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:

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)

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)

2010 UPL Baseball Wrap-up and Post-Season Awards

Once again, props to the UPL owners who were playing the season out until the last day, when we had a bit of an upset when Phatsnapper took over first place from Hats for Bats, and became the latest UPL multi-title owner. Phatsnapper took a somewhat risky route to the title, deciding to sacrifice multiple categories (SB and SV), and hoped that no one was going to put together an elite season. In the past, I've briefly written about the numbers behind punting on a categories. Part of the thought process is that you only can surrender so many points, and expect to win. In the past, we generally have teams win with somewhere between 114 and 116 points (in 11 or 12 team leagues). If you bump that up to a 13 team league, and assume that teams in contention would probably get most of those extra points, then you'd probably expect 125 to 127 as the magic number you'd need to get to.

Bearing in mind that in a 13 team league, we're looking at 156 possible points, that means that surrendering 30 points is the most you'd want to do. When you punt on a category, you're automatically surrendering 12 points. To give up on SV and SB means that you're surrendering 24 points. This means that across the remaining 10 categories, you need to average a little better than 12 out of 13 points. This means that you'd have to finish 2nd or better across the board, which is awfully tough to do. And even then, you may run into a buzzsaw of a team. If you run into one of the top UPL teams from years past, surrendering a category, much less multiple categories, probably dooms you.

Generally speaking, when you run a strategy where you're surrendering 1 category, it's risky. You have to trust that you're going to come awfully close to maxing out everything else. But, if you execute, you can still pretty much control your destiny. Surrendering 2 categories is a bad strategy, unless you know some other things, namely, whether anyone else is going to also punt on those categories. If you don't know these things, then even if run perfect, there's a chance that you can still get beat. Now, if you know that other teams are going to give up on SB and SV, then this becomes a little more viable, since you can reasonably expect to make some tactical adjustments for a few points.

That said, the execution still matters or the strategy matters. But I'd argue that your optimal strategic move is to assume perfect execution, so that you're not relying the breaks falling your way. If you look at how the breaks went, some specific things went right that you can isolate. Hats for Bats lost out on his skirmish in SLG, a potential 2.5 point swing, and basically played his OBP competition at par (could have gotten another 1.5 points, but could have lost 2 points), when his offense let him down in the last 2 weeks of the season. Similarly, the O.N. Thugs had unexpectedly disastrous stretches from Tim Lincecum (0-5, 8.00/1.80 in August)and Chris Carpenter (2-5, 4.50/1.30 from 8/26 until end of season) that swung the W/L numbers by anywhere from 5 to 7 points. If the breaks had fallen the way of Hats for Bats or the O.N. Thugs, then this could have been a very different result.

But, one thing that the Phatsnapper strategy does is make your execution much easier. From a theoretical sense, you're removing some moving parts from the equation. This lets you devote more of your roster to fewer categories. If you look at the "upward/downward mobility" in the categories, you can see that Phatsnapper was pretty much locked in to his points, save for a few minor skirmishes here and there. On the other hand, the teams that were chasing Phatsnapper were all involved in heavy competition for points, with a lot of possible variance across multiple categories.

That said, I think that's a relatively less interesting discussion than the more pertinent discussion about the UPL trade waters, which I will comment on in a future post. As for the rest of this post? It's time to give out some hardware:

All-UPL First Team:

C: Joe Mauer, Phatsnapper
1B: Albert Pujols, IAmJabrone
2B: Robinson Cano, Phatsnapper
3B: Jose Bautista, Hats for Bats
SS: Troy Tulowitzki, Cheeseheads
OF: Carlos Gonzalez, '90 Reds
OF: Carl Crawford, Cheeseheads
OF: Josh Hamilton, Phatsnapper
UTIL: Joey Votto, Muddy Mush Heads
UTIL: Paul Konerko, SuckMyKnuckleballs
SP: Roy Halladay, Hats for Bats
SP: Adam Wainwright, Phatsnapper
SP: Ubaldo Jimenez, Benver Droncos
SP: David Price, Phatsnapper
SP: Jon Lester, JimmyDixLongballs
RP: Brian Wilson, '90 Reds
RP: Heath Bell, Hats for Bats
RP: Joakim Soria, O.N. Thugs

