Wednesday Fantasy News (9/22/09)
Sep 23, 2009 Blog
Many of the team sites out there are starting to take initial looks at the expected rotations and I’m going to try to round up as many as I can for you guys here in the news column. Remember, I’m going to be out beginning this Saturday for a week, but the news column will return next Saturday when I get back from Disney World.
TheKnicksBlog.com takes a look at Al Harrington, what he needs to do this season and how how he fits in with the Knicks. Analysis: I don’t look for Harrington to have a future or much fantasy value with the Knicks. Curry should be hyped and showcased for a trade, Milicic will get his minutes while Danilo Gallinari and David Lee fight for the Power Forward minutes. There just don’t seem to be enought minutes to go around. Harrington would probably help his fantasy value, and the other Knicks values, with a trade.
HoopsWorld.com examines the fantasy values of the New York Knicks rotation.
Dime Magazine reports that Raymond Felton gets a $5.5 million qualifying offer from the Bobcats. Analysis: Felton should play hard this year looking for a payday next summer. Now that Felton is set, DJ Augustin will decline in value, but he still might have some fantasy relevance.
Flip Saunders on Gilbert Arenas: “Right now I plan on playing him strictly as a one,” Flip told David Aldridge, shooting down the idea of Gilbert Arenas spending time off the point. “He has to maintain his scoring aggressiveness as a one, and let people play off of him,” continued Saunders. Meaning, team scoring and passing will be on Arenas’ shoulders. The ball will be in his hands a lot, eighty-percent of the time according to Saunders. “He has a great opportunity to really improve because he’s gonna have the ball in his hands like never before.” Analysis: More opportunity equals more fantasy stats.
DailyThunder.com discusses what the Thunder need to see from Kevin Durant this season and projects what his fantasy stats might be.
Minnesota releases Chucky Atkins so he can latch on with another team. Analysis: I’m sure Chucky’s bags were packed about 5 minutes after the signing of Ramon Sessions, no to mention the drafting of Flynn and Rubio. I think Chucky got the message in Minnesota.
TSN’s Tim Chisholm reviews the Okalahoma City Thunder.
StraightOuttaVancouver.com with a fantasy preview of the Dallas Mavericks.
Michael Redd thinks he might be ready for opening night: “I’m on the court now, doing some running,” Redd said. “I’m doing basketball drills, progressing as far as cutting goes. I’ve been shooting for a month. As long as I’m healthy on opening night, that’s all that matters.” Analysis: As bad as the Bucks are going to suck, I see absolutely no reason why managment would allow Redd to rush back from injury and risk a setback. Take Redd’s statement with a grain of salt and temper your fantasy expectations accordingly.
Slam Online with a good article on Caron Butler in their continuing series of the Top 50 players in the league.
RoundballMiningCompany.com examines Denver’s acquisition of James White and what role he could play with the team.
Tuesday Fantasy News (9/22/09)
Sep 22, 2009 Blog
Don’t get worried if you see alot of the Eurobasket players sitting out some early camp time. There isn’t anything wrong with most of them, they will just require some time to rest and recover. Most of them are probably well ahead of their teammates back home as far as conditioning anyway. One player dealing with such speculation is Hedo Turkoglu.
Raptorblog.com with some thoughts on Marco Belinelli.
IndyCornrows.com takes a look at Mike Dunleavy’s knee and what the Pacers expect from Luther Head. Analysis: Those comments don’t make me feel like Dunleavy is very confident in being ready any time soon. As for Head, fantasy owners don’t really care about your goal being great defense. Shoot the 3 Luther!
HowardtheDunk.com with news that Jameer Nelson is looking 100% healthy, as well as a look at how he fits in with the Magic. Analysis: I’ve read the same opinion from several other sources on Nelson’s health and I’ll probably be moving him up my Point Guard rankings as the season approaches.
ThirdQuarterCollapse.com with a look at Mickael Pietrus and what to expect from him this season.
GiveMeTheRock.com with an article on fantasy leagues using 3PT% as a category, as well as some of the best and worst players in that specific category. Also, a great percentages spreadsheet from GMTR. Very useful if you are working on ranking the percentages of your potential fantasy targets.
Ira Winderman of the South Florida Sun Sentinel reports that Michael Beasley is back playing basketball and looks to be in great physical shape. Analysis: Maybe, but how is his mental shape, that is the real question with SuperCoolBeas. I’m still not a believer.
Slam Magazine reports that San Antonio has signed Keith Bogans. Analysis: Good move by San Antonio to replace the defensive anchor, Bruce Bowen, with Bogans. How hard did SA have to search to replace all those worthless Bowen fantasy minutes with something even more worthless?
JSOnline reports on the health of Andrew Bogut’s back and how rehab is progressing. Analysis: Bogut is sliding down my rankings. It doesn’t look like he is anywhere close to being 100% and even if he does play, it may be random minutes, thefore making him a very risky fantasy play on any given day.
Charlotte Observer reports that Boris Diaw’s ankle sprain isn’t too serious. Like I pointed out with Turkoglu above, don’t be too concerned when Diaw sits out much of camp as Charlotte plans to give Diaw plenty of time to rest and recover from summer basketball activities.
SilverScreenandRoll.com with a look at the rotation of Los Angeles Lakers and how the fantasy minutes might be distributed this year.
SacTownRoyalty.com with an article on Jason Thompson and what his role with the team may be this year.
Monday Fantasy News 9/21/09
Sep 21, 2009 Blog
Hope you all had a good weekend. Some good pro football games this weekend and my Crimson Tide had a laugher 53-7 over North Texas. A few fantasy news quotes from around the blogosphere:
GiveMeTheRock.com with a good look at fantasy options on the Houston Rockets. Give Me the Rock is definitely a site you will want to add to your fantasy basketball favorites list. Good writers and good info over there.
