Without as much experience as most here, and just the narrative way I build, my take on my team won't be as nuanced. I do know most of my strengths/ weaknesses, but a little constructive criticism is always cool.
1-2. Dwight and Big Ben - Pretty much no-brainers to me with who had gone before. Having the 2 of them meant I go with my preference of playing SFs at the 3-spot more than PFs.
3. Moncrief - Lack of 3s was the only detriment to me. I didn't know he was as good at ORebs as he is. Enough assists that I could go with my next guy and combined they could do perform as a my PG.
4. Brent Barry - Good at everything most seasons, but low-Usg/ low minutes a couple seasons. Just a really good role-player. As with many of my picks from here out, I might've grabbed him a round early, but I wanted to make sure I got him.
5. Joe Ingles - I just wanted him for 3s, eFG% and passing, decent rebs at SG are a plus. Only using his 3 best seasons.
6. Otto Porter - 3s, high eFG%, usually decent defense, good DRebs, low TOs. I know I picked him early, but willing to take the risk for a guy that really takes nothing off the table. Just using his top 3 years.
7. Worthy - We all know what he's not great at, but just expecting an efficient scorer that plays decent defense and gets 5-6 boards a night, he's great. Low TOs help. I'll be starting him for 2-3 seasons, 6th-man for the others.
8. Plumlee - Efficient, good Def in the 4 seasons of his I'm using. A few really good passing years, which is important since I didn't get a starting-caliber pass-first PG.
9. Yao - Using 3 of his seasons as the backup to Dwight. I wasn't excited about it, but his Usg is really similar to Dwight's, so... There's that...
10. Muggsy - Using him for 2 backup seasons, <1000min. I simply wanted a high Ast% with low TOs and low Usg. That's the only thing he's good at, but man is he good at it.
11. Nance Jr - Pretty much the same as Plumlee, but not quite as efficient. His passing made it a good pickup for me. Using his 3 best seasons, some Min at PF, some at SF.
12. D'Angelo - Was going back and forth between him and Jason Richardson. What won me over was his Ast%, something my team could really use. There's not a lot to get excited about, but for one big-min season and 1-2 backup seasons, he'll get me 3s and assists. He won't do it that efficiently, but hopefully my other guys make up for it.

For everyone who said Shaq was in their top 1 or 2: which seasons?

I'll assume everyone is picking 99-00 and 00-01. Personally, I'd go with 02-03. After that, hard to say. 92-93? 93-94? 08-09? 04-05?

Posted by bds9992 on 6/6/2020 2:32:00 PM (view original):
For everyone who said Shaq was in their top 1 or 2: which seasons?

I'll assume everyone is picking 99-00 and 00-01. Personally, I'd go with 02-03. After that, hard to say. 92-93? 93-94? 08-09? 04-05?

I dig the 93-94 season. For his Usg, the TOs seem incredibly low. Plus, that Shaq got me my first title, so personal bias :)

1. Hakeem Olajuwon
2. Julius Erving

Okay. Well, I originally loved my position at 24. Thought it was the best place to be in the entire draft. It quickly became apparent that this was horribly wrong. I had an initial list of 16 guys I wanted and 22 guys I was okay with. I figured a few people would screw up, and I'd get two good guys. Well, almost no one screwed up. Everyone was going to have a high usage efg% monster, and it was becoming obvious there would be none left for me. So I had two choices: follow the usual model but take a worse player, or say f*ck it and try something different. Doing the same thing as everyone else, but without a stud is a quick way to the bottom. A few owners seemed to do this, and looking at their rosters I am very glad I didn't follow suit. I'm still not sure that Hakeem/Erving is going to make me a real contender for any of the 5 championships, however I am pretty confident they were both the right picks and will give me a high baseline in each league. I would rather have two 40+ minute guys who are really good but flawed, then have two 25-30 minute guys who are better per minute in this league. When I said this early in the draft, other owners were confused. They thought minutes wouldn't be a problem. That isn't what I meant. Of course, total minutes wouldn't be a problem in this league, but players who have 5 seasons of really good minutes would be scooped up quickly. If I went the other route, I would have to fill major minutes with later round players and those players wouldn't be nearly as good. With these two picks, I now didn't have to worry much minutes or usage, and could focus on my team needs.


3. Hassan Whiteside

I had Larry Nance as my best available, and Whiteside as the player I wanted most. Almost took a chance that Whiteside would slide to my next pick, but that wouldn't have worked. Nance would have given me a third 100 defender, but then both my wings would have had no threes and that wasn't a position I wanted to be in. I think Whiteside was the right choice. Gives me two top tier seasons, and three top tier backups. Because of Olajuwon and Erving, I was in a position where I could take a guy like Whiteside. I now had three top tier defenders and could focus on getting threes and assists with my next couple of picks.


