What part of the human body do you admire the most? Heart? Brains? Come on… Probably boobs, right? Well, show me your fantasy team and I’ll tell you what kind of a guy you are. By this time, my average reader (and that’s the average of two people or something, so quite the sample size!) already knows I love my fantasy basketball analogies to real life. Okay, so after a few (dozens) mock-drafts my eyes captured a theme of certain teams. The teams have features. They are either smart, sexy, full of soul or straight-up ugly, but the building blocks are the same:
First Round – Heart, Tits and Soul
Yeah, the first round will define you team. While it may (or may not, I don’t know) be highly acceptable in the scientific community that the brain is the one organ you can’t really live without (although some people twitting nonsense instead of governing try hard to prove it wrong), it serves me better to address it later. In (fantasy) reality, the first thing anybody who looks at your fantasy team will notice is your first round pick.
Of course, picking Harden or Westbrook can be compared to a boob-job. You might as well just stick it in my face. All of those points, assist, rebounds. Yum! But as Al Bundy sings… “Hooters, hooters, yum yum yum! Hooters, hooters on a girl that’s dumb.” You’ll be lacking somewhere else if you draft the first round with your dicks, guys.
For me, the first round should go to the heart and soul of the team. The pick that sets the tone, the beat of your team. And that is, my friends, the percentages. Durant, KAT, Curry; Guaranteed tranquility throughout the season (barring a heartbreaking injury).
Second and Third Rounds – Muscles and Veins
Some like to keep targeting BPA (best player available), and some like to use the second or third round picks to balance the base of your team. I’m not really sure where I belong there, but I do know that I tend to either over-compensate for the first pick, or over-strengthen it.
I think that once the tone is set, the second-third rounds picks can really ruin your team if mishandled. These rounds are all about solidifying the base of the body of a team you’re trying to put together. These are the veins which will transfer the liquid of life to your body, to the beat of the first rounder. It can also be the muscles and limbs, which will make the team move faster, stronger and higher up the charts. Preferably both.
Fourth and Fifth Rounds – The Lungs
By the fourth round you have a faint idea of your team’s weaknesses. The next couple of rounds are here to give you a breather. You might as well take BPA again, but you will run out of breath in a few rounds, for sure. Here you should look at your team. Low on rebounds and 3s? Take Kevin Love. Drafted three guards? Think Horford, great complement. Give yourself some room to breathe.
The lungs demonstrate a wonderful concept of taking oxygen (or the analogous talent), otherwise transparent, and transferring it, with the help of the heart and veins, to the muscles and vital organs, giving them meaning. Yes, the first rounder is meaningless without the vast support of its following – ummmm – at least four or five rounds.
Sixth Round – Nerves
You have a sleeper list ready. We know you do. Who’s on it? At what picks? That’s anybody’s guess. The problem is that you don’t know your fellow drafters’ lists either. This is where the nerves start to build.
Let me take you for a ride of the sixth round. Close your eyes (but keep reading, somehow. I don’t know.. Figure it out). You drafted an okay team but you want to smash. You’re thinking. Watching your queue. Aaron Gordon. Gary Harris. “Should I? Would they? Will they come back to me? Can I do without them?” Nerve build-up. See what I mean? But you’re cool as ice. You grab Vooch and hope for the best.
Seventh and Eighth Rounds – The Brains
The smart move. Ahhhh, this is where you reach and smite the blow. This is where you steal away Gordon and never look back at the horde of gasping, heaving dumbasses you draft with. Of course, there is the possibility you’re not the sharpest knife in the drawer yourself and you reach for Wiggins or something like that.
Anyway, the smart move you think you make really defines the brains of the team. It’s usually guys like Gordon, Harris, Bradley or Noel. These are ‘Stuff and Things’ guys, who do a whole lot of enough categories and don’t really hurt you elsewhere.
If you belong to the Wiggins part of the discussion, no worries. You don’t have to have a brain to succeed. Or – again – become a leader of a country or anything. There’s always a chance everybody else is dumber than you. A bloody good chance, unfortunately…
Ninth Round – The Appendix
No one knows why we have it in our bodies, it sometimes gets infectious and needs an operation to be removed, and sometimes it does nothing and you live happily and die happily (perhaps not happily, but when you’re pretty damn old) without noticing it has ever been there. That is, in a nutshell, the appendix. And this is also your average ninth pick.
Yes, this is the player you drafted with the hopes he gets you that ring, but never came through. In fact, he was dead meat at the back end of your bench for most of the season. Last year it was Darren Collison. It took you a while – damn too long – to get rid of him, because it was your ninth pick. Not low enough to let go in an instant. The appendicitis grew and grew, until it almost burst. Conceptually, it was very hard to get him on the wire. A long process with yourself.
And you cut him loose. Picked up James Johnson. You already feel better. Relief. Don’t think this time around it’ll be different, though…
Tenth Round – Remember the Good Times
This guy… You took him because he really helped you back then. Wayde, Pau, Dirk. They all fit the bill. Base picks on memory and sentiment and you’re up for a down fantasy year, dude. Seriously. Draft’em young and fierce. Full of potential and upside.
Eleventh Round – Hello ADHD
You’re almost done. The perfect team.
But then… Your daughter’s crying. Your Boss is behind you. The hospital calls! Congrats! Your wife is in labor! “Shut the fuck up! I’m drafting!” But before you know it, you got distracted and Mr. Autopick himself came to visit. If you’re lucky, it’s on the eleventh round and you have to deal with the ghost of IT4 for over half a season. If you’re unlucky, it happens in the 4th round and… well, you have to deal with the ghost of IT4 for over half a season.
You wished you stayed focused. You should have taken your meds, man.
Twelfth and Thirteenth Round – Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit
Yes you can very well see that the paragraphs here are getting shorter towards the end, ’cause it’s a very long blog this time. The final two rounds of the draft are the kidneys and anus. Simply put, these players have the ability to take fine stat-sets and effectively turn them into piss and shit. If all is well, you will replace them with other players shortly.
But in special cases when it goes bad, it goes really bad. You go to the bathroom and just… Man… No person should get in there after you’re done. It should be sanitized and never to be talked of again. Thank you, Bruski, for Meyers Leonard again, by the way.
As a side note, these are rookies, almost every single season .
Special section – Dynasty/Keepers Leagues – The Genital System
What are dynasty and keepers leagues if not the genital system of the fantasy world? You take some of what made your team your team and place something else in it with the hopes of creating a better specimen, with a promise for a better future!
You just don’t realize we’re all doomed to a vicious cycle of generations. Really good dynasties are hard to come by…
So, what did I learn this week?
Nothing. I did not have time to learn because I wrote this stupidly long piece.
Have a nice one, people.
P.S. I strongly recommend ITL’s “Hell Week”, where they break down position ranks all week long!
And give me a follow! @JBallblogger
Yours Truly, J-Ball
A Really not professional fantasy basketball blog 