Hoops Lab: The Things We Do For Fantasy Sports

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Updated on October 27, 2015 12:01PM EST

It's that time again, people! Basketball season is HERE, and it's my favorite time of year. But even I must admit, I hate the way that the fantasy hoops season is almost snuck in right after football begins. I mean, baseball gets a whole summer to shine fantasy-wise while the fantasy hoops season ends in early April, then there's nothing but fantasy baseball for FIVE WHOLE MONTHS until the NFL season kicks off in September. Meanwhile, the fantasy juggernaut (which I help cover) of football only gets about a month before the fantasy hoops draft season starts ramping up, at the same time as fantasy hockey, real-life playoffs baseball and even fantasy golf (which I also cover). Hoops is my absolute favorite, but I end up having to push a whole lot of other things to the side in order to really get into it like I want to.

And last Monday absolutely epitomized that because in addition to the joys of sports, in my free time I'm also a biomedical engineer on the side. And every year around this time, I attend one of the largest science conferences in the world at the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) meeting that has about 30,000 engineers, scientists and other tech heads all in one place. The SfN meeting this year was held in Chicago, and I had to present a fun, exciting poster on how to best insert a 3-dimensional microelectrode into neural tissue with minimal tissue damage. But I also had

So I knew that I would have to find a way to fit the hoops into all of the science, but I had a plan. My poster was on Sunday, so all I had to do on Monday was work at our booth which would be done by 5:00 p.m. I purposefully left Monday evening free of any scientific or business entanglement, planning to eat on my own and then do back-to-back drafts that night (with the NFBKC draft as the pinnacle of the night). Fool proof.

Or so I thought. Instead, the president, VP and sales director of my company decided we should eat dinner as a group that evening about 6:00 p.m. Then, we found out that a business frenemie of ours was having a social that evening, and they wanted us to attend. Which pushed our company dinner back to 7:30…the exact time that my first draft was scheduled to start, and a half hour before the NFBKC draft. And just for kicks, the president of the company decided to invite two of our company board members to the dinner as well, so the dinner became absolutely MANDATORY that I attend. Great.

So, did I do the smart thing and punt on the fantasy hoops drafts so I could concentrate on helping/saving my real job? Of COURSE NOT, don't be ridiculous. Instead, I utilized the joys of the smart phone and made myself that obnoxious guy that sits at the dinner table and just stares at their phone for hours. I mean, what other choice was even reasonable in this situation?

So anyway, the first draft starts. I'm sitting directly across from the COO of our company and not paying him any attention at all, but I try not to let this bother me. The draft is on Yahoo, and this marks the first time that I've used their app to draft a team. I'm nervous about the signal strength, but it works pretty well. I'm picking seventh and decide to go with DeMarcus Cousins. I'm hoping to get Damian Lillard on the comeback (it's a 10-team draft), but he goes two picks before me and I end up taking Carmelo Anthony in the second round. The "drama" with this draft is that I can't simultaneously draft and look at the RotoWire Draft Kit rankings, which I like to do, so I'm going from my gut and my memory. But since I contributed a bit to the rankings I had some idea of where the players were ranked, which served me well on my next few picks: Draymond Green in the third (currently No. 14 on the RotoWire rankings), Andre Drummond in the fourth (No. 12) and Kemba Walker in the sixth (No. 31).

I missed my fifth round pick, and increasingly had to fill my queue and miss my subsequent picks, because right around this time the NFBKC league was getting going. I'm now using my phone to text with Liss, who is literally texting me every pick that's made as I try to feed him advice on who we want to take. This doubles down on the blindness I was experiencing in the previous draft, as now not only can I not look at the RotoWire Draft Kit but I don't even have Yahoo's default rankings or even an up-to-date pool of the players that are left. Instead, I'm straight up going from my gut and swinging for the value fences, with Liss giving me a nudge every so often if he sees an obvious name still on the board. It was crazy, but all-in-all, I don't think it worked out too badly.

In the NFBKC league (12-team league) we had the 10th pick and nabbed Lillard with hopes for Paul George on the comeback but instead we settled for Carmelo Anthony again, which isn't bad if he's fully healthy. In the third round we nabbed Draymond Green again, with Kemba Walker on the back end of the fourth (the league inverted the draft order every two rounds). Huge upside in the "Greek Freak" Giannis Antetokounmpo in the fifth, big man role player Joakim Noah in the sixth, then relocated point guards Ty Lawson and Deron Williams sandwiching a Zach Randolph pick. At this point the president of my company has started staring daggers at me, so I give Liss a handful of names as potential guys for the queue (which turn into Mason Plumlee, Julius Randle and Josh Smith in the next few rounds) and leave the rest of the draft to him.

