Draft Order: 2006

1. Jon - Funk Coalition
2. Eric A - Human Amoebas
3. Eric L - Fat Jubas
4. Jose - 100AcreWoodPoohBears
5. Oliver - The Pub1ic Hiers
6. Evan - Monkeys
7. Brian - Squirtle Squad
8. Roger - Buffy
9. Alvin - Morrie's Pogiboys
10. Ping - Phanatics
11. Trieu - Sour Snails
12. Reno - Rhythm Drive

Draft Primer

We decided on 9 total categories so that we could balance our competition between the traditional big men (REB/BLK/TO/FG%) and small men(AST/STL/3PT/FT%) categories -- with PTS being the domain of everyone. Our goal is to make sure that a winning team will hypothetically be well balanced, just like an ideal NBA team should be. Real teams can't play winning basketball with five point guards or five centers, neither should our fantasy teams. Instead of using positional requirements, we hope our scoring will dictate balanced winning teams.

With nine categories, balance can be paramount -- just like on a real NBA team. But one of the things we've experienced in the past is a genius strategy that concentrates on one type of player in order to make sure you win 5 of the 4 categories each week. While this team didn't necessarily produce championships, it was a force to be reckoned with.

For our purposes, it's called the "small ball" team. Concentrating on just the four guard orientated categories (AST, 3PT, FT%, STL) and making sure to win PTS, a team can win handily each week by disregarding REB, BLK, FG% and TO.

The ideal small ball team would, of course, need a strong PG to provide ASTs and one of the scoring champions. In our current league, Nash and Kobe would be the ideal one -two combination. After those two, the needs are for another mid-range PG to provide some more ASTs and then all shooters for the rest of the roster. Big men who might provide provide REB/BLK/FG% are completely ignored as this team is about running and gunning.

The key here is to round out the roster with (relatively) cheap shooters who don't handle the ball much -- occassionally allowing the team to even win the turnover (TO) battle once in awhile when faced with certain matchups.

The upside of assembling this type of team is that most of the ideal players for this small ball system are often undervalued or overlooked. An ideal lineup here might look like: K Bryant, S Nash, Michael Redd, Jason Terry, Peja Stojakovic, Jameer Nelson, Wally Szerbiak, Kyle Korver, Ben Gordon, Cuttino Mobley

Notice the type of player that is perfect for this team. Aside from the main AST guys and the scoring star, you just pick shooters who can hit 3s, shoot accurate free throws, and don't touch the ball enough to never turn the ball over. It's not an intimidating lineup on paper, but it can be devastating on the court. You could call it the Glenn "Big Dog" Robinson of fantasy teams.

Note that the reverse of this strategy -- concentrating on the big men -- is much harder to do. Sure you could try to disregard guard-stat oriented players, but the overall shallow talent pool and steep drop-off after about 20 big men, makes the "big ball" strategy very hard to do. For example, the top 30 or so big men begins at Tim Duncan and ends at Danny Fortson (with Lamar Odom or Chris Webber in the middle). Many of the top big men have significant drawbacks, even discounting FT%, AST, STL, etc. Most of the big men who can score over 20 PTS a game will be long gone by the time you need them. Thus, it's much easier, and efficient, to field a squad of light, but accurate, shooters. Plus, as we all know from our first-hand basketball experience, it's so much more fun and demoralizing to bombs away (from 3-point land) and annihilate your opponent with precise missile strikes, ala the legendary Eric Agustin.

This primer is in no way meant to encourage or discourage a certain style of play, but it is meant to point out what is possible with our system, and to make sure everyone is aware that the initial balance of our 12-teams will be depend largely on recognizing what each individual owner is trying to do and keep that in context with what we are trying to do. We want to encourage variety in our team make-ups, but there is a slight potential for abuse of the system if a smart owner gets the opportunity and the motivation to field a small ball team.

Behind the Scenes...