All-UPL Second Team

C: Victor Martinez, '90 Reds
1B: Miguel Cabrera, O.N. Thugs
2B: Dan Uggla, IAmJabrone
3B: tie, David Wright, O.N. Thugs and Adrian Beltre, Westy's Sluggers
SS: Hanley Ramirez, Black Sox
OF: Ryan Braun, SuckMyKnuckleballs
OF: Matt Holliday, Milwaukee Whiffers
OF: Adam Dunn, O.N. Thugs
UTIL: Jayson Werth, Black Sox
UTIL: Adrian Gonzalez, JimmyDixLongballs
SP: Felix Hernandez, Phatsnapper
SP: Roy Oswalt, Milwaukee Whiffers
SP: C.C. Sabathia, IamJabrone
SP: Josh Johnson, Black Sox
SP: Justin Verlander, Black Sox
RP: Mariano Rivera, SuckMyKnuckleballs
RP: Rafael Soriano, Cheeseheads
RP: Billy Wagner, Milwaukee Whiffers

All-UPL Team Killers

C: Matt Wieters, Benver Droncos
1B: Justin Morneau, Benver Droncos
2B: Chase Utley, Westy's Sluggers
3B: Mark Reynolds, IamJabrone
SS: Jimmy Rollins, Benver Droncos
OF: Jacoby Ellsbury, IamJabrone
OF: Justin Upton, '90 Reds
OF: Jason Bay, SuckMyKunckleballs
UTIL:Matt Kemp, Phatsnapper
UTIL: Dustin Pedroia, SuckMyKunckleballs
SP: Zack Greinke, Phatsnapper
SP: Josh Beckett, SuckMyKunckleballs
SP: Javy Vazquez, free agent (kept by '90 Reds)
SP: Wandy Rodriguez, '90 Reds
SP: Scott Baker, free agent (kept by Westy's Sluggers)
RP: Bobby Jenks, JimmyDixLongballs
RP: Johanthan Broxton, IAmJabrone
RP: Chad Qualls, free agent (kept by '90 Reds)

Team of the Year: Phatsnapper
Manager of the year: Pauly (honorable mention, Rup and CJ)
UPL MVP - Josh Hamilton, Phatsnapper
UPL Cy Young - Roy Halladay, Hats for Bats
UPL Fireman Award - Brian Wilson, '90 Reds
UPL Rookie Pitcher - Neftali Feliz, Phatsnapper
UPL Rookie Hitter - Buster Posey, Cheeseheads
UPL Out of Nowhere Pitcher - Mat Latos, '90 Reds
UPL Out of Nowhere Hitter - Jose Bautista, Hats for Bats

2010-11 UPL Hoops: The Decision

EDIT: THE DRAFT HAS BEEN MOVED TO 8:45 PM, BUT STILL ON SUNDAY OCT. 24.

So it doesn't look like we've got much in the way of new features for the 2010-11 UPL Basketball: The Decision. But we are continuing with the UPL Draft Lottery, the results of which we will be announcing later in this post. The draft itself will be in prime time for the first time ever. Given the difficulty we've had with Saturday morning draft times, we've made an executive decision to move the draft to Sunday, October 24, at 7:30 pm (central), in prime time.

What this means is that we need to get our keepers e-mailed to me a week in advance, by Sunday, October 17th. After you sign up for this year's league, you can look at last year's results and see who is on your rosters. Also, trades can be made - contact me via e-mail, and I'll send out a notice to the other owners for evaluation.

And without further ado, the results of the 2010 UPL Draft Lottery. Based on last year's order of finish, each team receives a number of "lottery tickets" in this season's draft. The numbers that correspond to each team are randomly assigned. Each teams will receive the following number of tickets.

Team	Rank	"Tickets"
Phatsnapper	11	1667
IamJabberjaw	10	1515
Floor Burns	9	1364
WakeupWithTheKing	8	1212
Chowtime	7	1061
Love T'Wolves	6	909
Westy's Ballers	5	758
Sparty Rules	4	606
SuckMyDribblingBalls	3	455
O.N. Thugs	2	303
IamJabrone	1	151
TOTAL	66	10000

The process is similar to the procedure used in the past, and is detailed here and here. This year, Jeff, C-Lauff, Westy, and OD provided the numbers for the winning lottery tickets. The results are as follows:

Picking 11th: IamJabrone. Last year's defending champions are choosing last in the 1st round.

10th: O.N. Thugs. Things progress according to plan, as the 6-time UPL Hoops champions pick at the end of the draft again.

9th: SuckMyDribblingBalls. Again, the order of draft is continuing on as one would expect.

