Fantasy Basketball is probably the best fantasy sports game of them all. While Fantasy Football is okay, you only get to play once a week and all your players always get hurt. It's a continual trip to the waiver wire to see who's available at running back or wide receiver because the guys on you roster got hit in the head. Fantasy Baseball doesn't get the injury problems, but you have to pay attention every day, there are SO MANY games and you have to watch your starting pitching situation constantly, a little bit too much activity to be spent on what should be a pleasant diversion.
But basketball is, as Little Red Riding Hood said, "just right". Whether you play rotisserie or straight up against an opponent every week, it's perfect. Eighty games, a few days off each week, there aren't many injuries, and there's quite a bit of player turnover each year to make things interesting. There are also sufficient scoring categories to more or less emulate a REAL basketball game, not just points and rebounds, but also assists, turnovers, steals and blocks. There are even some other stat categories you can optionally use, but enough's enough.
Anyway, my 2007-08 team, Driving the Lane, is one of my favorites. I have two terrific players, the all-everything Kevin Garnett of the Boston Celtics and Deron Williams, the assist machine from the Utah Jazz. Both can score, have no problem with passing the ball to a teammate, play defense and basically, do as much as they have to in order to win. My other guards, which had been a problem early in the year, in the persons of Ben Gordon and Jamal Crawford, are starting to come around. Gordon, I think, had an attitude problem, as he was named in trade talks for Kobe Bryant. Crawford just goes to sleep from time to time, and in the process, he turns the ball over quite a bit. In fact, both these fellas had the same problem, turnovers. Their shooting percentages were also down from what they could have and should have been.
Partially saving the situation for my team, however, was Manu Ginoboli of the San Antonio Spurs, someone I'm able to get a bargain on seemingly every year. He's just another guy who does everything. Need points? He'll get them, he'll drop behind that 3-point line and start bombing. And he hits them. Need steals, he's pretty light-fingered, assists, no problemo. As well as he could play though, I still needed a little more consistency overall at the guard and forward spots. And I was most gratified to be able to grab both shooting guard Carlos Delfino on the Raptors and Andres Nocioni, a small forward from the Chicago Bulls. As it turns out they are both from
What the Argentines offer is consistency. They play hard every time out. They might not get the minutes of some of the other NBA stars, but they are productive every time out. They'll hit all the stat categories with the exception of turnovers. They pay attention. They're coachable. Unselfish. Imagine! In the NBA.
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