All hail the king! With our inaugural 12 teams set up and ready to embark on an epic journey, the Slamnation board of trustees opened up the coffers and sprung for an all expenses paid trip to the espn.com headquarters -- located strategically at espn.com. New owner Trieu had been to espn.com before (in fact, every day) but he'd never been a VIP before. Mr T was flabbergasted at being given access to never before seen parts of the site. "They showed me the source code, they showed me the embedded links, they switched off the lights and told me to bend over, I saw where the magic happens. I loved it."

The other eleven owners had been here and seen that before. They just hung out on the front page and waited for Bill Simmons to show up. He never did.

The Beginning

EXPECTATIONS
To be an active, alert, aware owner. I know football gets us overwhelmed, but we need good enthusiastic owners for this to work. Even if your team is the Hawks 2004, you have to be active on the wire, active everywhere to pull your team out of the doldrums. That's the only way we can play a keeper league. It's the worst when the bottom six teams in a league give up in January. If you're a quitter, quit now. "Wedding Crasher Rule #76: No excuses. Play like a champion."

MONEY
No cash prize, but this can be discussed. We typically play for a ring each year. We could do a trophy but none of us see each other, so really, I'm not sure how exciting this would be. I'd propose gifts such as "3 McFarlane figures" of your championship team for winning, etc. Something rather than nothing. To be discussed.

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KEEPERS
All players on the roster at the end of the year (before the keeper roster lock befoer the playoffs) will be on the roster for 3 years. Meaning there's no re-draft of current players except every three years.

ROSTERS
Full rosters will consist of 15 men. Note the lack of a season ending IR spot. If it's worth it to keep an injured guy, it's on your own dime.

SCORING
9 Non-weighted categories. PTS, AST, REB, STL, BLK, 3PT, FG%, FT%, TO
Each week you compete across all nine Head-to-Head and whoever wins the most categories that week receives a win.

LINEUPS
Play 10 men each week. No positional limits or minimums.
We set lineups weekly (Monday).

TRADES and WAIVERS
No waiver pickup limit, it'll be done in reverse order of the standings for each new transaction period. Waiver order resets weekly. All players cut from a roster hit waivers for 2 days. Then they become Free Agents. Any unaffiliated player is already a Free Agent.

Trades will be reviewed by the commissioners and only overturned if it seems terribly wrong. Otherwise, trade away.

Trade and waiver deadline will be decided when I set up the league (currently 3/12 for trades, 3/19 for waivers).

PLAYOFFS
The top 4 teams from each conference enter the playoffs. Top seeds have tie-breaker advantage should the scoring for the week come up even.

The final Championship Week is (possibly) more than seven days. Traditionally, the scoring goes more than the allotted seven days to make up for the last few days of the NBA regular season.

(amended from:) Top 3 teams from each conference make the playoffs. Start date for playoffs is unsure. First place team in each conference gets a bye.

The championship round will consist of (very likely) more than just one week. It usually goes about 1.5-2 weeks for some reason, just b/c of the NBA season. This also has the side effect of making the championship round a tad longer.


TOILET BOWL
To determine next year's draft order, we'll have a Toilet Bowl. The last and second-to-last place teams will duke it out for the #1 pick in the next year's draft (during the first week of our playoffs). The winner of that game gets the #1 pick, the loser gets #2. During that same week, the third-to-last and fourth-to-last teams play for picks #3 and #4. The fifth-to-last and sixth-to-last teams play each other for the #5 and #6 picks. Sounds confusing, it's not. It's incentive for every team to play competitively all year, even to just win their next year's draft pick.

ROSTER LOCK
Before our fantasy playoffs each year, we'll need to institute a roster lock. The purpose is two-fold. One, it lets the playoff contestants add/drop for their playoff run without ruining their keeper roster. Two, people can't snipe players this year for next year. Like grabbing a young guy just as the playoffs start to suddenly make him (or her) part of your keeper core. See, "Trades and Waivers" for lock time.

OWNERS - 6 East, 6 West.
East - Alvin, Brian, Eric A, Jose, Oliver, Reno.
West - Jon, Evan, Roger, Ping, Eric L, Trieu.