ENWorld Fantasy Basketball IS HERE!!! (league now filled)

Mistwell said:

By the way, I forgot to mention it is 100% free, and does not involve gambling in any way. It's just an online game essentially.

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PLEASE NOTE:

1.) We will conduct a "messageboard/offline draft" where you make your picks one at a time on the ENWorld messageboards instead of ranking players and having Yahoo do an "autodraft." This will give you greater control over your initial roster. We will run as many rounds as we can get through before October 27th. CHANGE: Since Yahoo has no provisions for a partial draft, if we're not done by October 27th, I will ask you to post your player rankings to the thread (I'll go first in doing this BTW, as a gesture of goodwill) for the remainder of the draft. I will then manually do an "autodraft" based on those rankings the rest of the way on October 28th; any team without a list submitted will use Yahoo's default list. Again, hopefully this won't be needed.

2.) AWOL owners will have their lineups filled in case of injury or simply leaving a spot open for a week. This will be done in an arbitrary manner, by using Yahoo's "last month" ranking to fill slots and putting together the combination that puts the ten highest-rated players possible into the empty slots.

3.) The trade deadline will be moved from the default of "the day of the NBA trading deadline" to CHANGE March 3rd (the earliest option Yahoo allows after the Feb. 24th NBA deadline).

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CURRENT OWNERS LIST (Team name in parenthesis):
1 - The Sigil (Skyhawks)
2 - LeapingShark (Gelatinous Cubes)
3 - fujaiwei (Okamis)
4 - Kajamba Lion (Wampanoag Lions)
5 - Krug (Dwarven Stormhammers)
6 - Mistwell (Mistwell's Maulers)
7 - JohnSemlak (The Frost Mages)
8 - Brother Shatterstone (BS's Flagrant Fouls)
9 - Black Omega (Tokyo Samurai)
10 - John Crichton (JC/DC)
11 - reuterje (Chief Sleep)
12 - croationsensation77 (Red Star)

Please e-mail me at the_sigil - at - hotmail.com so I have your e-mail contact info and can keep you in the loop on the draft, everyone
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Here are the league settings:

League ID# 3426
Name: ENWorld
Password: rpgs
Draft Type: Offline Draft
Max Teams: 12
Scoring Type: Rotisserie
Max Moves: No maximum
Max Trades: No maximum
Trade Reject Time: 2
Trade End Date: March 3, 2005
Waiver Time: 2 days
Can't Cut List Provider: Yahoo! Sports
Trade Review: League Votes
Max Games Played: 82
Start Scoring on: Tuesday, Nov 2
Weekly Deadline: Daily - Tomorrow
Roster Positions: PG, SG, G, SF, PF, F, C, C, Util, Util, BN, BN, BN, DL
Stat Categories: FG%, FT%, 3PTM, PTS, REB, AST, ST, BLK, TO

Also, thanks to Krug for allowing me to do the commissioner "thang" this year.

Finally, for reference, here's last year's thread:

http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=60587

--The Sigil

/me casts "Raise Thread"

Nobody's interested?

--The Sigil

I'm there!

The pre-draft is a great idea.

The AWOL auto-lineup is a good idea. Though I think we should come up with a specific set of guidelines that you'll be following in selecting alternate starters from the roster (and/or free agency if that became necessary) to reduce the amount of subjectiv-ism(-ity?).

For the categories and ratings and such, I prefer to stay as close to default as possible. Not only because the Yahoo suggested rankings are based on the default (though with arguable foibles :\ ), as well as the little management articles and tips that show up on Yahoo all during the season which are based on the default, but also because the default ratings are used by tens of thousands of other Yahoo players, which allows a common basis for comparison and conversation (should one be interested in that). I played in another public Yahoo game as well as the EN one (Longshots heh), and it was alot of fun to compare my two teams, and to compare the state of the two leagues, since both had identical rules, and similar free agent markets, etc. For the same reasons I prefer the default 12 team league too.

