We have our first blockbuster trade of the UPL Basketball season.
Lebron James going to the Milwaukee Bricks
Joakim Noah and Eric Gordon to Stephan, who will also have to rename his fantasy team. I've suggested WakeupWithoutTheKing as an option.
This will either be the most brilliant or the most idiotic trade in the history of the UPL.
Let's break it down.
LeBron, typical: 29.5 PTS, 1.5 3PM, 49.5% FG, 76% FT, 1.1 OREB, 7.1 REB, 7.5 AST, 1.7 STL, 1 BLK, 2.1A/TO.
LeBron, this year: 22.2 PTS, 0.9 3PM, 44% FG, 79% FT, 0.2 OREB, 6 REB, 8.7 AST, 1.8 STL, 1 BLK, 2.0 A/TO
The major difference? His FG% has dipped, especially from 3. And he's taking about 4 fewer shots (including 2 fewer 3-pointers) per game. Also, his OREB's have gone down quite a bit, as well. Why is this happening? The Heat are playing at a tempo at about 102 points per game, virtually the same as what the Cavs did last year. The problem is that there are more players who actually want to score (and are actually good at it).
So why might you want to hang on to LBJ? His peripheral stats are still darned good. You're picking up an extra AST, though you're giving away an OREB in doing so. Everything else is basically the same. LBJ has likely peaked statistically (since it's really hard to do more than he has done the last few years). But if you believe that the Heat are going to keep playing at 102 points per game (and not 110 PPG), then you may need to temper your scoring expectations. So in that sense, now may be the perfect "sell high" opportunity. And he's not quite as untouchable as he would have been being a 1-man show in Cleveland or wherever else.
Which leads to the 2nd part of the equation. Joakim Noah and EJ Gordon
Gordon, this season: 21.1 PTS, 0.9 3PM, 47.7% FG, 76.6% FT, 0.6 OREB, 3.7 REB, 4.7 AST, 1.3 STL, 0.7 BLK, 1.375 A/TO.
Noah, this season: 15.9 PTS, 0 3PM, 52.6% FG, 77.5% FT, 4.1 OREB, 13.9 REB, 2.6 AST, 1.0, STL, 2.1 BLK, 1.286 A/TO.
Now, these numbers may improve a little bit for Gordon, as he develops (and by all accounts, he's getting better). He's largely limited to being a scorer, for fantasy purposes. And 21.1 PTS is good by any evaluation. However, I'd argue that if you are only going to get about 4 REB and 4 AST, (both below average for a UPL championship-caliber team), then you need to get a little more than 21.1 points (unless he's a real 3PM guy). This is sort of my argument against guys like Rip Hamilton, Jamal Crawford or Jason Terry.
On the other hand Noah has been tearing it up, scoring reasonably well, and leading the league in OREB and REB, and being a definite asset in BLK. He's scoring about 5-6 more points per game than last season, and this is coming from 3 more FG attempts and 2 more FT attempts. The major reason? 9 more minutes per game. Personally, I'd be a little suspect that this will stay the case throughout the season. Why? There's some dude named Boozer that the Bulls paid a lot of money for last season that will be coming back in a few weeks. In addition to scaling back to something like 32 minutes, there may be some other things decreasing. Given Noah's team-oriented nature (and Boozer's black-hole-ish game), he may be deferring on those extra shots on offense, and may give up a few of those REB. We shall see.
Of course, the comparison to similar trades should be made. Last season, there were only minor rumblings when the O.N. Thugs and SuckMyDribblingBalls swung a major trade. The Thugs acquired Kobe Bryant, and send Monta Ellis and David West over to SMDB. At the time, West was ranked somewhere in the high 20's, low 30's, Ellis was ranked in the 40's (coming off injury), and Kobe was ranked 5th, I believe. And Ellis was trending upward at the time. So, the idea is that it would take roughly two 3rd round picks to get a clear first round pick. And since then both parties have been pretty happy with the results. Kobe's done his thing (despite gimping around the last half of the season in 2009-10), Ellis has gone nuts for a bad GS team, and David West keeps churning out games of 19 and 8 with high efficiency.
Now, given that LBJ is much younger than Kobe, in a keeper league, you'd expect a premium to what was paid for Kobe. I'm not sure if Gordon and Noah would be better than Ellis and West. Ellis is clearly better than Gordon (about 5 PTS , 1 more REB, about 2 more STL per game, and 51.1% FG). West is a little older, and has been unselfish (and let Okafor get more established), so his numbers of dropped off a bit this year as he's gone from 36 to 30 minutes per game. Noah is getting about 6 more REB than West right now (scoring slightly favors West). But I'm not sure that the margin between Noah and West will be as high as it is now, once Boozer gets into the mix. Maybe you're getting a slight premium to Ellis/West. But I'd argue that LBJ should be getting a heavier premium to Kobe than that. That isn't to say that this trade doesn't help Stephan's team. Noah is the sort of player that definitely helps you win - single-handedly keeps you competitive in 3 categories, about neutral in PTS, and is a plus FG% guy.
