentarily forgetting it was a mock so everything worked. I remember he made some reaches but overall he was able to salvage a middle of the road free throwing squad.
Then I’m woken up out of my stooper when I see Dwight’s name light up and fade away and know it’s time to move on. My new vanquishing foe is my given named counterpart Austin H, my main Rolodex lending wrangler.
So now all the sudden it hits me: I haven’t seriously looked past Dwight Howard. I had had ideas, but nothing decided upon. Was I still going to punt FTs or try to salvage them and build around LeBron with good charity stripe performers?
Forty seconds into my first of back-to-back picks, I’m still struggling. Carlos Boozer (74% and a beast in points and rebounds) and Josh Smith (71% and a beast in blocks and steals) are sitting right there. On the
other side of the coin, so are Kevin Martin, David West and Rashard Lewis. Now, I’ve done all the
research. I know who will help, or at least I think I do. All that’s left is to pull the trigger. So I take a deep breath, swallow hard and get greedy, firing out West and Lewis’ names. I just couldn’t stomach the though of taking Kevin Martin so soon. This was a huge mistake though, I would later find out, as the other two don’t offset LeBron's free throwing nearly as much as K Mart would have.
So now I’m unhappy, which is the staple of any good compromise. I’ve taken a crack at being okay in one cat but given up hope of being dominant in all others. Now, three-and-a-half weeks into the season I can tell you just how stupid this strategy is, as you’re never going to win 9 – 0 or even 8 – 1 every week. You are far more likely to be successful if you know ahead of time that there are a good number of cats you’re going to own or at least rent (if you will) from week to week. That’s the way you win easily, pound the cumulative cats like they owe you money.
Instead now I have struggled in most cats from week to week, winning different ones in every matchup. One perk of this outcome is that it makes the game more fun by being less predictable. At the same time maybe it doesn’t and this is just the way I rationalize my choice so I don’t have to kick myself every time before I go to sleep. Anyway, it’s a long season and I’m more than up to the challenge.
