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Finishing 20th out of 75 participants brought me no solace. And no money.
Today, like the Miami Heat and the Oklahoma City Thunder, I will hit the reset button.
But first, an autopsy of the past 48 hours is in order.
I have been operating on the studs and duds theory of fantasy basketball, and the duds I picked to fill out my lineups the past two days have been just that — duds.
I almost had both Thabo Sefolosha (0 points, 0-for-4) and Nick Collison (0 points, 0-for-3) on the same team in a $2 contest that began Monday, but I swapped out Collison late in the afternoon to avoid the embarrasment of having a double donut hole in my lineup.
In the Sunday-Monday $22 entry fee league, the top 10 finishers got paid.
I finished 20th with this team:
With another 11 points, the team to your left would have finished in the money. I spent two days debating whether Scola or Collison was the better play, and it turned out neither of them were. I should have gone with Derek Fisher (16 points, two steals, two rebounds, one assist), who shows up at least once every postseason and chose Monday night to be that night.
Sub Fisher and his 23 DS points for Scola, and I am writing about what I am going to do with my $125 fifth-place prize.
What are DS (DraftStreet) points, you ask?
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 by clicking on the DraftStreet banner at the top of the page, and if you are a first time depositor, you get one of those Phil Jackson/HOPE t-shirts that young William Sheridan is modeling over his favorite tie-dye.
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.
I have a $22 team and a $2 team in action tonight, and the $22 team is going to need a monster night from three members of the Heat — LeBron James, Chris Andersen and James Jones — to have any chance at cashing. That is another team that paid the price for selecting Sefolosha instead of Fisher.
In the $2 league, I am very much in contention after having only Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant in action last night. That team also includes LeBron James (yes, I spent $71,000 on the three most expensive players), so it, too, will need a boost from Jones, Andersen and Scola.
Hey, studs and duds has its drawbacks.
But enough about the past. What are we going to do going forward?
As discussed in yesterday’s post, there will be adjustments coming from coaches Erik Spoelstra and Scott Brooks after their Game 1 defeats. I am gambling that Andersen will get a lot more run than the 19 minutes he played in Game 1, and it would not surprise me if Spoelstra replaces Battier in the starting lineup.
With Brooks, it is tougher to discern how he might adjust, because he is somewhat infamous for being unable to make the proper adjustments. Fisher was a minus-18 in his 26 minutes, so I do not think lightning will strike twice there. Caron Butler could be moved into the starting lineup ahead of Sefolosha, but so, too, could Jeremy Lamb.
Here are today’s studs and duds prices:
| DraftStreet | Price |
| Stars | $$$ |
| Kevin Durant | $24,563 |
| Russell Westbrook | $23,713 |
| LeBron James | $23,401 |
| Paul George | $17,398 |
| Tim Duncan | $15,176 |
| Value Plays? | Under $9,000 |
| Reggie Jackson | $8,283 |
| Ray Allen | $8,271 |
| Danny Green | $8,238 |
| Boris Diaw | $8,025 |
| Steven Adams | $7,554 |
| Caron Butler | $6,142 |
| Chris Andersen | $6,124 |
All of the high-priced guys except Westbrook have a higher price than they did one day ago, making the bargain bin search all the more important.
Also, about 50 percent of all participants selected Durant, Westbrook and/or James in the Monday-Tuesday contests, so astute bum selecting is at an even greater premium today.
Again, my advice — my strongest advice – is to go with Andersen. My next strongest advice is to go with Danny Green.
After that, you are on your own.
I went with the two guys I touted, and I had to squeeze in Caron Butler.
Should I just kiss my $22 goodbye? Or is the guy from Racine, Wisc. going to come through for the team that signed him after he was bought out by the Milwaukee Bucks?
That is the fun of these two-day tournaments.
So go ahead and sign up if you haven’t already done so, and log into DraftStreet during the game for live updates. When you are near the top, or at the top of the leaderboard during the games, it brings a little (or a lot, depending on how much you stand to win) of extra excitement to the best time of the NBA season.
Back tomorrow with another update — hopefully a happy one.