Would an open market for LBJ have fetched more? Jeff - make sure that you're reading this next section, because I have a suspicion that you could get yourself 2 or 3 keeper pieces, which probably makes sense for your franchise. But I think that it would have. So in that sense (and I don't say this often), Jeff made a great trade. I don't know how many times those words show up in the same sentence here on the UPL Blog. So savor it :-)
I'd bet that C-Lauff would have at least thought about Carmelo and David Lee. Reasonable chance he bites on Carmelo and Horford. And he'd definitely move Carmelo and Collison. If you offer LBJ to OD, you can probably get D12 and Raymond Felton. Or Monta Ellis and Tim Duncan. Probably not D12 and Monta Ellis, though. From the O.N. Thugs, you 2 pieces out of Roy, Aldridge, Boozer, and maybe even Westbrook/Lopez. I'd guess that Robby would move 2 pieces out of Rondo, Z-Bo, Bosh, and Gay.
My prediction? Jeff plays this one savvy and moves LBJ again (maybe with another marginal keeper) and locks down 3 legit keepers that he can really build a team around.
Meanwhile, on a completely unrelated topic... Jeff, are you a Trail Blazers fan? They play basketball the right way, and two guys that really do it well are Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge.... and a guy with huge upside is DeMarcus Cousins. I really think that these guys would be a nice set of players to build a strong UPL franchise around...
-Chairman (aka O.N. Thugs)
Friday, November 12, 2010
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Assumptions
I'm copying and pasting parts of an e-mail exchange that I'm having with Westy about some basketball stats. Mainly, it's me making fun of John Hollinger's power rating statistic, which has somehow become a fixture on ESPN.com. A second issue worth thinking about is how perfectly smart people (like Westy) can fall into common traps. Basically, on the front page of ESPN.com, there was this slick graphic that showed that the Heat were the top team in the NBA sofar, based on John Hollinger's Power Ratings. And of course, I thought that was crap.
My initial e-mail was intended to give a little ribbing to Westy about his love for "advanced" stats like the stuff that John Hollinger uses. Just one sentence and a picture from ESPN.com:
Westy - I guess that I see why you love your advanced stats and hate winning :-)
Note the "winning isn't everything" lead-in. We don't need wins; we have numbers with decimal points.
Also, note that this is before my man D-Will led a 4th quarter comeback, which in turn led to an upset of the Heat by the Jazz in OT.
Of course Westy's response is that Hollinger uses strength of schedule (SOS), with the idea being implied that a statistician like Hollinger wouldn't post anything as ridiculous as a 5-2 team being better than a 7-0 team, unless there was a good reason. To be honest, I had no idea what Hollinger's methodology was, other than it was spitting out shady results. So I took a peek at what was under the hood by looking at the methodology. And of course, I'm appalled.
So, I shoot off an e-mail to Westy. I make some smart ass comment about how going 4-0 against the Nets, T'Wolves and Sixers, while going 1-2 against the Magic, Celts, and Hornets clearly makes you the best team in the NBA. But more importantly, you notice that the Hornets have a higher SOS than the Heat, yet are ranked well below them by Hollinger (despite winning head-to-head). I'm OK with using margin of victory as a component in team evaluation, but you probably shouldn't use it straight up. At this point, I hadn't scrolled far enough down to see the actual equation being used, but I did see that the Hollinger starts off by talking about margin of victory, which suggests that's the major component of this ranking (which is what it looked like at first glance). Part of my comment to Westy:
Seems that Hollinger's first criteria is margin of victory, probably w/out any sort of cap or deeper view beyond the final score. In that sort of scenario, you're rewarded more for winning by 54 points against the T'Wolves and Nets and losing twice by "only" 3 and 8 points (only 2-2, but still +43), than you would be for, say, going 4-0 and winning by 9 points each game (+36). Don't get me wrong. Margin of victory/loss should count, but once you get beyond, say 15 points, you'd have to show me a strong case for why it matters.
Now, I'm sure that Westy didn't look at the Hollinger methodology very closely, and my guess is that he assumed that a statistician that's associated with the "advanced stat" movement wouldn't use a crude tool. At least, certainly not to the extent that I was insinuating. Westy suggests that Hollinger is actually using offensive and defensive efficiency, which would be the best (simple) predictor of team performance. Westy's probably right about how team efficiency stats would be a pretty good predictor, at least compared to the readily available stats. But the assumption is that Hollinger is using something that has built off of those stats.
I had a suspicion that Hollinger's stuff just couldn't be as useful as Westy was suggesting, with the results it was spitting out. So I went back to the explanation of the methodology. And sure enough, we see this:
Look at some recent NBA history, readily available on ESPN.com. Since 2002, NBA teams SOS at the end of the season will range from 0.484 to 0.514. The reason that everyone doesn't have a .500 SOS is that you have unbalanced schedules, and the certain conferences/divisions are stronger than others. But if you take the difference from 0.500, and then divide by 0.037, you find that SOS will impact a team's power rating anywhere from -0.378 to +0.432. Okay. So what?
