dh555 - DeAndre Jordan, John Stockton, Zion Williams, Victor Oladipo, Shawn Marion, JR Smith, Cedric Ceballos
This team is first and foremost an EFG beast, with Oladipo and Marion “dragging down” your average. FTs aren’t as flattering but you will secure a lot of trips to the line. The cost of that shooting though is felt in the inconsistent defense, middling rebounds, and average/minus TOs, blocks, and fouls.
No issues with the DJ pick, and you covered for Stockton’s turnovers moderately well with clean players. Marion is another guy I eyed at various points of the draft, but like you said I’m ultimately not sure he’s worth the price. His defense is significant for your team, though, as are the 3s so I do like the package. I don’t know that you needed Ceballos and think you could have possibly gone with a more all-around player, not that he’s a slouch per se.
But none of these are huge weaknesses, and your big guys are going to be unstoppable on offense with Stockton tossing lobs. Certainly a favorite to make the playoffs, and I’m thankful that you’re in the opposite conference.
jcred5 - Kawhi, Magic, Larry Sanders, Embiid, D'Angelo Russell, Anderson Varejao, JaMychal Green
After your comments, I was really looking forward to taking a deeper look at this squad. My initial take was that outside of Kawhi, and maybe Embiid and your sixths, I wouldn’t have taken the guys you did, at least not as highly as you did. I suppose 86-87 is a reasonable Magic season to use, with high usage and his lowest TOs, but they’re still quite high at 15.9% and I don’t love his midrange focus or middling EFG either at the price.
The finished product is pretty solid though. You probably have more shots than you need, and your EFG is decent but not intimidating; the good news is that none of your leading shot takers (outside of maybe Gasol who is 5th in FGA) are duds, so there’s a high floor. That low EFG has given you the budget for tons of rebounds, lots of assists with average TOs, solid but not great defense. FTs are a big strength.
So I guess I see a team that will win on the boards while staying about neutral in the turnover game. Will your good passing, decent defense and EFG be enough to win the shooting game? I’m not sure, but despite my drafting you early I’m definitely not counting this team out.
raggedclaws - Harden, Ben Wallace, Derrick Favors, Brandon Clarke, Delon Wright, Ed Davis, Birdman
Happy to be presented with Harden in this spot in the first; I tried him out two seasons ago to mediocre results but felt like I could do a better job on a second try. I knew I had gotten too much usage last time, which is easy to fall into with Harden, this time I was going to be more focused. So as soon as I took Harden, I started looking for his backup. There really aren’t that many 8 point usage guys, and once you get past the first rounders most of them actually don’t get taken, which makes sense, as it would be overkill for most teams.
But I already had the idea early of pairing him with one more perimeter scorer, and then just stuffing the roster with efficient inside guys. It was nice to not have to worry about having to pair up positional usage points, and for the perimeter scorer I kept coming back to Donovan Mitchell’s latest season – affordable, well rounded, more minutes than I strictly needed but would help carry the overall usage load while getting me to enough 3s. Pretty confident he wouldn’t be drafted which was good because I didn’t want to use a high pick on the role, and had a backup just in case.
With that planned out somewhat, Ben Wallace was a perfect second rounder (I lucked into enough budget to upgrade to his decent shooting season), though I knew from then that I couldn’t go with bottom of the barrel usage guys, there’d have to be a bit of a paint scoring punch. Hence the focus on guys like Favors and Clarke that have really high efficiency and also shoot the ball a bit, over 18.7 usage for both of them. I know what the defensive plan against this team is going to be and am trying to preemptively undermine that a bit. Still would have been nice to get Harrell on this team. Anyways.
The rebounding, steals, blocks, turnovers, FTs, and on-ball defense should all be even better than last year on paper and the team shoots less midrange. I tried to keep fouls low, and Big Ben helped, but they’re still a bit higher than last year and somewhat worse than league average. Darn it, I should at least get some extra credit for not drafting Tree this time.
Meanwhile the bigger hit is to scoring. Usage is down from 103.3 to 101.5, EFG is down from 56.4 to 54.8, and assist % is down from 64.2 to 57.9. Though the higher TS% should help a bit. And WCS in particular is more of an innings eater who will lose minutes in the playoffs, that could be a bump as well.
So on paper everything checks out, but I’m still a bit wary of the offense, especially as Harden-centric as it is, so a bit of an underperformance wouldn’t shock me at all. And jcred will probably take the division.
ty84moss - Dennis Rodman, KAT, Kyle Lowry, Donyell Marshall, Derrick Rose, Enes Kanter, Kristaps Porzingis
Another team I’m just now taking a first look at. First reaction is that I don’t like Rodman in the first, but that everything else from there looked well considered. It’s probably better to get him around the turn like you did so you can target your ideal partner.
Lowry and Marshall are decent value at their spots, though you’re not exactly prioritizing defense in this draft. Enough minutes, shots, bit high on 3s but not terrible. Those rebounds and turnovers, wow. Shooting is really strong too. Defense is really not where you’d like it to be, and fouls are a little high, but this is a very good team.
I think people are going to play perimeter defense against this team, and you’re going to rebound all over their faces. I wish you had more minutes of that Kanter rebound/dunk energy, like swapping a Gerald Wallace type for Donyell, but this is a really well constructed team, and a clear contender.
