Our fantasy basketball challenges with DraftStreet.com have been a huge success, and they will now be a fixture each and every Friday for the remainder of the NBA season.
And better yet, there is an extra one taking place tonight (and once again, there will be a $350 prize pool).
I have been quite humbled in my efforts to win the first two freerolls, finishing 50th in the first and a crushing 149th in the second. (There were more than 350 entrants in each.)
So I decided Sunday to enter a cash contest, applying the lessons learned from my first two failed attempts (no more backup Orlando guards. Von Wafer and Chris Duhon have killed me), and I finished just out of the money.
When you pick your team, you select eight players: Two guards, two centers, two forwards and two utility players.
One of the first things you have to realize is that these fantasy challenges put a premium on blocks and steals. They are worth 2 points each, which means getting a guy like Josh Smith who fills up the stat sheet is paramount to your chances of success (although he can kill you, too, if he misses a ton of shots as he did yesterday when he had 11 misses and three turnovers to more than offset his four blocks).
Secondly, assists are worth 1.5 points apiece, but you lose one point for each turnover. So a high assist guy with a low assist-to-turnover ratio is not necessarily a good player to have on your team. (Deron Williams, at 1.95, and John Wall, at 1.7, are prime examples). Jose Calderon at 4.78 and Chris Paul at 4.44 are two of the NBA’s best at assist-to-turnover ratio).
Third, guys who grab a lot of rebounds and convert them at a high percentage are valuable, since you gain 1.25 points for every rebound and one point for every point scored. You lose a point for every shot a player misses, be it from the field or the free throw line, so you have to take the bad with the good if you go for a high-priced player such as Dwight Howard.
Marcin Gortat of Phoenix is 2nd in the league (behind Howard) in field goal percentage, and although he is just a 61 percent free throw shooter, he doesn’t go to the line much. And he’ll cost a lot less than Howard. (You have a $100,000 salary cap with which you build your team).
If you spend a ton of money on three studs, you had better make some astute picks with the remainder of your budget.
In the $11 contest I played in yesterday, the winner did just that: He had LeBron James, Kobe Bryant and Kevin Love, filling out his final five spots with DeMar DeRozan, Tiago Splitter, Zaza Pachulia, Ronnie Brewer and Avery Bradley. Big games from DeRozan and Brewer (three steals) pushed him into first place.
I finished a respectable 12th out of the 75 entrants using a lineup of Josh Smith, Deron Williams, Dirk Nowitzki, Emeka Okafor, Jeff Teague, Linas Kleiza, Anderson Varejao and Joakim Noah.
To play in tonight’s freeroll, which is exclusive to readers of SheridanHoops.com, just click here and sign up.
Again, it is free.
DraftStreet will send a follow-up e-mail offering a bonus to play in their cash games, but there is no obligation, and your e-mail privacy will be respected. You can continue playing in our freerolls all season without ever spending a dime.
If you sign up early and learn later in the day that one of your players has been scratched, you can replace him up until 7 p.m. EST.
So go ahead and give it a shot, and best of luck to all. Again, click here for the link to tonight’s contest.
At the end of the night, the top seven finishers split the $350. (First place: $125; 2nd: $80; 3rd: $55; 4th $40, 5th $25, 6th $15, 7th: $10). This is a game of skill, not a game of chance, and it is perfectly legal for anyone in Canada or the United States (with the exception of residents of Arizona, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Montana, Vermont and Puerto Rico).
I changed my team four different times today because of the injury news regarding Jameer Nelson and Jason Kidd. So yes, I am back for another shot with Duhon. The rest of my team is Rudy Gay, Kevin Love, Andre Iguodala, Greg Monroe, DeAndre Jordan, Gerald Wallace and Rodrique Beaubois.
I got 2nd in the freeroll and won $80!! Thanks for the challenge!
Awesome.
Loving this, thanks a lot Chris!