Well, remember that we're starting off at 100 points. SOS impacts you less than half a point either way. So how do you get teams with ratings of 86.814 (the Wizards so far this year) and 116.15 (the Heat, before their loss to the Jazz)? Well, SOS can be a bit skewed right now, but even with a 0.600 SOS, the contribution to the power rating would only be about 2.7. The only other component is scoring margin. Again, if you look at the stats since 1999, you'll see that the lowest/highest scoring margins have been -11.5 and +10.2 points per game. Remember that SOS contributed somewhere between -0.378 to +0.432 points in power rating, we're seeing how scoring margin contributes about 25 times more. This suggests that over 96% of the power rating comes from scoring margin, and less than 4% comes from SOS. Basically Hollinger's power rating is just point differential with a slight tweak based on SOS. Not quite as advanced as something based on offensive and defensive efficiency.
As for the Heat, and their 116.15 power rating? So far this year, their SOS was a very high .595. Divide by .037, and you get 2.57. So, if 100 is the baseline, their SOS contributes 2.57, then their scoring margin contributes the other 13.58. If you place this in context, and look at the actual results, then the interpretation is that the Heat are the best team in the NBA because a) they've smoked the Nets and T'Wolves and Magic, and have lost two relatively close games. Now, if we were in a game where you took all of the points that a team scored in a season, and then subtracted the points that were scored on them, and then awarded a trophy to the team that had the greatest differential, then scoring margin by itself would be a great stat. But, in a game where you have discrete wins and losses, you really should capture the variance of margins in wins and losses. I'm not inclined to look in depth at creating these measures right now (mainly because I'm lazy). But you should be able to tell that once you look under the hood, this Hollinger power rating isn't quite as advanced as the the slick graphics and front-page placement on ESPN.com would have you believe.
In an ideal world, Westy would be safe in his assumption that something that makes the front page of ESPN.com as something from an "advanced stat guy" would be truly useful. Smart people would actually be putting together useful information that extends existing knowledge. Unfortunately, in our world, people have an incentive to sandbag on the truly useful stuff, and instead, we're exposed to the stuff that can fool most of the people most of the time. I'll give Hollinger the benefit of the doubt, and assume that he's got better stuff that he's keeping under wraps, hopefully because it's proprietary for some NBA team that he's consulting. In fact, he even admits that this power ranking needs some caveats. But I don't think that most folks think that it's as crude as I've (hopefully) demonstrated it to be. After all, when you see that the Heat are 116.150, and the Wizards are 88.814, you have all these decimal points that suggest that there's something smart going on under the hood.
-Chairman (aka O.N. Thugs)
My initial e-mail was intended to give a little ribbing to Westy about his love for "advanced" stats like the stuff that John Hollinger uses. Just one sentence and a picture from ESPN.com:
Westy - I guess that I see why you love your advanced stats and hate winning :-)
Note the "winning isn't everything" lead-in. We don't need wins; we have numbers with decimal points.Also, note that this is before my man D-Will led a 4th quarter comeback, which in turn led to an upset of the Heat by the Jazz in OT.
Of course Westy's response is that Hollinger uses strength of schedule (SOS), with the idea being implied that a statistician like Hollinger wouldn't post anything as ridiculous as a 5-2 team being better than a 7-0 team, unless there was a good reason. To be honest, I had no idea what Hollinger's methodology was, other than it was spitting out shady results. So I took a peek at what was under the hood by looking at the methodology. And of course, I'm appalled.
So, I shoot off an e-mail to Westy. I make some smart ass comment about how going 4-0 against the Nets, T'Wolves and Sixers, while going 1-2 against the Magic, Celts, and Hornets clearly makes you the best team in the NBA. But more importantly, you notice that the Hornets have a higher SOS than the Heat, yet are ranked well below them by Hollinger (despite winning head-to-head). I'm OK with using margin of victory as a component in team evaluation, but you probably shouldn't use it straight up. At this point, I hadn't scrolled far enough down to see the actual equation being used, but I did see that the Hollinger starts off by talking about margin of victory, which suggests that's the major component of this ranking (which is what it looked like at first glance). Part of my comment to Westy:
Seems that Hollinger's first criteria is margin of victory, probably w/out any sort of cap or deeper view beyond the final score. In that sort of scenario, you're rewarded more for winning by 54 points against the T'Wolves and Nets and losing twice by "only" 3 and 8 points (only 2-2, but still +43), than you would be for, say, going 4-0 and winning by 9 points each game (+36). Don't get me wrong. Margin of victory/loss should count, but once you get beyond, say 15 points, you'd have to show me a strong case for why it matters.
Now, I'm sure that Westy didn't look at the Hollinger methodology very closely, and my guess is that he assumed that a statistician that's associated with the "advanced stat" movement wouldn't use a crude tool. At least, certainly not to the extent that I was insinuating. Westy suggests that Hollinger is actually using offensive and defensive efficiency, which would be the best (simple) predictor of team performance. Westy's probably right about how team efficiency stats would be a pretty good predictor, at least compared to the readily available stats. But the assumption is that Hollinger is using something that has built off of those stats.