4. Danny Green
5. Terry Porter

Being at the turn, I now had 46 picks between my choices each round. No reason to have any hope that my guys would fall to the next round. I needed threes like crazy, but no way I was getting Danny Green in 46 picks so I crossed him off my list and tried to come up with other wings. I came up with a plan to hope Korver was there and draft my top point guard to go along with him. I was between Terry Porter, Charlie Ward, and Ben Simmons in that order. I really wanted to try Simmons and just go for it with my two best teams, but I am very glad I decided against that and to build the 5 best teams I could. If Korver was gone, I was just going to draft two point guards and figure out a wing later. When Korver went, I had Porter and Ward penciled in when I realized that no one had taken Danny Green yet. Made my decision easy. Green should have gone early. I now had the best defensive foursome in the league and Terry Porter to lead the show. Still needed another point guard to mix and match with Porter. Charlie Ward would be perfect. Their high minute seasons compliment each other's low minute seasons perfectly. No way he could make it through another 46 picks right?


6. Charlie Ward
7. Tree Rollins

I could not believe Ward was still there as I almost drafted him in the previous round. My point guards were now set for all 5 of my teams. Ward and Rollins were in their own tier for me among all the available players left and I kept waiting for them to go, but they never did. Up to this point, I was pretty much getting the exact players I wanted and wasn't having to think too hard. I really liked all five of my teams through 5 rounds.


8. Chris Gatling
9. Rodney Rogers

Here is my first big screw up. Gatling is fine and gives me the backup usage I needed for a couple of teams, but I think there were better players available. Rogers was a terrible pick. I had had Buddy Hield penciled for this slot since very early in the draft and was certain I would get him. jhsukow took him two picks before mine, and I spent the next hour figuring out who I could take that gave me threes and could backup Dr. J for 6-12 minutes and give me good minutes at the other wing slot. I came up with one name: Michael Redd. Of course, Ash had the very next pick and is well known for his Michael Redd love. At this point, my daughter was crying and my wife needed a break and I had to make a pick or face both of their wrath. I panicked searched some quick parameters and Rogers was the result. He's fine in two seasons, but this was easily my worst round.


10. Wesley Person
11. Michael Beasley

Love both these picks this late. Person is actually going to start for me instead of Danny Green one season and has one very good season and another good one. Beasley gives me 10 very good minutes for 3-4 teams which is exactly what I needed.


12. Tobias Harris

I had 5 full teams going into this pick so it didn't really matter who I picked. I zeroed in on my weakest minutes and decided I needed a few SF minutes with good usage. Tobias has a wonderful partial season that fit nicely.


Overall:

I have four really mean teams and one team that is okay. I really only have one team that I think will be a true contender, but I have four teams that I think are going to make the playoffs and one that should have a chance. Hakeem and Julius scream "Don't draft" in most leagues. However, in this league I think they give me something different. Other teams have much better duos, but these guys are unique and I think I built around them really well. We will see...

1. John Stockton

He is incredibly consistent with all seasons and all of them with good EFG, defense, and assists. So this pick was easy for me.

2. Dirk Nowitzki

I picked Dirk here so a couple reasons. First off, he is my favorite player of all time so I use him any chance I get. Second, he is consistent across his top 5 seasons. That fact will be a running theme.

3. Clyde Drexler

Another consistency pick, and with Drexler and Dirk I definitely am not going to be low on Usg. He also is a good rebounder at th SG spot and also has a season that he can play at the PG spot for even more of a rebounding advantage.

4. Bob Lanier

I would have preferred a rebounding big man here but I don’t think there where very many I liked here so I went with the most consistent and best option available which was Bob Lanier. That and his 73-74 season I like a lot. I’ve had a lot of success with it.

5. Bo Outlaw

I had a ton of usage and was low on D and rebounding so Bo seemed the obvious pick here

6. Robert Horry

A good Defender with low usage to pack up Bo and sometimes start during some of Bo’s lower minute seasons

7. Marc Gasol

It was at this part of the draft where I start over drafting minutes but there’s no cap so it didn’t matter to me as much. There were better bench players out there but were there more that had 5+ seasons of pretty good play? Not so much, so again I chose consistency.

8. Dana Barros

A good consistent back up to Stockton. Not much else to say on it

9. Blake Griffin

a good consistent back up to Dirk with usage to make sure I never have to little.

10. Toni Kukoc

a good consistent back up to Clyde. Hoping to play him over Dana when possible.

