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Please don’t tell me you got fooled by Roy Hibbert’s Game 7. One of us is enough.
Yes, I took the big stiff and put $2 on the possibility that his disappearing act in the first round (along with the final 2 months of the season) was a mirage, and that $2 is now dead money.
Hey, it’s only $2.
I played three different teams yesterday in the Monday-Tuesday leagues, and Hibbert was a member of the team that did the worst. But on the plus side, I have a team in the $11 entry fee league that could compete for first place if Ray Allen shows some semblance of a pulse tonight.
Allen was in the bargain bin yesterday, and I selected him for $4,934. Only 6 percent of the players in the $11 contest joined me in this crapshoot on the NBA’s all-time leader in 3-point field goals, which is understandable given that Allen did not score in double figures in any of the Heat’s first four games. But hey, he’s due. Right?
If Allen can knock down a couple of 3s and hand out a few assists, I’ll be happy. That’s because the team I put him on also includes LeBron James, Chris Bosh, Joe Johnson, Chris Paul and Nene. Paul (32 points, 10 assists) was brilliant Monday night in the opener of Clippers-Thunder, and Nene — chosen by an astounding 53 percent of players — was better than decent with 22 DS points.
And what, you newcomers might ask, are DS points?
Read on …
You pick three guards, three forwards, one center and one utility player using a salary cap of $100,000, and then you root for them to fill up the box score. You can sign up here.
Steals and blocks are worth 2 points. Rebounds are worth 1.25 points. Assists are worth 1.5 points. You lose 1 point for every turnover, and you lose 0.5 points for every missed field goal attempt or missed free throw attempt.
It takes something in the neighborhood of 250 points to win. And this is an example of a team that can win:
As you can see, only 26 percent of the contest participants selected LeBron, who is going to find out soon how far he finished behind Kevin Durant in MVP voting. You don’t think that’ll motivate him?
The other key player on the team shown above is Bosh, because there just aren’t many reliable centers left among the eight teams still playing. Marcin Gortat (12 points, 15 rebounds, three blocks) had a very nice Game 1, whereas Kendrick Perkins (3 points, three rebounds) and DeAndre Jordan (7 pts, five rebounds, four steals) were pedestrian at best, and Hibbert produced a Hibbert — no points, no rebounds.
Since Bosh is center-eligible on DraftStreet, I recommend taking him every night. Birdman Andersen, Andray Blatche and Mason Plumlee are just too hit or miss.
So, let’s have a look at drafting strategy for today …
| DraftStreet | Price |
| Stars | $$$ |
| LeBron James | $22,055 |
| LaMarcus Aldridge | $20,888 |
| Kevin Durant | $20,598 |
| Russell Westbrook | $19,979 |
| Blake Griffin | $19,707 |
| Value Plays? | Under $9,000 |
| J.J. Redick | $8,697 |
| Boris Diaw | $7,276 |
| Danny Green | $7,218 |
| Alan Anderson | $6,040 |
| Mason Plumlee | $3,109 |
Wondering why Chris Paul is missing on that stars list? Me, too.
CP3 can be had for the price of 18,742, and I will be selecting him and LeBron to build my team(s) around. Since the $2 entry fee tournament has a higher first prize ($250) than the $5 contest ($200), I will enter five teams and put $10 into play.
As for the value plays, Plumlee is very tempting at that price. The Nets are going to try to use size to their advantage, and Plumlee has been getting minutes as one of the backups (along with Andray Blatche) to Kevin Garnett, who should play about 20 minutes. The risky thing is that you don’t want to be too dependent on the big, pale kid … but that sort of goes with the territory when you are putting money in play, eh?
Anderson will remain in the starting lineup for Brooklyn, and it becomes a matter of whether he will produce. I think he will, and that has allowed me to grab a third stud behind James and Paul — a guy named Kevin Durant. I did that by selecting Anderson, Plumlee and another potential stiff who plays for Indiana and is not named Roy Hibbert.
Three of my five teams went the studs and duds route, and two were filled with mid-level players.
I’ll be back tomorrow with another strategy session, and an update on whether Ray Allen (and Boris Diaw) allowed me to capture first place in the $11 contest, which pays $500.
Good luck, y’all.
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