I had a suspicion that Hollinger's stuff just couldn't be as useful as Westy was suggesting, with the results it was spitting out. So I went back to the explanation of the methodology. And sure enough, we see this:
RATING = (((SOS-0.5)/0.037)*0.67) + (((SOSL10-0.5)/0.037)*0.33) + 100 + (0.67*(MARG+(((ROAD-HOME)*3.5)/(GAMES))) + (0.33*(MARGL10+(((ROAD10-HOME10)*3.5)/(10)))))
Basically, here's what this equation says. Everyone starts with 100. Then, you look at strength of schedule, and measure how much it differs from .500. Then you divide this difference by 0.037 (no explanation for why he uses this number). Do this for the entire season, weighting it 2/3, and do this for the last 10 games, weighting it 1/3 (so that you're placing greater emphasis on the last 10 games). Also, note that he doesn't explain why he chooses the 2/3 and 1/3 weighting (or 10 games for that matter). Finally, you look at the scoring margin, and add an adjustment of 3.5 points for each game played on the road. Again, do this for the entire season, weighting it 2/3, and for the last 10 games, weighting it 1/3. Seems simple enough. But what does this really tell you?Look at some recent NBA history, readily available on ESPN.com. Since 2002, NBA teams SOS at the end of the season will range from 0.484 to 0.514. The reason that everyone doesn't have a .500 SOS is that you have unbalanced schedules, and the certain conferences/divisions are stronger than others. But if you take the difference from 0.500, and then divide by 0.037, you find that SOS will impact a team's power rating anywhere from -0.378 to +0.432. Okay. So what?
Well, remember that we're starting off at 100 points. SOS impacts you less than half a point either way. So how do you get teams with ratings of 86.814 (the Wizards so far this year) and 116.15 (the Heat, before their loss to the Jazz)? Well, SOS can be a bit skewed right now, but even with a 0.600 SOS, the contribution to the power rating would only be about 2.7. The only other component is scoring margin. Again, if you look at the stats since 1999, you'll see that the lowest/highest scoring margins have been -11.5 and +10.2 points per game. Remember that SOS contributed somewhere between -0.378 to +0.432 points in power rating, we're seeing how scoring margin contributes about 25 times more. This suggests that over 96% of the power rating comes from scoring margin, and less than 4% comes from SOS. Basically Hollinger's power rating is just point differential with a slight tweak based on SOS. Not quite as advanced as something based on offensive and defensive efficiency.
As for the Heat, and their 116.15 power rating? So far this year, their SOS was a very high .595. Divide by .037, and you get 2.57. So, if 100 is the baseline, their SOS contributes 2.57, then their scoring margin contributes the other 13.58. If you place this in context, and look at the actual results, then the interpretation is that the Heat are the best team in the NBA because a) they've smoked the Nets and T'Wolves and Magic, and have lost two relatively close games. Now, if we were in a game where you took all of the points that a team scored in a season, and then subtracted the points that were scored on them, and then awarded a trophy to the team that had the greatest differential, then scoring margin by itself would be a great stat. But, in a game where you have discrete wins and losses, you really should capture the variance of margins in wins and losses. I'm not inclined to look in depth at creating these measures right now (mainly because I'm lazy). But you should be able to tell that once you look under the hood, this Hollinger power rating isn't quite as advanced as the the slick graphics and front-page placement on ESPN.com would have you believe.
In an ideal world, Westy would be safe in his assumption that something that makes the front page of ESPN.com as something from an "advanced stat guy" would be truly useful. Smart people would actually be putting together useful information that extends existing knowledge. Unfortunately, in our world, people have an incentive to sandbag on the truly useful stuff, and instead, we're exposed to the stuff that can fool most of the people most of the time. I'll give Hollinger the benefit of the doubt, and assume that he's got better stuff that he's keeping under wraps, hopefully because it's proprietary for some NBA team that he's consulting. In fact, he even admits that this power ranking needs some caveats. But I don't think that most folks think that it's as crude as I've (hopefully) demonstrated it to be. After all, when you see that the Heat are 116.150, and the Wizards are 88.814, you have all these decimal points that suggest that there's something smart going on under the hood.
-Chairman (aka O.N. Thugs)
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
2010-11 UPL Basketball Fantasy Outlook
As we head off into the latest iteration of UPL Fantasy Hoops, the keeper era is well under way, and we definitely see how the sins and successes of the past have laid a path for the performance of today. The keeper era allows teams to keep 8 out of their 10 starters, which means that only 2 starters and the 4 bench players from a given season need to be replaced. So teams that are good one one year probably won't become awful the next year, barring major injuries. However, there's no guarantee that a championship team one year will automatically do it again the following year.
In fact, in our first two seasons, we've seen some heavy variance from our 1st year podium to our 2nd year podium. Back in 08-09, it was the O.N. Thugs and European Sellouts (aka WakeupWithTheKing) tied for 1st, and Sparty in 3rd (with IamJabrone, Chowtime, and Westy close behind in 4th, and tied for 5th, respectively). However, there was a bit of a shakeup in 09-10. The 4th Jabrones took the title, the O.N. Thugs slipped to 2nd, and SuckmyDribblingBalls rose from 7th place into 3rd. Sparty and Westy stayed in that 2nd tier. But the co-champion WakeupWithTheKing dropped all the way into 8th place. So what we've seen is that there's generally not a ton of movement, but it's possible to have massive rises/drops in performance. And when you look at what happened in UPL Baseball from 2009 to 2010, you'll see that there massive improvement could be even more common.
