Morning Offering: Seriously, who are these draft picks?
Written by TiVo on June 29, 2005
I should have some thoughts on which players from last night’s NBA draft will have the greatest fantasy impacts, but I barely know who most of these chumps are. The guys from Illinois, UNC and Wake, fine. The guys from South Gwinnett and Skyline High Schools, not so much.
I've got no frame of reference on these foreign guys either. One French draft pick looked like Busta Rhymes from his L.O.N.S. days. Whoo-haa!
I love basketball and used to care about the draft, but I guess I‘m just not invested in most of the players. Although I still watched a bunch of it.
Just don’t forget about these guys come roto draft time. Several rookies, like Dwight Howard, Emeka Okafor, Ben Gordon, Luol Deng and Andre Igoudala made fantasy impacts this season. Of course, most of the rest of the first-round picks spent the season taking splinters out of their asses.
Season kickoff
We Rotogods are thinking of bringing you a series on how to spice up your fantasy football league, if your old stand-bys aren’t cutting it.
A couple of interesting ideas I’ve read about or thought up lately:
Pay-per-loss, in which the loser of a head-to-head matchup contributes to a pot to be collected at the end of the season, or just pays the winner outright, in beer or free lunch.
The college kids often look better than some of your late-round picks, don’t they? In the first year of a keeper league, make the last round a pick-a-college-kid affair. It’ll certainly make this NCAA season a fun one, plus it’ll give the stinky teams something to look forward to.
Tired of only caring about the offenses? Try to find ways to weight defense equal to its impact on the game. I’ve played in leagues where tackles are a point or more each, and interceptions and sacks worth as many as four points. Blocked kicks and safeties are rare, so why not 10? Unless you feel that brings luck into the equation over the skill of analyzing talent.
Have fun with negative numbers. One of the first leagues I played in, backs and receivers had to get 30 yards to break even. That’ll make you think twice about starting that goal-line specialist. It also made bad weeks from your backs more painful, but kept the scores in the 30s.
I can’t imagine you would have missed it, since it just published yesterday, but we’re already talking mock draft here.
To keep or not to keep?
We’re barely approaching the all-star break, but it’s never too early to start thinking keepers if you’re in a true rotisserie league, or a fantasy league that lets you hold on to players until the next season. Eric Gagne and Clint Barmes have likely been dropped in your league, even if they could be keepers. As studs start going down for the year -- or never begin playing it, like Barry Bonds -- next year’s keepers are something to keep in mind.
Lightining round
Who is the NL All-Star starter at first base? You gotta love Derrek Lee, though Pujols might be the next most-deserving all-star. Discuss in our public forum.
Why does BET make making good television look so difficult? On their awards show last night, the host chick was like “my mic’s not on.” Except it was. And she was live. Later, Alicia Keys told the camera people to move so she could see Gladys Knight as she presented her lifetime achievement award. Why black people gotta have the ghetto channel? Daaamn.
I hate when a waiter tries to be cool and memorizes your order instead of writing it down, then fucks something up.
Why do Bridgestone, Dodge and McDonald’s think that throwing some wack-ass rap into their commercials will make us in the 18-34 demographic buy their products? They gotta be fuckin kidding.
I wonder how many items I can say “fuck” in. Three at least.
The Nats actually had a decent free giveaway when I saw them play the Blue Jays Saturday night. All the people I sat near were calling them reversible floppy hats, but I always refer to them as PMD fisherman hats.
Jeremy Roenick. Nice one.
It’s Wednesday, hump day. Look alive.
It’s off to work you go. Sorry.
Berate, belittle or big-up TiVo at Tivo@rotogods.com. Or find him lurking the message boards 24-7. Hip-hop and funk fans can also peep TiVo’s musical musings occasionally on allthangsfunky.blogspot.com
-- Written by TiVo on June 29, 2005
Nice. I enjoyed that.
Posted by: Xach at June 29, 2005 04:06 AM