This is the time of year when everything starts over, starts fresh. All those goals, those plans, those things you've been meaning to do for months ... now's the time to get started. The gyms are flooded this week with folks who have decided that now is the time to get in shape. Food plans with words like "keto" and "DASH" are starting up hot and heavy around the country. Books are being started, money-saving plans abound, and social media behavior is changing. For this week, and this week only, all things are possible.
Fantasy sports should get in on the action as well.
The NFL regular season is officially over, which means that season-long fantasy football is done. For many people, this is the "unofficial" start to basketball season, as the NBA and NHL will run the professional team-sport landscape for the next several months. For those already in fantasy basketball leagues, now is a great time to bear down and really dig into your squads.
For those who aren't in a fantasy basketball league yet, now's a great time to start one. And for those who have been focused on your fantasy basketball teams all season, you might have learned some lessons already to use moving forward. Whichever camp you fall into, it's a great time to make some changes.
I'm no different -- I've got a lot of things that I'd like to change on my fantasy basketball front. So, without further ado, let's go through my fantasy basketball New Year's resolutions for 2019. Some of them might have a bit of seriousness in them ... and some might just be for fun. Let's get it!
I resolve to give Stacey Augmon's old nickname to Giannis Antetokounmpo
Stacey Augmon was a memorable player from the 1990s whose nickname was Plastic Man. Now, it's time to pass that moniker to another. Ladies and gentlemen, your new NBA Plastic Man ...
how are you supposed to guard this pic.twitter.com/qY7oQJM6D7
- Bruh Report (@BruhReport) January 2, 2019
No wonder Antetokounmpo is dunking at Shaq rates this season ... it takes him only three steps to go full court!
I resolve to never again draft multiple injured players to stash for the future
I'm in a lot of leagues this season, which means I did a lot of fantasy drafts in late September/early October. I had done the projections and rankings, and I had a group of players whom I expected to be more valuable than their given draft slot this season.
In some cases, injuries affected the balance of upside and draft slot.
Would a player who would be healthy for 80 percent or more of the season at third- or fourth-round value be worth a pick in the middle rounds? Would a potential impact starter who might play only 50 percent of a season be worth a late-round pick and stash? Many of the leagues I play in have an injury slot, so this season I leaned into taking the risk and drafted a bunch of injured guys.
This is a strategy that works well in fantasy football, but it is not so successful in basketball (aside from certain formats). For one thing, there are usually fewer bench slots in basketball than in football. As such, having injured guys clog your bench for the early months of the season makes it almost impossible to sufficiently grab the promising early-season surprises who always litter the waiver wire. This is significant.
But what's even more significant is that bench players are more frequently starters in fantasy basketball than in fantasy football. This is clearly true in head-to-head leagues that use daily lineups, as there are very few days when enough NBA teams play that your entire fantasy starting lineup is full. Thus, in those types of leagues, your "bench" players are essentially extra starters, and having a bench full of injured guys is almost a guaranteed loss.
However, this is also true in weekly transaction leagues (both H2H and roto) because the number of games played in a given week is so vital to setting lineups.
This has become the foundation of my weekly rankings, as role players who play one or two more games than bigger-name players routinely prove to be more valuable in a given week. Thus, in those leagues, having a bench full of injured guys is almost as much of a team-crippler, because you are forced to start players even when their schedules are lacking, and thus your team isn't maximized.
Thus, while John Collins and Lauri Markkanen are finally starting to play at the level I expected when I drafted and waited on them -- and DeMarcus Cousins and Kristaps Porzingis could still be of value at some point -- I'm not doing this again next season.
I resolve to tell any NBA player I meet to stop trying to dunk on Jarrett Allen
Back in the day, everyone in the NBA used to dunk on 7-foot-6 center Shawn Bradley. Don't believe me? Here's what it looked like (video also serves as a nice throwback to pre-HD videos. Yikes!).
Well, this season, Allen has been making himself into the anti-Bradley. He's been taking the greatest players and dunkers in the game and putting them on his personal highlight reel. Don't believe me?
For 2019, I think those with intent to boom on Allen should resolve to pass instead.
I resolve to play the game (instead of just coaching)
When I'm in my zone, I know every player who is on every one of my fantasy basketball teams. I know the strengths and weaknesses of the team, I know who's healthy and who's injured, and I know exactly what my fantasy team needs. Not only that, I know who's available on the free-agent wire whom I've been keeping an eye on, and I know the instant that any major player has a situation change (e.g., trade, injury, coaching change, etc.) which players I would need to pick up/drop in order to take advantage of the new normal.
In addition, I know exactly who is on every other fantasy team in the league, and every other team's strengths and weaknesses so that I can always put together viable trade offers that actually would help my opponents ... but would just help me more.
But a funny thing has happened with my "zone" in recent years. Actually, several funny things, namely "wife," "kids" and "job" to name a few.
The latter is one of the great ironies of life, because my job is actually fantasy basketball advice, but these days I gather and disseminate the advice for you, not for me. Often, by the time I've finished researching and writing my articles and spent my family time, there just isn't as much time as there used to be to actually look at my own teams. This was especially true before I came to ESPN, when I was a full-time engineer by day and a basketball writer by night, but I thought this season would be different.
Writing fantasy basketball full time, from the start of the season, would (I thought) be a throwback to yesterday when I was in my zone and focused on my leagues. To that end, I drafted an absurd number of teams this season. I mean, completely outlandish, even by my standards. But I figured it'd be all good, that I'd go back to the days of spending hours just staring at my leagues every day, scheming. So far, to end 2018 ... not so much.
Thus, I resolve to actually start playing my leagues for 2019, on top of helping your teams from the sidelines. I'm going to pick a league every week to immerse myself in, until for that particular league I'm in my zone and ready to make moves. Once I get rolling in one, I'll move on to the next one.
I'm in so many leagues that doing one a week might not let me get to all of them before this season ends, but that's OK. Resolutions are all about changing our worlds, one step at a time. And I've got to figure, actually playing a league has to be a big change in the right direction from barely remembering to get all the lineups set ... right?
You should do the same with any leagues you've let slide.
I resolve to officially upgrade "Do The John Wall" to "Mo Bamba"
I lived in the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina when Wall was tearing up the courts in the late 2000s. I was still there in 2010 when Troop 41 released its surprisingly catchy dance song "Do The John Wall." That song got blasted on the radio, to the point that I'd catch myself walking around the neuroscience lab singing to myself, "Do it for the city ... and do it for the fans ... to ball like Wall, boy you gotta do the dance ..." on a daily basis.
Since then, in every fantasy basketball draft when Wall is picked, I've felt almost duty-bound to break into the song.
But now, there's a new kid on the block, and his name is Mo Bamba.
The first time I heard Sheck Wes' ode to Mo, I was ... skeptical. It seemed a song more for my kids' generation than a son of hip-hop from the '80s and '90s like me. But then I kept hearing the song ... and hearing the song ... and hearing the song, and the next thing I knew? I'm walking around the ESPN campus singing, "Mooooooooooooo, baaaaaaaal-ing, just like Moooooooooooooo, Baaaaaamba" (and yes, I'm aware those aren't the right words, but really ... I kinda refuse to learn the right words. They don't even matter. But I digress).
Anyway, by the time the viral (and not quite safe for work) Instagram video of "Mo Bamba will take a party from 0 to 100 in less than 3 seconds" was forwarded to me ... at work, by the way ... I'd already given in to the inevitable. The torch has been passed. While I might still occasionally break out my John Wall lyrics when the mood strikes me, moving forward, Mo Bamba is the official "I must sing/reference this" song of fantasy basketball drafts for 2019 and beyond.