THE KEEPER STORY
Having said all that about team mobility, keepers matter a lot. If you recall, my analysis of last year's keepers was very favorable for the O.N. Thugs and IamJabrone. However, I allowed myself to be fooled when I placed the Jabrones lower in my actual season preview. In fairness, I thought that he botched the #1 draft pick (he did), and that the Hawks were going to tank (they didn't). Though Westy's team had highly ranked keepers, the makeup of that looked off (lots of age, and a hole as the 8th keeper), and didn't seem like it would be quite as strong as he was the previous season. And the keeper list suggested that WakeupWithTheKing was in for a bit of a struggle last year, which indeed was what happened. So what about 2010-11?
As you look through the rosters, in particular the keeper rosters, you see a clear top tier. IamJabrone and the O.N. Thugs finished 1st and 2nd last year, and are loaded again. When Derrick Rose and Carlos Boozer are the lowest rated (by Yahoo! pre-rank) keepers on these two teams, you know that there are 8 solid options to start off. If things play out, like I think they will, we'll probably do a more in-depth breakdown of these two teams in the future.
Right behind these two teams is Love T'Wolves and last year's 3rd place team, SuckMyDribblingBalls. I liked Robby's keeper core from last year, though that hasn't really been added to, they run a legit 6 deep (Durant, Rondo, Bosh, Z-Bo, Gay, Love). Andre Miller and Michael Beasley are somewhat questionable, but could be solid pieces. For SMDB, having the improved D12 and ageless 'Ason Kidd (no J, much like his protegee Ra'on Rondo) leading off, followed by Monta Ellis, David West, and Timmy give a legit top 5. However, the other keepers (Raymond Felton, John Salmons, and Greg Oden) are question marks of varying degree.
I would say that the tier after this looks to be Sparty Rules, WakeupWithTheKing, and Chowtime. These are top-heavy teams with noticeable drops in quality.
Sparty has CP3, Chauncy Billups, and Marcus Camby. So the non-scoring stats should look awfully good. But with Bargnani, Troy Murphy, Jeff Green, Hedo, and Diaw, the rest of the keepers look suspect (at best). But any team with CP3 will have roster flexibility, because that one player will guarantee points in AST and A/TO.
The same story holds for WakeupWithTheKing. Any time you have LBJ, you'll compete because you'll be getting help in so many categories. Add on Steph Curry, Gerald Wallace, and you'll be competitive in rebounding and 3PM. Add on youngsters Tyreke Evans and Brandon Jennings, and you've got a nice core to start, though they may be a couple years away from really flourishing. OJ Mayo is still only a scorer, but is a reasonable keeper (though you'd like to improve there). The only major question mark is Bynum, with his injury history.
Chowtime is a bit more balanced, and has 4 awesome keepers, and 4 question marks. Any time you can lead off with Dirk, Granger, and Pau, and then follow up with Blake Griffin, you're starting off solid. However, when you go with guys like Manu and Yao, you're hoping for some luck. And I'm not sure that Chris Kaman and Tony Parker feel like keepers on a championship team.
Then you get to Westy's Ballers (or Impresarios or whatever the hell they are now). Given Westy's past UPL Basketball success, you'd assume that he'd be a top half team. But then you look at his keepers. AI 2.0, Big Al, The Other Gasol. A couple older guys in Baron Davis and Paul Pierce. Devin Harris. Anthony Randolph. Paul Millsap. I see some nice pieces. But you don't look at this team and think"podium." I look at this group, and I'm thinking 7th or 8th place.
After that, you run into three bottom-tier teams. Floor Burns, Milwaukee Bricks, and Phatsnapper all have rebuilding efforts in front of them, of varying degrees. Of the three, I'd say that Phatsnapper has the most talent, given the Nash/Stoudamire combo, but definitely needs to make some trades. The Bricks have a nice group of Eric Gordon, Joakim Noah, Nene, and Aaron Brooks to build around, but definitely need to get an infusion of young talent in there (and may need to try to pull off a 2 for 1 or a 3 for 1 sort of deal).
So off of the keepers, the UPL preview looks something like this:
Likely Championship Contenders: O.N. Thugs, IamJabrone
Possible Championship Contenders: Love T'Wolves, SuckMyDribblingBalls
Outside Shots at the Championship: Sparty, Chowtime, WakeupWithTheKing
Heading for Limbo: Westy's Impresarios
Rebuilding Now: Phatsnapper, Floor Burns, Milwaukee Bricks
DRAFT AND EARLY SEASON PICKUPS
The next step in the formula is to look at the actual draft, to see how things play out. And I'll be the first person to say it. The draft is huge for rebuilding teams, and for championship contending teams. For rebuilding teams, it's a chance to get at young talent. For championship teams, it's about rounding out your stats. When you brick a draft, you set yourself up for failure. Last year, I put myself behind the 8-ball in the draft when I overslept the draft, and ended up with the best white player available as my auto-pick motif (Spencer Hawes, Peja, etc.). Needless to say, I revamped my bench very early on in the season last year. On the other hand, when you luck out in the lottery like C-Lauff did last year, you get a huge advantage by jumping to the front of the line for superstars-in-waiting like Blake Griffin, who looks to be a double-double machine for the foreseeable future... er. Wait. Check that. You end up with guys like Anthony Randolph who... uh... can't get run on Westy's team.