The change in the trade deadline is an interesting idea. It's hard to predict what all the repercussions might be. The one thing I worry about is that it seems to put even greater emphasis on being "active" as a manager on that bonus day. I would hate to be busy with RL.

In any case, I would still go along with the new changes if everybody else liked them.

I'm sure it will be alot of fun either way.

LeapingShark said:

I'm there!

The pre-draft is a great idea.

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Thanks. Hopefully we can "Talk this up" and get some more people in here over the next 10 days.

The AWOL auto-lineup is a good idea. Though I think we should come up with a specific set of guidelines that you'll be following in selecting alternate starters from the roster (and/or free agency if that became necessary) to reduce the amount of subjectiv-ism(-ity?).

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Well, here's what I had in mind... for alternate starters, I would simply pick the combination that put the "best ten players possible" on the floor based on Yahoo's rankings for the current season (or the last month, if we can't see that). The only reason I qualify the "ten best players possible" is that it may be impossible to put the top 10 players on due to player positions; e.g., a team with 5 of their top ten players as PGs would be unable to field their top 10 because there are only 4 spots where PGs can play (PG, G, Util, Util); in that case, the 4 top PGs would play and the "11th best" man would be moved into the lineup in lieu of PG number 5. Does that make sense? I think that's the least subjective way to do it. I might have to shuffle a roster a bit (e.g., moving a FC from the PF slot to the C slot in order to put the 10 ten players on the floor), but I think that's the best way to do it.

As far as bolstering the roster from Free Agency (if need be), I think the best way to do that is to select the "highest ranked player over the last month" to fill a hole, using similar criteria to the above; I pick the highest-ranked player that can actually get shoehorned into the lineupwith the team's other "top 9 players" and drop the lowest-rated player from the roster (if the team has only one active player that can play at C, I wouldn't try to pick up a SG, for instance; though if the team can move a FC from the F spot to fill the hole at C and then a GF from the SG spot to the now-empty F spot, and the best player available is a SG, I *would* pick the SG since there is a way to get him into the lineup).

For the categories and ratings and such, I prefer to stay as close to default as possible. Not only because the Yahoo suggested rankings are based on the default (though with arguable foibles :\ ), as well as the little management articles and tips that show up on Yahoo all during the season which are based on the default, but also because the default ratings are used by tens of thousands of other Yahoo players, which allows a common basis for comparison and conversation (should one be interested in that). I played in another public Yahoo game as well as the EN one (Longshots heh), and it was alot of fun to compare my two teams, and to compare the state of the two leagues, since both had identical rules, and similar free agent markets, etc. For the same reasons I prefer the default 12 team league too.

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Fair enough on both fronts. The amount of interest this has (not) drawn tells me that I may have trouble so much as filling 12 teams.

The change in the trade deadline is an interesting idea. It's hard to predict what all the repercussions might be. The one thing I worry about is that it seems to put even greater emphasis on being "active" as a manager on that bonus day. I would hate to be busy with RL.

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Would you prefer an extra three days (on the theory that nobody will be busy for all three days) or no extra days (you have to make your trades before the NBA trade deadline comes and goes)? I myself lean toward 3 extra days - I think it's important to let people react to what actually happens rather than have some teams get shafted/rewarded for "guessing right" about a trade... here I'm thinking of someone like Antoine Walker getting traded right at the deadline and going from primary offensive option to 6th man or vice versa for a similar situation - the team that "guesses right" as to if and where he's traded gets a huge bonus (or penalty); though most trades won't be as drastic, I think it's important to give people a little time to react to a major change in a player's role... I know I would appreciate it if I *wasn't* the commish.

In any case, I would still go along with the new changes if everybody else liked them.

I'm sure it will be alot of fun either way.

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I sure hope so.

