NBA Season 2012-13. Draft and off-season 2013.

Tracy McGrady. The world will never know if he could have done anything at Houston, because he was either injured, didn't have the supporting cast, or ha another legit piece (Yao) who was also frequently injured.

It's been a long time since the days of The Dream.

It's ball night.

Excited for the new season, no question. I love the NBA.
Was the fantasy league ever set up? Is it currently going?

My favorite bit of analysis from the surprising Harden trade:
Link

Zach Lowe wrote:

But spare me the dreck about how James Harden should have sacrificed for the greater good. He's under no obligation to do so. The Thunder's owners haven't sacrificed profits here; why should Harden? The Thunder brain trust believes in the importance of sacrifice for the greater good, harking back to Tim Duncan taking less than the max in 2007 to help San Antonio afford its complementary stars. They wanted Harden to make that sort of sacrifice. He didn't, and the Thunder voluntarily chose to cut their championship odds in order to save the equivalent of about $1.5 million in salary and a few million more in tax payments every season.

Scaphism wrote:

My favorite bit of analysis from the surprising Harden trade:

Zach Lowe wrote:

But spare me the dreck about how James Harden should have sacrificed for the greater good. He's under no obligation to do so. The Thunder's owners haven't sacrificed profits here; why should Harden? The Thunder brain trust believes in the importance of sacrifice for the greater good, harking back to Tim Duncan taking less than the max in 2007 to help San Antonio afford its complementary stars. They wanted Harden to make that sort of sacrifice. He didn't, and the Thunder voluntarily chose to cut their championship odds in order to save the equivalent of about $1.5 million in salary and a few million more in tax payments every season.


Link

Unfortunately if you listen to the podcast Lowe did Simmons steers it in the direction of Boston again. If you hire someone like Zach Lowe you need to let them just do analysis and not feel pressure to cover Boston an inordinate amount of time. Bill, you've already got that base covered.

I'll catch that podcast later today. I'm glad Zach Lowe has a bigger presence now, and it's hardly surprising that Simmons goes on and on about Boston. That's his lens. I've developed a pretty good tolerance for Simmons' tangents over the years though.

Saw an analysis today that said Harden, statistically, produced the second highest wins of any Thunder player last season. Sounds good to me!

First Rockets game is tomorrow night, though, so it will be competing with Halloween and whatever my wife wants to do. I might only get to read about it.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

Saw an analysis today that said Harden, statistically, produced the second highest wins of any Thunder player last season. Sounds good to me!

First Rockets game is tomorrow night, though, so it will be competing with Halloween and whatever my wife wants to do. I might only get to read about it.

That statistic doesn't shock me.

All I know is what I saw with my eyeballs. And my eyes told me that when Harden entered the game the tempo changed and the other team frequently found itself on its heels. Pounding the ball upcourt the way he does with the threat of pulling up for the 3 or going to the rim is a deadly skill. When your attitude about it is as relentless as his it literally changes the game. The best comparison I can come up with is Steve Nash. Now Harden isn't Steve Nash, not even close. But it's that same thing where you realize that he's going to be coming out you the entire time he's in the game and that he's a threat to score on every possession. Maybe OKC doesn't need that, but my eyeballs told me that that change of pace was really valuable.

It will be interesting whether he will have that same intensity on another team. Or how long it will last if the team is struggling.

Caveat: I am not a fan of Harden. It seems to me that he is limiting himself to only a role player because he comes across as uncoachable.

The same analysis was very critical of Presti for trading Harden with a year still on his contract. He said if you can't get value for your player, you just keep your championship-contending team in place. Makes sense.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

The same analysis was very critical of Presti for trading Harden with a year still on his contract. He said if you can't get value for your player, you just keep your championship-contending team in place. Makes sense.

Assuming Harden was mentally in a place where he'd be completely dialed in and not a distraction like previous contract-year players I think this is 100% correct. That caveat makes me think it's possible Presti saw him as potential trouble in the locker room. Otherwise why not keep the core together and make a run. It's possible that if that one more "feel-good" year in OKC convinces Harden to take less money. Who knows.

Scaphism wrote:

Was the fantasy league ever set up? Is it currently going?

Seemed like we only got to 5-6 interested parties. I thought about setting it up yesterday with a 2-team per owner deal. But I figured with less than 24 hours, it would be too hard to draft and get everyone signed up.

At this point we have 6 hours.

I could definitely set it up and invite 5 other owners, but I don't think there's time for a manual draft before 7pm tonight. And a manual draft is half the fun. Still it might be an interesting experiment, and lead to some rules suggestions and a better plan for next year. Gotta start sometime right?

From the end of page 1/2 I see:
Me
HansomB
DSGamer (sorta?)
Bill Bonney
shurefoot
fangblackbone
Blind_Evil? (suggested 2 team idea)

I guess the other option is I start the league up, but we don't actually start our first week of play until next Tuesday, if it allows that? That might be interesting, to draft this weekend, after all the teams have 2-3 games under their belt. With such a long season, I don't think missing one week would be the death of the league.