And an extension of the draft is the early season pickups that you make, as real-life playing time gets sorted out. For rebuilding teams, the goal is to find young potential impact talent, to find potentially underpriced veteran talent, and otherwise tradeable pieces. The goal should be to worry less about rounding out a roster. The contending teams, the goals is to balance that upside with performance in specific stat categories (as the team's stat base should be largely set). So how did teams do?
The winner of the draft was the winner of the lottery, because this year, the lottery winner (Phatsnapper) took the #1 overall NBA draft pick, John Wall. Phatsnapper gets a keeper building block. They also got Evan Turner, who I'm not nearly as high on, but seems to be a reasonable investment. His roster still has a long way to go, but adding on 2 easy keepers makes this draft a win.
IamJabrone's moves have leaned toward stable, veteran players (Crawford, Rashard Lewis, Okur, Ibaka, Augustin). But has found a couple guards with (Augustin and Bledsoe), as he looks for this year's version of Darren Collison. On the other hand, the O.N. Thugs took slightly more balanced route, taking on some youth (Cousins and Favors) and some players for specific stats (Dalembert, Delfino), and buying low on some veterans (Conley, Hickson). Both teams seem to have helped themselves out, though I'm guessing that the benches will be pretty fluid throughout the season. I'd guess that the O.N. Thugs have more attractive trade pieces, and the Thugs seem to be able to pull of a useful move each season. But the draft doesn't really do much for separating the two teams.
I'd argue that Love T'Wolves helped themselves the most out of any non-Phatsnapper team in the draft, picking up 3PM help (Channing Frye and Ben Gordon), as well as some emerging talent in Roy Hibbert and Rodney Stuckey. I think that his draft should create a little separation from that of SMDB, who added a couple solid pieces in Elton Brand (who's been awesome thus far) and Jameer Nelson. However, SMDB seems to have whiffed with this remaining picks (George Hill, Barbosa, Heyward, and Dunleavy).
Chowtime took an interesting route by drafting young with Wesley Johnson, Derrick Favors, Jrue Holliday, Marcus Thornton, and Yi (in addition to the old veteran KG). But has since backtracked, moving Johnson and Favors for guys like Kirk Hinrich and Richard Jefferson. We'll see how that plays out, but the implication is that this is going to be a run for this year, rather than trying to rebuild for 2011-12.
The opposite of what Chowtime did was what Sparty did in the draft. All vets. AK-47, Tyrus Thomas, Brendan Haywood, Jarrett Jack, Mike Miller, Beno Udrih. The implication is that he's trying to win now. However, Sparty's roster is starting to look like the Milwaukee Bricks, plus CP3. I'm not sure if that's enough to win, and that draft doesn't give you as many trade options with rebuilding teams. Westy took a similar approach, hoping for bounce-back seasons from veterans (Caron Butler, Luol Deng, Kleiza), and an improvement due to change in scenery (Dorrell Wright). Unfortunately, Westy's team is looking like it's going to become the Milwaukee Bricks, without CP3. It'll take some savvy moves (and maybe swallowing a bitter pill this year) to keep that from happening.
WakeupWithTheKing has the biggest lottery ticket of the draft in Gilbert Arenas. His roster leans young anyway, so adding some veterans into the mix could help reduce some of that variance. But the rest of the draft doesn't seem to have revealed a difference maker. Similar story for the Bricks and Floor Burns, who may have found some reasonable pieces (Biedrins, Robin Lopez, Drew Gooden for Bricks; Blatche, McGee, Young, and J.R. Smith for Floor Burns). But you don't get the impression that there's going to be a major change from the draft. The major difference is that WakeupWithTheKing started his rebuilding last year (Brandon Jennings, Tyreke Evans, Steph Curry who is not Blake Griffin), and is probably going to be back in the top half of the league this year. The same can not be said for Floor Burns or the Bricks.
So where does this have things shake out?
Likely Championship Battle: O.N. Thugs, IamJabrone, Love T'Wolves
Fighting for a Podium Spot: SuckMyDribblingBalls, Chowtime, WakeupWithTheKing
Stuck in Limbo: Sparty Rules, Westy's Impresarios
Rebuilding: Phatsnapper, Floor Burns, Milwaukee Bricks
Overall, there are a lot of moving parts to consider. You've got 3 teams that should finish in the top half, and 3 teams that will finish in the bottom half. How the 5 teams in the middle compete will really influence how the points are distributed in the league. I have a suspicion that one or two major trades, and perhaps one or two random free agents will influence how everything plays out. Given the relatively tight competition 1 through 8, the makeup of this list could change drastically.
But like I always say, I never bet against the O.N. Thugs.
-Chairman (aka O.N. Thugs)
In fact, in our first two seasons, we've seen some heavy variance from our 1st year podium to our 2nd year podium. Back in 08-09, it was the O.N. Thugs and European Sellouts (aka WakeupWithTheKing) tied for 1st, and Sparty in 3rd (with IamJabrone, Chowtime, and Westy close behind in 4th, and tied for 5th, respectively). However, there was a bit of a shakeup in 09-10. The 4th Jabrones took the title, the O.N. Thugs slipped to 2nd, and SuckmyDribblingBalls rose from 7th place into 3rd. Sparty and Westy stayed in that 2nd tier. But the co-champion WakeupWithTheKing dropped all the way into 8th place. So what we've seen is that there's generally not a ton of movement, but it's possible to have massive rises/drops in performance. And when you look at what happened in UPL Baseball from 2009 to 2010, you'll see that there massive improvement could be even more common.