8th: Sparty Rules. Still no changes, as the lottery remains on track.

7th: Westy's Ballers. The lottery is still on track.

6th: Love T'Wolves. So far each of the picks are what the statistics would predict.

5th: Chowtime. Last year's 7th place team is picking 5th this year, as expected. This is the most predictable draft that we've ever seen in the UPL.

4th: Floor Burns. Finally, a minor shakeup. Last year's 9th place team (3rd to last) is picking 4th. This means that WakeupWithTheKing has won one of the three lottery slots, in a minor upset.

3rd: IamJabberJaw. Last year's 10th place team is picking 3rd, which means that WakeupWithTheKing will be jumping up at least 2 spots.

2nd: WakeupWithTheKing. The lucky streak as run out, but moving up two spots in the draft is a nice little bonus. And more importantly, this means that...

1st: Phatsnapper. For the 2nd time this week, Phatsnapper has won a UPL event. He starts off the week pulling off a last day victory in UPL Baseball, and today, he has won the 2010 UPL Basketball Draft Lottery. Congrats to Rup.

Phatsnapper is on the clock.

-Chairman (aka O.N. Thugs)

Dark Days Behind

It's been 5 months now. And I think that I'm finally ready to talk about it. At first, I was in denial. I can't believe that it happened. Then anger. I kept my composure on the surface, but underneath the calm exterior, I was fuming. I blamed others. Mikey. The airlines. God. But that went away. There wasn't much bargaining. There isn't much to bargain with when it's you versus numbers on a computer screen. Instead, I continued straight into depression. For 5 months, I replayed scenarios in my head, wondering how I could have let things fall apart like that. But today, I have reached the final stage of grief. Today, I accept what has happened, and am prepared to move forward.

What am I talking about?

Fantasy hoops. Specifically, 2009-10 UPL Fantasy Basketball. I will tip my cap to C-Lauff for the win - he took advantage (sort of) of his lottery victory, and put together a very solid team, that persevered despite the loss of shooting guard Gilbert Arenas.

However, let me set the record straight.

C-Lauff writes:

"As much as Roland wanted everyone to think that it was his to lose, I've had him teed up for a while in the AST and OREB categories, which is where the season was won and lost. Obviously, it was close and could have went either way, but I don't think it was as a sure thing as Mr. Thug wanted us to believe."

That statement is out and out wrong. In some sense, basketball is the fantasy sport that you have the most control over, because the performance is somewhat predictable, whereas even in baseball, events like HR and SB (and even R and RBI) happen so sporadically that you get a lot of variance. But you have to play the games for the predictability to matter. If you look at the compete standings, you will see a shortage of games played on my end. Specifically, three games short, and they came at big-man positions (which you can't see). This league came down to AST and OREB, which C-Lauff is correct about. However, from the situation that we were in, he could not have won both, had both teams executed properly. But we'll get to that later.

The easy answer is that I made a mistake in my lineup on the last day of the season. I was making final adjustments the night before, as I was flying up to Chicago for Mikey's (I Giocatori from UPL Football) wedding. Basically, I thought that I had Taj Gibson in the lineup, but had not saved the changes properly. Instead, Carlos Boozer took a DNP. I was so sure that I had Gibson in the lineup, that when I was driving from the airport to the north suburbs, I explained to Mikey that I had Gibson in the lineup. And then I got on to the internet and saw that Gibson had a huge game, pulling down 7 OREB. I figured that the title was locked. Of course, when I logged in, I saw that I actually have Boozer in there, and that I needed a miracle from some guy named Reggie Williams. That was the start of the denial. And actually, we went into anger awfully quickly. I started being upset about flying up on Wednesday night to be able to help out with errands on Thursday before a Friday wedding (which C-Lauff blew off, by the way), costing me a 5-peat. But as I look back, I reach some level of acceptance.

But even before the poor execution on the last day, the Jazz had hurt me, with Boozer and D-Will taking a couple other DNP's, which messed up my endgame scenario. Basically, I was staggering my games so that I could get to 163 games each at C and UTIL, and then play 2 players on the same night, so that I could cheat the 2 extra games. This is how you see teams get to 822 games played (and in case anyone didn't know that originally, I've let the cat out of the bag). With the Boozer DNP's going on, I ended up unable to max out my GP. Additionally, D-Will's DNP's in the last week (I actually had to pick up and play Kirk Hinrich in the last week), set things back in AST. But even I had set it up so that I'd come in with a safe landing by the tightest of margins. So what was the endgame that I had setup?