Pbandj - Hassan Whiteside, Dr J, Deron Williams, Bill Russell, Steve Nash, Chris Bosh, Marvin Bagley
PBandJ is finally up, and would pick 5 times by the 76th slot. I thought Hassan and Dr J were two good first picks, with Whiteside bringing efficiency while Dr J checks off even more boxes. Deron Williams, though, woof. It seems like you may have been picking him based on his ADP from last year alone, but I’d… advise against that. I had some questions about each of your picks from Deron on, though I will say that actually looking at your roster it doesn’t appear Russell and Nash were as harmful as I initially thought.
This team has several strengths, though I don’t like the towels, or the lack of 3s, or the low FGAs and high minutes. Given how you ended up a bit high on minutes anyways, I don’t know that a 7 man rotation was ideal; would have been nice to upgrade the Reggie Evans spot to a more useful 8th man.
Defense will be really good, especially when Nash and Bagley aren’t both out there. Assists are high even if the A/T isn’t, respectable blocks, solid EFG in your non-Russell drafted players. I still don’t see this as a playoff team but wouldn’t be shocked if it outperforms my draft ranking.
robusk - Tim Duncan, Damian Lillard, Jimmy Butler, CJ McCollum, Clifford Ray, Ivica Zubac, Kevon Looney
You’ve said that you don’t really like this team, but I don’t see it. Lillard and CJ are efficient, Zubac and Looney are great role players, and Jimmy Buckets and Duncan both fill the stat sheet while not killing you with their shooting, really Duncan is a plus. They’re both so clean, too, Butler especially.
I could go either way on Clifford, but his rebounds help fortify that area as a real strength. Defense has two clear positions of weakness but good everywhere else. A/T is really nice. EFG is I think above average, though not by too much. Shots maybe on the high side, you’ll be juggling minutes in the regular season at least.
I’ve been going back and forth a bit on CJ, who feels a bit redundant with Lillard; if you needed to back Dame up with someone, there aren’t really many player with his profile AND good defense in the fourth, I get it. Still, with Timmy, Lillard, and Butler on the roster, and shots ending up a bit high, I’m wondering about that spot. I mean, couldn’t Butler just back up both Lillard and Duncan?
Regardless, it’s a good result and the clean play will be an asset. It’s going to be a tough division but you’ve got as good a chance as anyone. If the offense clicks, and it looks like it will, this will be a really difficult team to play against.
ysw128 - Larry Bird, Charles Barkley, Eric Bledsoe, Tom Boerwinkle, Brandon Ingram, Kyle O'Quinn, Andrew Bynum
Bird and Barkley is a good SF rotation out of the gate, and I like Bledsoe too, not always in the third, but more so with this squad. Boerwinkle, well I’m not sure the towels and price will add up for me, but it’s not totally objectionable here. Though it does begin a trend of kind of nodding towards defense but only vaguely and some of the time. Would have been nice to cover for Barkley a bit better.
Speaking of Barkley, 92-93 is an interesting choice; it’s a clean season, but it doesn’t play SF as well, and actually it looks like you have him playing the 4 which seems like a mistake. I’d rather go with 89-90 for a cleanish season, or 87-88 if you don’t care about that.
This team has a lot of shots, shoots pretty well, the rebounds and assists look nice, and the stocks are solid. But the turnovers and fouls are also high, defense is spotty, and I’m not in love with the bench picks – you don’t need these guys to have such good EFG, get some real defenders. I have this team somewhere on the playoff periphery, I probably ranked it slightly too well but wouldn’t be shocked to see it in the playoffs.
jhsukow - Christian Wood, Kyrie Irving, Dikembe Mutombo, Al Horford, Kevin Love, Horace Grant, Tyreke Evans
Bringing up the rear is jhsukow, whose first selection wasn’t until 37, but held five picks between 37 and 61. So how’d you do with these seconds and thirds? I like the first three picks, they all have legit second round value, though I bet you’d have liked someone with first round value like KG to slip slightly further to you. A good foundation though.
I’m not as convinced by Horford and Love, both of whom I’ve managed in recent seasons and come away a bit underwhelmed by, though they’re both perhaps better in ODL than Savage. Meanwhile Grant is someone I thought about a few times but just felt was overpriced.
With Tyreke, I guess you’ll have Irving, Evans, Wood, and Love as your scoring punch. Not bad, but skewing perimeter heavy. And indeed, you’re at almost 900 3PM. That’s a bit high for my taste, but is still better than not having enough. Still I don’t think this team, which barely scores inside, needed to add Bertans. His defense fits but I don’t think the shooting profile does, and his ability to play the two seems moot on this roster.
You’ve done well to shore up the defense outside of Wood, Irving, and Love; those three will still drag the average down noticeably, though. Team should be about average at D, better at guarding the rim than the perimeter, and better at on ball stopping than generating stocks. Rebounding is solid, I like your A/T, good shooting. It’s remarkable how many of your guys play SG, it might have been nice to get bigger with Love and Wood at SG and more rebounding oomph behind them, but I’m not mad at the result and you still ended up with respectable rebounding numbers. I may have underranked you a bit.
And that’s it. Now watch me have my worst ever performance in the O/U.