Seven weeks into the NBA season and a nice cluster of Fantazzle fantasy basketball gamers has emerged. I’m seeing a lot of the same faces in my weekly fantasy basketball leagues now, and it’s becoming clear who the real heavy hitters are. These are the guys who have grasped the most fundamental rules of the basketball salary cap game, and are simply just looking for good value on a weekly basis, rotating in a familiar cast of characters any time they have a four-game schedule.
This post is really not for you guys. I don’t want to waste your time telling you things you already know. Check back with me in the New Year, thanks for checkin’ in.
For the rest of you, let’s go over two of these so-called fundamentals. Maybe I can win you some money, so listen up.
The first rule of Fight Club is…there’s no such thing as a three-game player. At least not in my universe. The pool of rosterable Fantazzle players is not nearly as vast as you might think. And that’s because it never makes sense to pay a guy to play a three-game schedule when there’s another guy, of comparable value, who is playing four games that week.
Take the case of Mo Williams versus Brandon Jennings. Both are having really good fantasy seasons in both traditional formats – both among the top 30 – and in Fantazzle, where both are among the top 75. This week, Williams and Cleveland have a four-game schedule while Jennings and the Bucks only play thrice. Jennings is a top 30 Fantazzle Player (so far) while Williams is not even in the top 50. Meanwhile, Williams commands a 90K salary while Jennings only goes for 80K. You might be tempted to go for the young southpaw, thinking that on any given night he could go for 50 (Fantazzle Points…or actual points, really), so maybe he’s the better play. Right?
Wrong. You never go for the guy with only three games, no matter how much you like him, and now matter how good the value.
Is Carlos Boozer a steal at 80K? For shizzle. Should I pay him 80K to play three games when I can pay Amare Stoudemire 110K to play four? Nooope.
In this format, there’s always another good option available who plays a full four. No, Stoudemire is not the steal that Boozer is, not the same great value. 110K is a lot of money, I know this. And yes, you could take that 30K in savings and spend it somewhere else. But you just cost yourself points there, buddy. In order for Jennings to total the same amount of points as Williams, he’d have to play like top 15 player for a whole week: average nearly 37 FPG. (The math: if Williams does what you expect him to do – average about 27 FPG, he’ll net you about 110 FPG for the week).
Now, this is of course something that could very well happen, since Jennings has already shown us that he can go off for 40, or even 50, on any given night, and he does average over 33 FPG. But its certainly not something you can expect from the kid either. The numbers just don’t support it.
And at the end of the day, no matter how you slice it, fantasy sports is just a game of numbers. The Fantazzle fantasy basketball salary cap format is like a jigsaw puzzle – whoever can fit in the most high-value pieces into the same picture wins. That’s the way it works. Sure, you might get lucky some of the time, pick guys based on intuition, or from watching them play on TV. But if you rely on these two things are ignore the cold, hard facts, those black and white boxscores every morning, you will lose more than you win. At least around here, in these parts.
Now, with that being said, it shouldn’t take a whole lot of time to figure out who you ought to play. Because for some weeks, there is a pretty short list of tier-one guys (think top-20 players) who are actually running a full four game schedule.
This week, for example, you can count them on one hand: Amare Stoudamire, Tim Duncan, Marcus Camby, Steve Nash and Baron Davis. If I’m missing somebody, please call in now, the hotlines are open! That’s 1-800-DJ-SALT-E-NUTS.
Which I suppose brings me to my next point, which is that it always pays to be pay LeBron. And Kevin Durant, and Dwight Howard, and the rest of the upper-echelon guys who go for $100,000+ in this racket of a game we call the ‘Tazzle. Well, nobody really calls it that (yet), but I’d bet my bottom dollar that you’ll see it in this here blog again.
True or false, you have had the following debate with yourself the first few times you played this game: am I better off trying to fill out a balanced roster, loaded with pretty good, but not really great players? Or should I load up on them Brons, go nuts with them Kobes and say screw it, pass me a little Timmy Duncan while you’re at it?
It’s the classic debate that any Salary Cap Game worth its salt creates. Here, I think the answer is pretty simple. It’s kind of like the idea that you always want to take a safe, yet still-upsidish kinda guy in the first round of your draft (say, like a Pau Gasol), and then take your chances in the later rounds with those true high-risk, high-reward type players (say, like a Gilbert Arenas).
Here at Fantazzle, you always want to load up on those rare guys that are like money in the bank. Because if you are doing it right, you basically get to make about three or four first round picks in this game, and then go about finding slick value the rest of the way. The one thing you absolutely don’t want to happen is pay good money (say, $100K or more) for a guy, and have him put up a 20 spot for you. That’s what you call a flop, ladies and gentlemen, and make no mistake about it – it’s what costs you them shiny cash prizes, at the end of the day.
My goal with every squad that I pick is to have about three or four guys averaging upwards of 40 Fantazzle Points Per Game (FPG), another three or four averaging in the 30′s, and then of course you sprinkle in a couple of them 20-point, 50-70K type value-buys (think Anderson Varejao or Trevor Ariza), and don’t look now, but you have yourself a 1400-point monster.
(The math: if the scoring average of every player on your team comes out to be about 35, and every player on your team is playing four games, that’s what you end up with).
If you are allowed to spend an average of 100K per player, then it stands to reason that you can afford to bag a couple of big ticket items as long as you can also snag your fair share of bargain-barrel pickups.
It’s kind of like this: you know that you could always get a better value for that electronic gadget if you wait until Black Friday, and then get up at four o’clock in the morning to wait on line outside of Best Buy with hundreds of equally crazy, broke ass idiots. Or, you could just pay full price for it now, when you really want it, in December, and get to enjoy it all year long.
Yes, you have to shop for value but no, its not the only thing that matters – not when there are guys like David Lee floating around out there with 90K price tags.
Or think of it this way: will the Cleveland Cavaliers hesitate to offer LeBron James a max-level contract this summer when he becomes a free agent? No, they’ll pray that he takes their money. And that’s because he’s the only guy in the league who’s the best guy in the league; there’s always only just one. Sure, LeBron costs you more than everybody else, but he’s also a lot better than everyone else, too, so you just pay him and smile.
Could Chris Paul be better a better fantasy play than James in a few months? Sure, if he has a career year and sets a career high in steals. But if that happens, you can just pay him instead. Or maybe not – maybe you just pay him too. The nice thing about this format is that you don’t have to choose between guys like that: you just have to be smart enough to know who else can help you in the 70K salary range to balance out your roster.
It’s OK to even overpay for a guy who is solid friggin’ gold when you’re getting 50 points, and you can also get 30 points from another guy, like Carlos Boozer, who makes 80K. As long as you also find your bargains, it all balances out.
But will you ever get a 50 point bargain? Maybe, but they’re awful hard to come by. And certainly not on a regular basis. (In case you’re wondering, LeBron is averaging nearly 48 FPG this year).
So now we’ve got our first two rules down. Any questions? There will be more to come in the weeks ahead. Dr. Quez is open for business, everybody. If you have a comment, just leave it here on the page. Otherwise, hit me up at agoliaat@gmail.com. Happy Chanukkah, boys and girls. That means you, Scot Hirschfield!
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