At the end of the day, I'd say that both drafted teams are pretty solid. Reasonably balanced, no glaring weakness categories and some areas that should be surplus that I can work around. And my boss didn't actually fire me (though I did get a bit of a talking to later), so I'm still gainfully employed. All in all, not a bad night's work. And another example of overcoming everything that's going on in order to get ready for fantasy hoops season!

Around the NBA: Thoughts on some storylines in the Cheat Sheets

Different League Types
There are four different cheat sheet formats in our NBA Draft Kit: head-to-head (roto), head-to-head points, roto (season) and points (season). Often when we discuss rankings we default to the season-long roto rankings, but there are differences in head-to-head and points-based leagues that are worth mentioning. The biggest difference is that in season-long roto leagues any one poison-pill stat category (most often free-throw percentage) can make an otherwise great player difficult to start. But in points-based or head-to-head, the poison pill doesn't matter nearly as much.

Who's No. 1? 2? 3??
Most of our cheat sheets have Anthony Davis as the No. 1 overall player, though the head-to-head has Stephen Curry. I agree that Davis should be the top player because if he stays healthy he has absolutely no weaknesses in his game. Rumor has it he plans to shoot from three this year as well, which is downright unfair for a player who could contribute strongly in every category with the possible exception of assists. And while Curry is great, for my own personal No. 2 I'm looking at Kevin Durant on the come back. To me, the only question is health. The last year that he was fully healthy, Durant averaged 32 points (50.3 percent FG, 87.3 percent FT), 7.4 rebounds, 5.5 assists, 2.4 treys, 1.3 steals and even 0.7 blocks per game. Some of that was with Russell Westbrook out, but still, I think Durant is the only other player who could give a healthy Davis a challenge for No. 1. At three, Curry is great value, but I'm not sure that I may not have James Harden just a tick higher. Can't go wrong either way.

Where to put LeBron James?
James is No. 6 in our roto cheat sheet, behind Davis, Curry, Durant, Chris Paul and Harden. He's generating a lot of conversation this year because he's still generally accepted as the best real-life player in the NBA. But even young LeBron ages, and as he enters his 30s with a dozen years of wear on his legs, the thought is that this year he may be rested more often in the regular season to make sure that he is fresh for the postseason. No one knows exactly how that rest might take place; he might play fewer minutes on a daily basis, he may sit out more, but either way the thought is that he will no longer be challenging the young bucks for the high-minutes and high-production during the regular season that you would expect to see in the postseason.

DeMarcus Cousins vs. Damian Lillard
In the two drafts that I mentioned above, I took Cousins in one and Lillard in the other, both near the bottom of the first round. Cousins is more proven as a contributor on this level, but he still has upside potential as a player that has flashed the ability to operate in the Anthony Davis sphere for long periods at a time. The main question with Cousins remains his volatility, especially with his well-publicized poor relationship with head coach George Karl, but he has come into his own enough in recent years that I expect huge things from him this season. Lillard, on the other hand, is a bit of a wild card. We had a great article this summer about how Lillard's volume didn't change dramatically last season even in the games that LaMarcus Aldridge missed, but I just don't buy it. Aldridge isn't the only Trail Blazer to leave town; in fact, the entire starting crew outside of Lillard left. As such, I tweeted both before and after the news that Lillard led the preseason in scoring:

As I tweeted a while back...Damian @Dame_Lillard will score a LOT of points this year for new look @trailblazers https://t.co/J4YlcS0ASp
— Andre Snellings (@ProfessorDrz) October 24, 2015

I could see Lillard scoring in the mid-to-high 20s with well over three treys to go along with strong assists, free throw percentage and reasonable steals. On our roto rankings we have Lillard at eight and Cousins at 18 (honestly I don't know why Cousins isn't higher, as he's the rare big man that's good from the line), while in our head-to-head we have Lillard at eight and Cousins at 10. Factoring in position scarcity, I could see it going either way.

Is Paul George all the way back?
George was a top-10 roto player two seasons ago before his horrific leg injury last year, but is he all the way back? I went to watch the Pacers play against the Pistons this preseason, and this is what I tweeted:

Sitting here at @DetroitPistons vs @Pacers preseason game. @Yg_Trece (George) has 31 in 3rd; @iAmSJ (Stanley Johnson) & Kentavious look good
— Andre Snellings (@ProfessorDrz) October 7, 2015

George was everywhere that game, and physically there was nothing to suggest that he's less than his best. You're always a little bit leery after such a major injury, but I've got George back to at least challenging for a top-10 slot this season.