Basically, I knew that if I won either AST or OREB over C-Lauff, that I would win. The calculus was pretty simple, as those were the only categories that were in play. However, about 3 weeks before the end of the season, I saw that AST was likely going C-Lauff's way, as he was pushing that category big time. He lucked out with Darren Collison's play after the CP3 injury, and was fortunate that CP3 was shut down for the season, which extended Collison's contributions. So, he does this by going after guys like Jrue Holliday, and Shaun Livingston. At this point, I make a semi-bluff by acquiring Mike Conley (who actually started playing well in the 2nd half of the season). The idea was that he was going to push hard for AST, then OREB would open up for me (since he was using in his UTIL spots to get AST, while I'd be using my UTIL spots for OREB). So, I quietly started pushing OREB, coming back from about 50-60 OREB back into a dead heat. Plus, I'd have a moderate chance to still hold him off on AST, if D-Will and/or Westbrook went off a couple games. And, I even put out a semi-bluff on the UPL Blog, talking about AST to a great extent. The idea was to go hard after OREB on my end. In reality, going after AST was going to be hard. I moved Brandon Jennings for Tyrus Thomas in an ill-fated attempt to get more BLK and OREB. So, I probably didn't have the horses to hold off a team that was devoting both UTIL spots to AST, which C-Lauff was doing a lot of toward the end of the season.

Instead, we ran into a worst-case scenario. I get a couple DNP's from D-Will so that he can rest for the playoffs. Based on season averages, this probably costs me about 16 AST. If D-Will goes off in one of those games, then we're talking about a potential 25 AST swing. The final standings had me 25 AST behind C-Lauff. So, the analysis that I had was about right. But that wasn't as big of a deal as D-Will's then-teammate, Carlos Boozer.

Boozer took the DNP's that D-Will did, which ended up costing me extra games in UTIL and C. I had benched guys so that I could arrange the lineups to get me up to 163 games for both UTIL and C. Then, you'd play 2 games the same night to get you to 165 games. However, when Boozer took those DNP's, that left me at 162, and the only night that had two players going was early, so that stuck me behind my strategy. And then to cap it off, on the last night of the season, I figured that Boozer would get the night off, so I'd roll with Taj Gibson.

Only it didn't happen. I mean, not getting the lineup right is clearly user error. But this does challenge the notion that I was "teed up" in OREB, both tactically (not getting the lineup right for the last day of the season), as well strategically (my endgame move). C-Lauff had no way of knowing that I was surrendering the point in AST, but I think that he didn't appreciate how fortunate he got with OREB. My estimates, based on Boozer playing out the string, and me maximizing my games with 822 had me with about a 10 OREB buffer. Instead, I end up with an inferior play for 2 games at PF (which cost me about 3-4 OREB), but more importantly, I left 3 games on the table, all of which were intended to be PF/C, for which 9-12 OREB is a reasonable number. Given the margin in OREB was 6, the endgame scenario that I had envisioned was a very reasonable one.

As far as what I was saying about C-Lauff hurting himself with his moves, what I was talking about was his overlooking of OREB in terms of his lineup choices (he went all out for AST, when he needed to win both - in retrospect it ended up good for him, but had I played optimally, it would not have). A major part of this was that he kept Anthony Randolph on his roster for the majority of the season, and kept Gilbert Arenas on there, as well. Evidence that even C-Lauff acknowledges that the Randolph move was a mistake was that he dropped him in the last week. More importantly, I'd assume that he could have gotten a taker at a slight discount for Arenas early on in November, before the gun issues started. And if not, then at a larger discount after the gun issues. Arenas was not a crucial contributor for the Jabrones, particularly once Collison emerged. Arenas should have been expendable for a championship run. Obviously, things worked out great, as C-Lauff holds on to Arenas, and wins the ring. However, I'd argue that not seeing Arenas as a an expendable piece was a strategic error, and that C-Lauff got a little lucky with the outcome. But regardless, he's the 2010 UPL Basketball champ, and he's in a good spot to be strong again for the 2011 championship. Of course, the O.N. Thugs will have something to say about that, as well others like Love T'Wolves, WakeupWithTheKing, and Sparty.

In any case, this was the endgame recap that I had promised. Next up? 2010-11 UPL Basketball previews, and hopefully lottery results.

-Chairman (aka O.N. Thugs)