GiveMeTheRock.com with an article on the ‘percentage’ categories in rotisserie fantasy basketball and how to work with them.
PointsInThePaint.com discusses when to draft Dwight Howard and his strengths and weaknesses. Analysis: They have it exactly right and this falls in nicely with the GiveMeTheRock article above. The answer here depends on what kind of league you are playing in. I’d also add that it also depends on what other pieces you can obtain to offset Howard’s weaknesses. For example, if you can land Jose Calderon, who shot 98% from the free throw line last season, then you might be able to make Howard a good rotisserie pick. If you are going to pick a fantasy player with weaknesses, you better have a predraft plan in place to work with.
For you followers of the WNBA, check out Swish Appeal. One of the few sites dedicated solely to the WNBA.
SacTownRoyalty.com with a look at the 3 Point shooting ability of the Kings players.
Slam Online with an excellent article on Greg Oden. Analysis: I think he puts it together this year and hopefully he can avoid the injury bug. If he doesn’t, the ‘bust’ label is going to start following him. I haven’t got to my Center rankings yet, but I’m sure Oden is going to be pretty far up the list this season.
Replacement Referees: Influence on 2009-2010 Handicapping and Betting? (9/20/09)
Sep 20, 2009 Picks
Now that the NBA referees have been locked out, we are stuck with replacement refs for at least a portion of the 2009-2010 season. The real question for NBA bettors and handicappers is how this will influence the lines and game results. As if the games weren’t hard enough to handicap based on the actual players, now we have to deal with the referees too.
As we have seen with the Tim Donaghy situation, the refs have tremendous influence over the game results. I found this quote on Donaghy that I thought was fascinating: “During the two years prior (i.e., 03/04 and 04/05) he called significantly less fouls than the average NBA referee (his games scored more than Las Vegas expected only 44% of the time). During his last two seasons he called significantly more fouls than average (his games scored more than Las Vegas expected 57% of the time).” This tends to beg the question for this season’s bettors and linesmakers of ‘how frequently will fouls be called by the replacement refs’? Will the refs allow a very physical game or will they seek to try and keep control of the games with nitpicky foul calling? If they allow a physical game, then which NBA teams benefit from this style of play and how will this affect the point spreads in those games?
And what about the pressure to satisfy the home team? Are these refs going to be biased to the actual court they are on so they don’t get booed out of the arena? Subconciously those guys don’t want to be hated by the fans and even an extra call or two to keep that night’s home fans happy can really affect the line and betting results. Same thing for calls on the ‘all-stars’. Garnett, Allen, Pierce, Rasheed and Rondo on the court versus Harris, Lee, Simmons, Jianlian and Lopez? Who do you think gets the best calls in that matchup from unskilled refs?
I doubt any of the replacement refs will actually do anything dishonest, but these guys get paid very little and have no job security at all since they will likely be fired when the lockout ends. But you definitely have to ask yourself just how susceptible the situation might be to another ‘Donaghy’ type incident. At the very least, the smart money will have a scouting report on most of these replacements and may have advance information on their tendencies to which the public has no access. It definitely makes the first few weeks tricky.
I’m sure the NBA higher ups are meeting with these replacement referees and I’d love to be privy to the instructions they are getting. It sure would make the first few weeks easier to bet knowing how these replacement referees were going to conduct the games.
I wish I could tell you exactly how to use the replacement refs to your advantage, but all I really know at this point is that it might be prudent to be extra selective for the first couple of weeks and maybe keep the betting units small until things sort out. Sometimes your best bet is not to bet.
Saturday Fantasy News 9/19/09
Sep 19, 2009 Blog
A lot of fluff out there around the blogosphere this morning. No real news. My Crimson Tide plays North Texas today and are favored by 39. I’m settling in for a full day of college football. I’m off to Disney World next Saturday for a week, so this is my last football weekend until, gulp, mid October.
Article from JE Skeets of Ball Don’t Lie taking a look at why more people play fantasy football and baseball rather than fantasy basketball. Analysis: I gave my thoughts in the comments to his blog. Let Skeets know your thoughts on the subject.
CavalierAttitude.com with info on the Delonte West arrest. A 9mm Beretta, .357 Ruger and a shotgun in a guitar case. Insert favorite joke here. West has had some depression issues in the past and I’m pretty sure I remember reading that he has prescription meds for it. Like alot of other bipolar sufferers, sometimes they think they are fine and quit taking the meds. While the details of the arrest are kind of funny, the underlying disease is not. I hope West gets some help immediately before he ends up losing it all.
TrueHoop.com on Michael Beasley: “Lucas is but one person in a larger rehabilitation enterprise — so the program rolls on whether he’s there or not. Nevertheless Beasley’s time as an inpatient is also almost over. Sources say that Beasley will be free to go at the end of this weekend.” Analysis: Good news for Beasley and the Heat. Rehab did their job babysitting Beasley until camp started and now he is free to get back to work.
NBA.com with a look at the Top 10 defensive teams of last season and a quick analysis of each for this season. Analysis: Getting a good grip on the defensive ability of each team is one of the top fantasy requirments if you are playing daily fantasy cash games. As the season approaches, I’m going to do a detailed article on all 30 league defenses.
ThirdQuarterCollapse.com with a look at Orlando’s offense for this season and how it might change with the exchange of Turkoglu and Carter, and the arrival of Bass and Anderson.
Desmond Mason signs with the Sacramento Kings. Analysis: It has all the same reasoning as the Juwan Howard signing: An old guy who doesn’t mind riding the pine to collect a check and can play if absolutely necessary. Nothing to see here.