Fantasy Basketball Champion

For the first time ever my fantasy basketball team took the crown!

I've commented before that winning leagues is beyond the draft, and about persistence and vigilance on the waiver wire. And of course, a little luck.

I will say that, compared to recent fantasy baseball teams, the people I drafted contributed well. Often my final roster looks little like the one I draft, but as you'll see this year was more solid.

The draft:

1. Chris Paul
2. Brook Lopez
3. Ray Allen
4. David Lee
5. Mo Williams
6. Mike Bibby
7. Al Harrington
8. Richard Jefferson
9. Mario Chalmers
10. Michael Beasley
11. Samuel Dalembert
12. Antonio McDyess
13. Grant Hill

This was the second time I picked Paul for my team, and the second time he was decimated by injury, playing only 45 of 82 games. By all rights I should have lost the league right there, and this post wouldn't exist... just another cursed season spent struggling to reach third place. Fortunately, Mike Conley was available and maturing into a veteran leader, and outplayed Paul for the season thanks to his health:

Paul 841 points, 191 rebounds, 480 assists, 96 steals
Conley 959 points, 191 rebounds, 425 assists, 109 steals

Lopez, Lee and Allen all shined as expected, filling up their position's key categories. I valued them more than the rest of the league, bumping them up in my draft ranking. And they all had good shooting percentages (I won the league FT% title by a landslide, at 81.4%). Of my original draftees, these were my top three scorers. And Lee emerging as the best-passing center in the league was especially useful when Paul went down; by rights we should've been swamped in the assist category but managed to come in fifth. Especially since...

Williams... got hurt... aaargh. He played 69 games, including a couple sat out after the Cavs had wrapped up the conference championship. Still, when he played, he delivered what I planned.

Bibby and Chalmers were niche players that I wanted for 3 point shooting and in Chalmers' case for steals as well. But Bibby's value was diluted by the arrival of Jamal Crawford in Atlanta, and Chalmers was ineffective as a sophomore. I dropped both of them within the first month. So in case you're counting, that's my top 4 point guards who all underperformed. It's hard to overstate Conley and Lee's contribution in the assist department!

I don't know how I landed Jefferson, I knew his game would be an ill fit for the Spurs and dropped him pretty early. McDyess was just bland - my first cut of the season. I liked the Hill pick, but his production was average in many things, and in fantasy you need someone who'll either do one thing exceptionally or several things above average. So he was gone in November as well.

I thought correctly that Beasley was undervalued, and he delivered 14.8 points, 6.4 boards, 1.0 steals and 0.6 blocks while keeping his turnovers below 2.0 and shooting 80% from the charity stripe.

Victory came from a series of good fortune, occasionally disguised as bad fortune:

Dalembert stunk up the joint in the first few weeks (I dropped him), then became a beast for two solid months (I got him back before anyone noticed - whew!). He and Erick Dampier (who I held for a month until he was besieged by mysterious ailments) clawed us out of a huge blocked shot deficit to the point that we ended the year in second place in that category.

During November one team dropped Mehmet Okur, the well-rounded Utah center who shoots 3 pointers as well as performing adequately in the paint. In these situations the team in front of the waiver line gets first crack at newly released players, and I was far enough behind that someone else snapped him up. Darn!

That first month also revealed a surprise emergence of 3 point gunner Danilo Gallinari, who perfectly replaced the treys I was hoping for from Bibby. Plus he averaged about a steal and more than half a block a game. Vigilance saved the day in finding him before the competition.

The two masterstrokes, though, were the pickups of Danny Granger and Andrei Kirilenko. Both were fighting injuries and dropped by their teams. Granger was a hero for us - number 6 overall draft ranking, so salved the pain of the Paul injury. What was that owner thinking dropping him? Having missed Okur earlier, I was at the front of the waiver line and got him. And he became my main man. While Kirilenko succumbed to his injuries eventually, he gave me two fantastic months of blocks, steals and shooting percentage. These two pushed us into the league lead with room to spare, which we needed to hold off challenges the rest of the way after the injuries struck.

This season had it all... misfortune, struggle, perseverance, astute drafting, timely and strategic waiver wire hunting, and ultimately a satisfying win for the good guys.