NBA Auction Draft Analysis

Last night I drafted my ninth and final Fantasy NBA team for 2008-2009. All of the leagues were auction based, eight of them had ESPN Standard scoring. There was a mix of Head to Head and Rotisserie formats. The league that drafted last night, the most important one in my mind, was composed of quite a few guys I play all of the fantasy formats with and a few new faces. This was a deeper league -- 12 teams, 16 roster spots per team -- and a keeper league. Each team I've drafted this year have had varying motifs and strategies. Some isolate certain stats, some isolate certain player-types, some were extremely speculative.

My strategy going into the draft was to execute a team style Schwartz and I came up with a few seasons ago: Bums who Rebound. This strategy works very well in Head-to-Head (our format) because you, almost by default, win FG%, Rebounds and Blocks every week. This league is an 8 cat league, in 9 cat leagues you can generally count turnovers in the win column every week. The wild card stats you go for are Points and Steals -- those two stats generally depend on the quality of your big men and quality of your guards, respectively.

Additionally, because this was a keeper league, I wanted to make sure to get a few of the stars of tomorrow, even if I slightly overpaid for them. In my baseball and football keeper leagues, cheap, young talent is grossly overvalued in trades. Trading should be a part of every owner's arsenal -- it is extremely rare that you are able to leave a draft with a complete team, especially in an auction. There are always tweaks to be made.

Here were the players I was targeting in the vacuum, before the draft. I knew I wasn't going to get all of them due to price, but felt that if I got a majority of this roster, things would be looking up for me. I'll give a brief line about the player if it is unclear why I would target them.

PG-- Rajon Rondo. Breakout candidate. Great fg%, reb for a PG. Steals machine.
SG-- Kevin Durant. Breakout candidate. Steal, Block per game. Scoring machine. So-So FG%
G -- Derrick Rose. Beautiful young talent. Steals machine. The Bulls are my team.
SF-- Gerald Wallace. Steal/Block per game. Boards well for a SF.
PF -- Tim Duncan.
F -- Al Jefferson.
C -- Amare Stoudamire.
C -- Dwight Howard. These last four guys are the core. They win FG%, Blocks, Boards each week on their own.
UTIL x3 -- Al Horford, Andris Biedrins, David West. Strong mix of scoring, boards, fg%, youth.
Bench x5 -- David Lee, Joakim Noah, Ronnie Brewer, Rudy Fernandez, Fransisco Garcia -- steals from the guards, youth, value, etc.

Obviously, I went a little overboard with my expectations of salaries -- Duncan, Jefferson, Stoudamire and Howard ended up going for a combined $198, we had $200 to fill our team. With that in mind, here is how I ended up and why I took the player if they weren't on my list prior to the draft.

PG -- Derrick Rose, $7.
SG -- Luol Deng, $12. Value was too good to pass up. High FG%, good rebounding from SG. SF eligible as well. Deng has been working out with the guy that turned Kevin Martin into Kevin Martin this summer, as a Bulls fan I really like where he's headed with the new look Bulls. Also grabs a steal and half a block per game.
SF -- Gerald Wallace, $16.
PF -- Michael Beasley, $21. I overpaid for Beasley here, but he should score a lot, rebounds well and is projected for a steal and block per game. He was one of the transcendent talents in college last year and is ultimately extremely valueable in a trade, even if he doesn't quite do what I want. I see him near 18-8-2-1-1 on 46% shooting.
C -- Amare Stoudamire, $65. Spent a little too much, but I'm happy with this.
C -- Greg Oden, $22. Injury risk, as we've already seen. Youth, breakout potential, statline fits my overall theme.
G -- Monta Ellis, $10. Love, love, love his game in this system. Steals, high FG%, scoring/assists should rise, 4.o rpg from PG. I'm mildly worried about the injury but I think he's a great long term pick. Works well because this strat doesn't really need great guard play to succeed, so I can hold him for a while.
F -- David Lee, $17. Overpaid slightly. He's going to be worth it in the D'Antoni system.
UTIL-- Anthony Parker, $5. This was an autodraft snafu by me, but he steals/shoots well at SG.
UTIL -- Andris Biedrins, $13.
UTIL -- Kenyon Martin, $4. He's looked decent in pre-season. Someone has to fill the rebounding void left by Camby in Denver. Also steals/blocks well.

BENCH -- Amir Johnson $1, Jason Maxiell, $1. Athletic, young rebounders and shot blockers that will have increased minutes in Detriot this year. I hedged my bets on which one ultimately gets the lionshare of the minutes.

Rudy Fernandez, $1. Replay some footage from the Olympics to understand this one.
Travis Outlaw, $1. This is a guy I've liked for a long time, he just needed a minutes increase to be really useful. Should see some moderate scoring and divergent skills (3s, steals, blocks) from this swingman.

Kalenna Azubuike, $3. Shorthanded at guard for now with Ellis out, Azubuike figures to see increased playing time. He showed signs of a breakout year in 2007-2008 early in the season when the Warriors were dealing with a few injuries.

As you can see, I didn't really come away with that many players on my initial list. I was only able to grab Stoudamire, Wallace, Lee, Beidrins, Rose and Fernandez. What I did come away with was some exciting young talent that I can trade to fill some holes eventually. The flow of the draft was one that saw a lot of guys that I saw as useful get driven up to prices I wasn't willing to pay. My solution was to draft guys that are more speculative but would be highly sought after because of the keeper-nature of the league as a way to, in a sense, redraft some of my team via trade.

Strengths of this draft:
1. Youth
2. FG%, Boards, Blocks in adequate quantity.
3. Solid Value Picking in the late-middle rounds: Deng and Wallace being the primary examples.

Weaknesses of this draft:
1. Overpaid for a couple young guys, primary culprit being Beasley going for more than Pau Gasol ($21 vs $20).
2. Concerned about my blocks with this roster, not quite as dominant as I wanted.
3. Missed a couple guards that make the strat work -- didn't have enough money left over for Ronnie Brewer and Rajon Rondo, guys who I viewed as absolutely essential in the long run.
4. Very speculative on the points front -- I need Beasley, Deng, Rose, Fernandez and Outlaw to average about 70-75 ppg as a group.