**Fantasy Basketball Advice Thread**

[MCS]

[ QUOTE ]
Dwight Howard is grossly overrated in fantasy. ... That said, he has a lot more value in a H2H league, so long as you're prepared for your draft, and don't spend the rest of the draft digging out of holes. If you're in a deep hole, then just forget about it.

[/ QUOTE ]


Okay so I'm in a H2H non-turnover league and here's how I'm thinking about it: he is a godlike rebounder, very good at FG% and blocks, and solid at points. Steals and assists are meh and 3PM=0, but that's the case for a lot of centers. All good so far, so FT% is the concern...but Howard is "very bad," not "historically abysmal."

So what if I have someone like Kobe shooting just as many FTs as Dwight, but at 88% with Dwight at 58%? That's 73% on a ton of attempts--how bad is that? I know it's not great, but couldn't I still win this category from time to time?

I understand the punting categories idea, but it seems to me that you can have Dwight Howard and still do okay in FT% if you happen to have someone else with an excellent percentage. And a lot of the studs qualify: Kobe, Arenas, Dirk, Nash. So in a non-turnover league, he strikes me as a pretty decent third-round pick.

Anything wrong with this argument?

[ClarkNasty]

Each player has value based on what they contribute. A significant portion of Kobe's value is FT%. Now you're taking Kobe and wasting a huge portion of his value because DH makes it all for naught (and 72% for a team is really poor).

[Green Kool Aid]

Question....

can't you just take BPA and then make trades that are +EV for both managers to try and stack/ignore certain categories?

the whole "draft strategy" around your first couple of picks seems unnecessary IMO.

[MCS]

[ QUOTE ]
Each player has value based on what they contribute. A significant portion of Kobe's value is FT%. Now you're taking Kobe and wasting a huge portion of his value because DH makes it all for naught (and 72% for a team is really poor).

[/ QUOTE ]


Yeah, that's a different way to look at it...wasting Kobe as opposed to mitigating Howard. If 72% is really that bad, then Howard is less valuable than I thought.

I don't have a good idea of the distribution of FT%. I'm in a 12-team league with 14 players/team, 9 of which are active spots (PG, SG, G, SF, PF, F, C, Util, Util). What would you expect the best team FT% to be? What would be an average FT%?

[ClarkNasty]

[ QUOTE ]
Question....

can't you just take BPA and then make trades that are +EV for both managers to try and stack/ignore certain categories?

the whole "draft strategy" around your first couple of picks seems unnecessary IMO.

[/ QUOTE ]

You're right except that it's really hard to do trades early in the season, especially the inaugural season. People are universally in love with their teams and it's not until they are demonstrably weak in areas that they start to negotiate from a realistic framework.

[ClarkNasty]

[ QUOTE ]


I don't have a good idea of the distribution of FT%. I'm in a 12-team league with 14 players/team, 9 of which are active spots (PG, SG, G, SF, PF, F, C, Util, Util). What would you expect the best team FT% to be? What would be an average FT%?



[/ QUOTE ]

In our very deep 16-team 12-starter league, the best team in the league is usually around 81%, the worst is around 71-72% and the average team is around 75%. The distribution is more weighted to the bottm because the really good FT% teams don't get there by accident. At least in our league, it's one of the categories frequently targeted because it works well with so many top players who also give you other things. 3%, for example, is much harder to target (though most leagues use 3M)

[Green Kool Aid]

rookie draft for keeper league/...

horford over oden??

22 and 12 in limited minutes for big al 2.0

[Needle77]

[ QUOTE ]
rookie draft for keeper league/...

horford over oden??

22 and 12 in limited minutes for big al 2.0

[/ QUOTE ]

This is going to be a tough decision for me depending who falls to #3. If Oden/Durant go do I take Horford or Yi? And if Oden falls do I want to have a possibly injury prone player on my roster? Rut roh for me...At least I sent out my offer to Torre to see if he wants to coach the Artful Dodgers.

[KLJ]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Each player has value based on what they contribute. A significant portion of Kobe's value is FT%. Now you're taking Kobe and wasting a huge portion of his value because DH makes it all for naught (and 72% for a team is really poor).

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, that's a different way to look at it...wasting Kobe as opposed to mitigating Howard. If 72% is really that bad, then Howard is less valuable than I thought.

I don't have a good idea of the distribution of FT%. I'm in a 12-team league with 14 players/team, 9 of which are active spots (PG, SG, G, SF, PF, F, C, Util, Util). What would you expect the best team FT% to be? What would be an average FT%?



[/ QUOTE ]

Right. You can't throw away Howard's poor stats if you're going to end up compensating for them later. If you do throw out the categories, players like Kobe who have value in the categories you're throwing away become less valuable (i.e. Kobe w/o his value as a FT shooter)

In my 12-team league with your settings, the worst FT shooting team last year was .742, the best FT shooting team was .799. The average of all 12 teams was .769.

A great way to have a ton of value on your H2H team is to throw away a category or two. If you were to toss FT% and TO, you could realistically end up with Lebron in the first, Duncan in the second, Howard in the third, maybe Shaq later? and have a great team.

[Green Kool Aid]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
rookie draft for keeper league/...

horford over oden??

22 and 12 in limited minutes for big al 2.0

[/ QUOTE ]

This is going to be a tough decision for me depending who falls to #3. If Oden/Durant go do I take Horford or Yi? And if Oden falls do I want to have a possibly injury prone player on my roster? Rut roh for me...At least I sent out my offer to Torre to see if he wants to coach the Artful Dodgers.

[/ QUOTE ]

wtf yi is terrible.

playing behind bogut and villanueva, possibly other/better players.