THE KEEPER STORY
Having said all that about team mobility, keepers matter a lot. If you recall, my analysis of last year's keepers was very favorable for the O.N. Thugs and IamJabrone. However, I allowed myself to be fooled when I placed the Jabrones lower in my actual season preview. In fairness, I thought that he botched the #1 draft pick (he did), and that the Hawks were going to tank (they didn't). Though Westy's team had highly ranked keepers, the makeup of that looked off (lots of age, and a hole as the 8th keeper), and didn't seem like it would be quite as strong as he was the previous season. And the keeper list suggested that WakeupWithTheKing was in for a bit of a struggle last year, which indeed was what happened. So what about 2010-11?
As you look through the rosters, in particular the keeper rosters, you see a clear top tier. IamJabrone and the O.N. Thugs finished 1st and 2nd last year, and are loaded again. When Derrick Rose and Carlos Boozer are the lowest rated (by Yahoo! pre-rank) keepers on these two teams, you know that there are 8 solid options to start off. If things play out, like I think they will, we'll probably do a more in-depth breakdown of these two teams in the future.
Right behind these two teams is Love T'Wolves and last year's 3rd place team, SuckMyDribblingBalls. I liked Robby's keeper core from last year, though that hasn't really been added to, they run a legit 6 deep (Durant, Rondo, Bosh, Z-Bo, Gay, Love). Andre Miller and Michael Beasley are somewhat questionable, but could be solid pieces. For SMDB, having the improved D12 and ageless 'Ason Kidd (no J, much like his protegee Ra'on Rondo) leading off, followed by Monta Ellis, David West, and Timmy give a legit top 5. However, the other keepers (Raymond Felton, John Salmons, and Greg Oden) are question marks of varying degree.
I would say that the tier after this looks to be Sparty Rules, WakeupWithTheKing, and Chowtime. These are top-heavy teams with noticeable drops in quality.
Sparty has CP3, Chauncy Billups, and Marcus Camby. So the non-scoring stats should look awfully good. But with Bargnani, Troy Murphy, Jeff Green, Hedo, and Diaw, the rest of the keepers look suspect (at best). But any team with CP3 will have roster flexibility, because that one player will guarantee points in AST and A/TO.
The same story holds for WakeupWithTheKing. Any time you have LBJ, you'll compete because you'll be getting help in so many categories. Add on Steph Curry, Gerald Wallace, and you'll be competitive in rebounding and 3PM. Add on youngsters Tyreke Evans and Brandon Jennings, and you've got a nice core to start, though they may be a couple years away from really flourishing. OJ Mayo is still only a scorer, but is a reasonable keeper (though you'd like to improve there). The only major question mark is Bynum, with his injury history.
Chowtime is a bit more balanced, and has 4 awesome keepers, and 4 question marks. Any time you can lead off with Dirk, Granger, and Pau, and then follow up with Blake Griffin, you're starting off solid. However, when you go with guys like Manu and Yao, you're hoping for some luck. And I'm not sure that Chris Kaman and Tony Parker feel like keepers on a championship team.
Then you get to Westy's Ballers (or Impresarios or whatever the hell they are now). Given Westy's past UPL Basketball success, you'd assume that he'd be a top half team. But then you look at his keepers. AI 2.0, Big Al, The Other Gasol. A couple older guys in Baron Davis and Paul Pierce. Devin Harris. Anthony Randolph. Paul Millsap. I see some nice pieces. But you don't look at this team and think"podium." I look at this group, and I'm thinking 7th or 8th place.
After that, you run into three bottom-tier teams. Floor Burns, Milwaukee Bricks, and Phatsnapper all have rebuilding efforts in front of them, of varying degrees. Of the three, I'd say that Phatsnapper has the most talent, given the Nash/Stoudamire combo, but definitely needs to make some trades. The Bricks have a nice group of Eric Gordon, Joakim Noah, Nene, and Aaron Brooks to build around, but definitely need to get an infusion of young talent in there (and may need to try to pull off a 2 for 1 or a 3 for 1 sort of deal).
So off of the keepers, the UPL preview looks something like this:
Likely Championship Contenders: O.N. Thugs, IamJabrone
Possible Championship Contenders: Love T'Wolves, SuckMyDribblingBalls
Outside Shots at the Championship: Sparty, Chowtime, WakeupWithTheKing
Heading for Limbo: Westy's Impresarios
Rebuilding Now: Phatsnapper, Floor Burns, Milwaukee Bricks
DRAFT AND EARLY SEASON PICKUPS
The next step in the formula is to look at the actual draft, to see how things play out. And I'll be the first person to say it. The draft is huge for rebuilding teams, and for championship contending teams. For rebuilding teams, it's a chance to get at young talent. For championship teams, it's about rounding out your stats. When you brick a draft, you set yourself up for failure. Last year, I put myself behind the 8-ball in the draft when I overslept the draft, and ended up with the best white player available as my auto-pick motif (Spencer Hawes, Peja, etc.). Needless to say, I revamped my bench very early on in the season last year. On the other hand, when you luck out in the lottery like C-Lauff did last year, you get a huge advantage by jumping to the front of the line for superstars-in-waiting like Blake Griffin, who looks to be a double-double machine for the foreseeable future... er. Wait. Check that. You end up with guys like Anthony Randolph who... uh... can't get run on Westy's team.
