Baker Family Fantasy Basketball

Tonight, my fantasy football championship is on the line. I need big nights from Brees and Sproles to bring me in a few more bucks. But that's not the point here. Football is the only fantasy sport that can keep my attention. I've done baseball a few times, but never made it through the season. I used to do hoops, and did ok with it, but eventually that also lost my attention. Changing lineups several times a week, worrying about who had how many games, lots of different statistics... I just didn't care enough to keep up with other guys in the league.

But football is a good balance. You can update it once a week and be good. Probably should check again before the Sunday 1:00 games. But it doesn't take much to at least stay involved. Which is perfect for me. It also had made me a much bigger NFL fan than I was before I started playing fantasy football. Would I watch tonight's MNF game? Probably. Would I care about the Bills' Stevie Johnson or the Chargers' Mike Tolbert. Absolutely not.

But hoops is different. I've always had an interest in the NBA. While a lot of people could care less about it being gone if there was a season-long lockout, I actually like the NBA. Not as diehard as I once was, but still enjoy it. Just can't do it for an entire fantasy season. But I still wanted to do SOMETHING. Which is why we came up with the inaugural ('first annual' is incorrect... never say that... nothing is 'annual until the second year... I digress) Baker Family Fantasy Basketball League, or the BFFBL. I texted my brother Christmas Eve morning telling him we were doing a 2-person fantasy hoops league and would draft that night or Christmas Day. Rules to come later. The league later expanded to include my brother-in-law Joe and my Dad, making his fantasy sports debut. Here's the premise of how this incredibly simple league works in case you also struggle with paying attention to fantasy hoops, but maybe want to do something.

I printed off ESPN's top 200 ranked fantasy players. Each of us had to draft ten total players, using the 1-4, 4-1 snake draft format. But our teams couldn't be stacked with superstars. With your first round pick, you had to take someone ranked 1-20. Second round, had to take someone in the 21-40 range, on down to the tenth round where you had to pick someone from 181-200. So of the top 20 ranked players, only 4 of them are on rosters.

Since this league is for people who don't want to have to update teams, there are no drop/adds. You draft ten guys, and those are your ten guys for the season. If they underperform, get injured, get cut... well, that sucks for you. We're keeping things as simple as possible. The only stats that matter are points, rebounds and assists, all with equal value of 1 point. So when LeBron gets a triple double of 20/10/10, he gets 40 fantasy points in the BFFBL. Again, keeping it simple. Blocks, steals, shooting percentage hold no bearing. Maybe next year.

The only other rule is that we did say we had to fill certain positions. Ten spots, no 'bench' players, so no decisions on who to start and who to sit. Just need to draft 4 guards, 4 forwards and 2 centers. That's it.

Technically, we could just draft and look at the stats at the end of the season. But I think I will calculate 'standings' once a month just to keep everyone interested. There was zero research done for our draft, which happened around midnight on Christmas Eve over a few 7ups. We just passed around the sheet with the rankings, agreed that everyone would chip in 25 bucks, winner take all, and started drafting. The first two rounds went somewhat smoothly. Toward the end, we were taking people we knew little about. Whatever. Just having some fun. Here are the teams we ended up with. (not listed in order of draft picks, just by position)

DAD
G- Baron Davis
G- Manu Ginobili
G- JJ Barea
G- Leandro Barbosa
F- Kevin Durant
F- Paul Pierce
F- Lamar Odom
F- Shane Battier
C- Tyson Chandler
C- Spencer Hawes

ME
G- James Harden
G- DeMar DeRozan
G- Evan Turner
G- Omar Casspi
F- LeBron James
F- Zach Randolph
F- Aaron Afflalo
F- Rashard Lewis
C- DeMarcus Cousins
C- Deandre Jordan

BILL
G- Derrick Rose
G- Brandon Jennings
G- JJ Redick
G- Anthony Morrow
F- Joe Johnson
F- Michael Beasley
F- Corey Maggette
F- Tyler Hansbrough
C- Joakim Noah
C- Mehmet Okur

JOE
G- Chris Paul
G- Rajon Rondo
G- Jose Calderon
G- Hedo Turkoglu
F- David West
F- Kevin Garnett
F- Carl Landry
F- Grant Hill
C- Samuel Dalembert
C- Kwame Brown

And there you have it. Pretty simple. Took maybe an hour or so to draft, won't cost us much financially or time-wise, but something kinda fun. We'll see how it works out, and maybe post some updates on here.

For today's video, I was going to try and find something awesome on youtube to show some of the excitement around the Knicks, but found this instead and thought it was worth sharing.



Slainte,
Gary