--The Sigil

The selection method for the awol players makes sense, but the part that I was worried about is when the yahoo rankings are misleading. For example if there's an injury to a player and he's been out for weeks, he may still have a great ranking, but putting him in the lineup over healthy players (of lesser ranking) wouldn't be at all competitive (though admittedly, any attempt to select any players at all, rather than having a "zero management" situation, is an improvement, so I still like the basic idea). In some of these injury cases it may be obvious if the player (er, basketball player) is out for the remainder of the season, so his ranking could be discarded. But in other cases the distiction becomes grayer. You may have to consider the "last month" thing with the active lineup too, but even that can be misleading. Eventually the whole decision-making process approaches the same kinds of decisions that we'll all be making with our own teams.

Ya, I like the 3 day trade extension. It would give everybody a little breathing room to consider the repercussions of the nba trades, so we could make appropriate adjustments.

Anyhoo, I think that the interest in our fantasy league will probably (hopefully) pick up when training camps start. Especially when everybody starts seeing player interviews on the nightly sportscasts and such.

I just realized that the depth of the productive players available throughout the year should see a slight bump this year, since having an extra team in the nba will introduce about 7500 more pts, 3500 rebounds, and other miscellaneous stats to the nba totals, and thus potentially more towards our own totals.

I'm also really eager to see the new-look Lakers. Kobe and Odom will likely be great, and I'm wondering how the horde of new players will mesh with them. It's like a totally different team now.

I'm in if you guys have room. I played the year before last, and I'm playing yahoo fantasy football now, so I'm a bit familiar with the rules - I 'll admit I haven't read your post completely (man it's long) and I don't have too many complaints about yahoo currently. That said, I love b-ball and it looks like you've created a well-thought out process for drafting, so I'm in if you've got room.

Welcome aboard!

Last year was alot of fun. The race was very competitive, in fact it went down to the last day. Plus we had lots of conversations and basketball chatter all year long; trash-talking, laughter, debates, pretty much everything. It was a blast!

(Ya Sig's posts are always really long, and he'll probably make the next one *extra special* for us, just for picking on him again. )

Hey, look under my name... "Mr. 3000" ... word posts, that is... LOL.

REALLY SHORT VERSION:
We will use the Yahoo defaults with the following exceptions:

1.) We will conduct a "messageboard draft" where you make your picks one at a time on the ENWorld messageboards instead of ranking players and having Yahoo do an "autodraft." We will run as many rounds as we can get through before October 27th; if we haven't filled our rosters by then, I will input the draft picks that were made, and let Yahoo "autodraft" the rest.

2.) AWOL owners will have their lineups filled in case of injury or simply leaving a spot open for a week. This will be done in an arbitrary manner, by using Yahoo's "last month" ranking to fill slots and putting together the combination that puts the ten highest-rated players possible into the empty slots.

3.) The trade deadline will be moved from the default of "the day of the NBA trading deadline" to three days later.

There, that's the short version.

--The Sigil

I'm game. I'll be good this year, too.

Nick

LeapingShark said:

I just realized that the depth of the productive players available throughout the year should see a slight bump this year, since having an extra team in the nba will introduce about 7500 more pts, 3500 rebounds, and other miscellaneous stats to the nba totals, and thus potentially more towards our own totals.

I'm also really eager to see the new-look Lakers. Kobe and Odom will likely be great, and I'm wondering how the horde of new players will mesh with them. It's like a totally different team now.

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Very true about more minutes available league-wide == more stats. This should be especially helpful at the Center position, where getting stats is always a tricky proposition (for one stretch last year, I was using Slava freakin' Medvedenko as a Center... of course, that was the week-and-a-half that he poured in 20 ppg, so I guessed right that his production would skyrocket with no Malone and no Shaq).

I am especially curious to see what the Lakers will do... I think the "re-shuffling" around the league of star players makes for some interesting guesswork - will Kobe's stats go up or down now that he doesn't have Shaq with him? Will McGrady and Yao get along, or will McGrady's production take a dive a la Steve Francis last season? Et cetera, et cetera. There's no shortage of questions and I think the owner that projects correctly how all the player movement will affect players will be the one with the inside track to the league crown.

Now all I need to do is figure out how NOT to lose the league crown in the final week this season... lost the title last year on a handful of steals.

--The Sigil