The New Shaq Rules
In our head-to-head rankings, Andre Drummond (12) and DeAndre Jordan (17) are both ranked in the top-20. In the head-to-head points rankings, they are 10th and 11th, respectively. But in the roto leagues, Drummond is 44th and Jordan is 36th. Why the difference? Because Drummond shot 38.9 percent from the line last year while Jordan shot 39.7 percent. The only reason that they didn't drop further is because neither has historically shot a (relatively) lot of free throws. But both are young players, looking to score a bit more and the "Hack-a-Shaq" is still legal and seemed to be gaining prevalence last year, so in roto leagues I think I'd drop both of them a bit further. I love them in head-to-head or points, but in roto leagues they'd be hard to win with.

LaMarcus Aldridge in San Antonio
On RotoWire Fantasy Sports Today with Chris Liss and Jeff Erickson on Monday (XM 87, Sirius 210), Jeff kept using the phrase "Popoviched" to describe the phenomenon of a coach resting their players in the regular season to have them fresh for the playoffs. Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich both invented and mastered this approach, and it makes his teams perennially dangerous in the postseason. But it absolutely sucks for fantasy owners. Aldridge has been a big-minutes, big-volume player in a Trail Blazers offense that has been built around him for years, but in San Antonio he is another candidate to get Popoviched. As such, a player that has flirted with first-round value the past few years is now not really on my radar in the first three rounds (he is 23rd in the RotoWire roto rankings).

Young "Vets" Ready to Bust Out
Last Friday, also on RotoWire Fantasy Sports Today, Liss and I talked a lot about how a young player performing well as a teenager could be a sign of massive potential. We were specifically speaking of Giannis Antetokounmpo, who entered last season a teenager and showed himself to be a capable NBA starter. Now aged 20, the Greek Freak could be on the verge of exploding. RotoWire has him 73rd in the roto rankings, but I'd be glad to get him as a fifth/sixth rounder who has top-25 upside. Nerlens Noel is another that was strong as a 20-year old in his pseudo-rookie season last year, and his combo of production and upside has him at 33rd on our roto list. And while Victor Oladipo is a bit older (23), he still ramped up a lot as a sophomore and has explosive potential in year three (ranked 34th).

Can Reggie Jackson Do It Again?
Last season, Jackson went nuts once he was traded to the Pistons and got a starting opportunity, averaging 18.5 points, 8.7 assists, 4.9 rebounds, about one three-pointer and about one steal per game. But he was a free agent at the time on a team that knew it was going nowhere, so the question was whether he could repeat it. Jackson had a 20-point, nine-assist, three-rebound, two-trey, one-steal, one-block performance in the preseason against the Spurs and is one of the focal points of the Pistons' marketing scheme (second only to Andre Drummond), so he certainly is expected to do big things again this season. I personally think that he can, with only Brandon Jennings' impending return from an Achilles injury as a potential stumbling block down the road.

Is Kemba Walker Worth His High Ranking?
RotoWire has Walker at No. 31 on our rankings, but as I mentioned above, I was able to get him in pretty much every league I drafted because he is ranked in the 50s on some other draft boards. And in the initial RotoWire rankings, Walker was ranked even higher (he briefly flirted with the top-20 off the initial projections). Why are we so high on him? Well, for one thing, he's another relatively young player (25) who is ramping up toward his peak. Yahoo has him at No. 56 in their preseason rankings, but he finished 53rd two seasons ago and 48th last year despite struggling with injury for much of the season. Reasonable improvement, with reasonable health, should be enough to move him a few slots up the list this season. Plus, there is no other perimeter volume-scoring threat on the Bobcats, so Walker should be able to shine.

Comeback Player of Year
A lot of players that had relatively down seasons a year ago are in new locations this year, and thus could be expected to bounce back. I discussed this with Jason Rubin on the TYT Sports/RotoWire video segment this weekend (which you can see below), and we went through players like Rajon Rondo, David Lee, Deron Williams and Lance Stephenson. I think that Williams and Lee should both bounce back well in their new environments. Fantasy-wise Rondo is boom-or-bust with a seemingly terrible relationship with head coach George Karl. I just don't see it for Stephenson, who still can't seem to find his shot.