11. Jeremy Evans

a good low minute defender with 5 consistent seasons. Won’t use him much but didn’t draft him till 11 so it felt appropriate.

12. John Wall

This pick was pure and simple filler. All my other needs were met and just needed to pick SOMEONE. Without looking I thought to pick Boban but he was gone. I picked as I was going to bed and I looked at my wife and told her to pick for me. She named Demarcus Cousins off the top of her head but of course he was taken, so she picked John Wall next. Ever the UK fan. Will probably only play him for a few minutes on one team. He’ll be warming the bench on the rest.

P.S. The two stats I like to look at in draft leagues are BPM and VORP (stats on basketball reference). In most theme leagues I’ve had mixed results but in draft leagues, especially, they have gotten me very good results. (See the Tiger Kings in the DH52) Hopefully the same will apply here.

P.P.S. You will notice my explanations are short and sweet. This is because I don’t over think picks too much. I usually just pick the best available at the time that fits a need not yet filled and doesn’t put me over on usage.

Posted by bds9992 on 6/6/2020 2:32:00 PM (view original):
For everyone who said Shaq was in their top 1 or 2: which seasons?

I'll assume everyone is picking 99-00 and 00-01. Personally, I'd go with 02-03. After that, hard to say. 92-93? 93-94? 08-09? 04-05?

For this league I actually had his top 5 salary seasons as my favorite five. In leagues where cap matters but don’t have drafts, 01-02 is absolutely king for me. He has soooo many partial season godlike seasons like that with varying yet consistent numbers that he makes building teams under restrictions so easy. Also has a few tier 3 usg seasons to match up with all of those 30-32 ones... but that’s really not important here (or any draft league)... that’s more of something you look for in an OL when you’re building around double steph or some lineup with 60+ usage already between two guys (lebron/steph/giannis/kd). I call it the 60/60 concert: get 60 usage with 60 efg with two guys then fill in the rest. There’s only a handful of guys you can do that with... Shaq gets you very close.

this is boring, let's talk about the yellow shark orchestral

Posted by bds9992 on 6/6/2020 2:32:00 PM (view original):
For everyone who said Shaq was in their top 1 or 2: which seasons?

I'll assume everyone is picking 99-00 and 00-01. Personally, I'd go with 02-03. After that, hard to say. 92-93? 93-94? 08-09? 04-05?

I ended up going with his top 4 salary seasons, and then 02-03 over 94-95. I preferred the 80D over the 65D. 94-95 may have 4 more minutes per game, but I'm using 18-19 JaVale McGee to back him up (62.5 efg%, 32.8 CRB%, 76D, 18M per game), so the minutes are irrelevant. The 02-03 Shaq/18-19 McGee combo is a beast.

Finding an efficient high usage backup is tough sometimes. There are so few. Especially when you have a 6 or 8 point guy, it's crucial. It was easier for me to make that work with Karl, but I understand the appeal of Shaq in this. I think 02-03 is kind of underrated for reasons I'll keep to myself, but that's just me.

One pick I wish I could take back: Dave Cowens

His minutes are his biggest selling point but I’m barely playing him on each team and I could’ve easily found someone who could’ve done more in that amount of minutes.

anyone else have any regretful picks?

Walton put me into some squeezes for going so early

This isn't really a regret but I kind of wonder if I could've swung for Mark Jackson later and used the Calderon pick on another need, but since Calderon is better and I like having nine good eFG% guys I'm not bugging over that.

I also wonder if I would have pulled the trigger on Iguodala if I knew I could get McCray four rounds later, but that's academic too since it's really nice to have both and McCray was kind of a steal on value provided you had enough 3s to make up for his lack

How often do you guys play someone at less than 100% positional efficiency? I usually keep everyone at 100 (sometimes 99) but I've got people playing minutes on some of my teams at 96-98 efficiency and I'm pretty nervous about it. If I had someone playing that low on fatigue, I'd consider resting them for a game, but at the same time 96% of some players is likely better than 100% of others so I'm trying to weigh out the pros/cons.

Posted by dBKC on 6/6/2020 8:49:00 PM (view original):
One pick I wish I could take back: Dave Cowens

His minutes are his biggest selling point but I’m barely playing him on each team and I could’ve easily found someone who could’ve done more in that amount of minutes.

anyone else have any regretful picks?

I would say Nash, but if I knew I would Not get Klay there, just trading down might have been a regret. I can’t believe Ash stole him from me.

watch him go like 36th or something next season.

Nice writing Ben and Sam. That is the first time I have seen you do lengthy writeup in a while Ben, maybe since you got married even?