H2H Category seemed to get the most votes. Still not sure whether to use Yahoo! or ESPN. I know a lot of people have Yahoo! accounts for the March Madness pool so I'm leaning that way for ease of signup. Not sure if there's much of a feature/rank difference between there and ESPN.

Yeah what the heck. I made the GWJFBL at Yahoo!

Tentatively set the draft for Fri at 9pm eastern.

Invites have been sent in PMs, and then we'll see about figuring out if that's a good draft time or not, and making sure everyone gets their 2 teams in. After you go through the process from registering one team, and see for sure they are in the league, you should be able to just click the invite link again, and go through the same process for your 2nd team. I was able to do that and get my 2nd team in.

Went with the 10-man setup: PG, SG, G, SF, PF, F, C, 3 utility for the starters, and then 3 bench players.

2 divisions, 12 teams. Although we might have 7? interested above? Can increase it to 14 teams if everyone signs up. Might decrease the roster by 1 utility player if that happens. Figure we let everyone have a team in each division, so we really all get to play each other equally. That will really work best if all 7 do join. Then we will have balanced schedules with 6/6 games against our division and 7 against the other division for 19 weeks, since we're skipping the first.

Did the FA budget thing like we do with football.

Kept the default 9 categories for scoring: FG%, FT%, 3pt made, points, rebounds, assists, steals, blocks, and turnovers.

See how it goes. Take notes for things we like/dislike and tweak for next year. So this is GWJFBL beta season.

Who's the third best player in an NBA roto draft? I'm doing my main draft tonight, the one I've been in for 6, 7 years now. I have the 3rd pick and in a snake draft I feel like that's the worst place to be. The drop-off between LeBron, KD and everyone else seems huge. And by the time the pick gets back to me it's going to be pretty rough. Especially in a 10 person league.

Rose? He still injured?

Chris Paul?

Stele wrote:

Chris Paul?

That seems to be the conventional wisdom, but it's a tough pill to swallow. One pick away from drafting KD (likely) and instead you end up with a player with a history of injuries and a huge scoring dropoff. Maybe you make that up with assists, rebounds, shooting percentage, etc. but I don't know.

Doesn't the list change when you are talking about the third best player in stats?

Because I'd wager a lot of my best players are underrated in the stats (because they do so many things without the ball or aren't covered by stats)

I'd say Love if he wasn't hurt :/

Regarding fantasy: my computer is out of commission for a while. I can borrow one for the draft, but is it easy enough to manage a yahoo team via mobile?

Blind_Evil wrote:

Regarding fantasy: my computer is out of commission for a while. I can borrow one for the draft, but is it easy enough to manage a yahoo team via mobile?

Yahoo! has a fantasy app for Android, so I assume one for iPhone as well.

Blind_Evil wrote:

I'd say Love if he wasn't hurt :/

Regarding fantasy: my computer is out of commission for a while. I can borrow one for the draft, but is it easy enough to manage a yahoo team via mobile?

In my league last year I drafted Love 4th before Kobe and many other players. He was a powerhouse. I would easily draft him 3rd if he was healthy.

Okay then, I'm in. I'll sign up later tonight.

NBA 2k13 simulated the whole season and playoffs.

Conference Standings

Western Conference
1. Los Angeles Lakers 62-20
2. Oklahoma City Thunder 61-21
3. San Antonio Spurs 57-25
4. Los Angeles Clippers 53-29
5. Denver Nuggets 50-32
6. Memphis Grizzlies 47-35
7. Golden State Warriors 44-38
8. Minnesota Timberwolves 43-39

Eastern Conference
1. Miami Heat 62-20
2. Indiana Pacers 52-30
3. New York Knicks 48-34
4. Boston Celtics 46-36
5. Chicago Bulls 45-37
6. Brooklyn Nets 41-41
7. Milwaukee Bucks 39-43
8. Philadelphia 76ers 38-44

Lakers over Heat in 7 for the finals.

Lakers over Heat in 7 for the finals.

Obviously it is in 6 =P

Happy NBA day!

How do I nab my second team?

Do I need an alt Yahoo ID?

HansomB1derful wrote:

How do I nab my second team?

Do I need an alt Yahoo ID?

No, don't need a 2nd ID. Just click the link in the PM again, and it should take you to the "create team" screen where you select an icon and name your team and stuff.

Oh jeez. Stern just said Hurricane Katrina instead of Sandy. Heat crowd not happy.

Stele wrote:

Oh jeez. Stern just said Hurricane Katrina instead of Sandy. Heat crowd not happy.

Well, in all fairness the guy has had Katrina on the brain for a long time now. He took over the Hornets and kept them in business when they should have just moved. He vetoed trades. The man has been thinking of Katrina longer than most.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO galaxy note 2 commercial!!!!! BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

you wont guilt me into liking Lebron James. I'm prepared to go to hell.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Is Dwight Howard secretly 6'8"? He is way shorter than Pau.