And an extension of the draft is the early season pickups that you make, as real-life playing time gets sorted out. For rebuilding teams, the goal is to find young potential impact talent, to find potentially underpriced veteran talent, and otherwise tradeable pieces. The goal should be to worry less about rounding out a roster. The contending teams, the goals is to balance that upside with performance in specific stat categories (as the team's stat base should be largely set). So how did teams do?
The winner of the draft was the winner of the lottery, because this year, the lottery winner (Phatsnapper) took the #1 overall NBA draft pick, John Wall. Phatsnapper gets a keeper building block. They also got Evan Turner, who I'm not nearly as high on, but seems to be a reasonable investment. His roster still has a long way to go, but adding on 2 easy keepers makes this draft a win.
IamJabrone's moves have leaned toward stable, veteran players (Crawford, Rashard Lewis, Okur, Ibaka, Augustin). But has found a couple guards with (Augustin and Bledsoe), as he looks for this year's version of Darren Collison. On the other hand, the O.N. Thugs took slightly more balanced route, taking on some youth (Cousins and Favors) and some players for specific stats (Dalembert, Delfino), and buying low on some veterans (Conley, Hickson). Both teams seem to have helped themselves out, though I'm guessing that the benches will be pretty fluid throughout the season. I'd guess that the O.N. Thugs have more attractive trade pieces, and the Thugs seem to be able to pull of a useful move each season. But the draft doesn't really do much for separating the two teams.
I'd argue that Love T'Wolves helped themselves the most out of any non-Phatsnapper team in the draft, picking up 3PM help (Channing Frye and Ben Gordon), as well as some emerging talent in Roy Hibbert and Rodney Stuckey. I think that his draft should create a little separation from that of SMDB, who added a couple solid pieces in Elton Brand (who's been awesome thus far) and Jameer Nelson. However, SMDB seems to have whiffed with this remaining picks (George Hill, Barbosa, Heyward, and Dunleavy).
Chowtime took an interesting route by drafting young with Wesley Johnson, Derrick Favors, Jrue Holliday, Marcus Thornton, and Yi (in addition to the old veteran KG). But has since backtracked, moving Johnson and Favors for guys like Kirk Hinrich and Richard Jefferson. We'll see how that plays out, but the implication is that this is going to be a run for this year, rather than trying to rebuild for 2011-12.
The opposite of what Chowtime did was what Sparty did in the draft. All vets. AK-47, Tyrus Thomas, Brendan Haywood, Jarrett Jack, Mike Miller, Beno Udrih. The implication is that he's trying to win now. However, Sparty's roster is starting to look like the Milwaukee Bricks, plus CP3. I'm not sure if that's enough to win, and that draft doesn't give you as many trade options with rebuilding teams. Westy took a similar approach, hoping for bounce-back seasons from veterans (Caron Butler, Luol Deng, Kleiza), and an improvement due to change in scenery (Dorrell Wright). Unfortunately, Westy's team is looking like it's going to become the Milwaukee Bricks, without CP3. It'll take some savvy moves (and maybe swallowing a bitter pill this year) to keep that from happening.
WakeupWithTheKing has the biggest lottery ticket of the draft in Gilbert Arenas. His roster leans young anyway, so adding some veterans into the mix could help reduce some of that variance. But the rest of the draft doesn't seem to have revealed a difference maker. Similar story for the Bricks and Floor Burns, who may have found some reasonable pieces (Biedrins, Robin Lopez, Drew Gooden for Bricks; Blatche, McGee, Young, and J.R. Smith for Floor Burns). But you don't get the impression that there's going to be a major change from the draft. The major difference is that WakeupWithTheKing started his rebuilding last year (Brandon Jennings, Tyreke Evans, Steph Curry who is not Blake Griffin), and is probably going to be back in the top half of the league this year. The same can not be said for Floor Burns or the Bricks.
So where does this have things shake out?
Likely Championship Battle: O.N. Thugs, IamJabrone, Love T'Wolves
Fighting for a Podium Spot: SuckMyDribblingBalls, Chowtime, WakeupWithTheKing
Stuck in Limbo: Sparty Rules, Westy's Impresarios
Rebuilding: Phatsnapper, Floor Burns, Milwaukee Bricks
Overall, there are a lot of moving parts to consider. You've got 3 teams that should finish in the top half, and 3 teams that will finish in the bottom half. How the 5 teams in the middle compete will really influence how the points are distributed in the league. I have a suspicion that one or two major trades, and perhaps one or two random free agents will influence how everything plays out. Given the relatively tight competition 1 through 8, the makeup of this list could change drastically.
But like I always say, I never bet against the O.N. Thugs.
-Chairman (aka O.N. Thugs)
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