Dh- I'm really digging your evals so far. Thanks for doing those (not to mention running the draft, which is no easy task).

It was a tough call. My original gut feeling that I wish now that I had run with was to take Gasol in the 3rd, Anthony Mason in the 4th and hopefully get Mullin in the 5th. But I got swayed to take Drexler in the 3rd when he was available. The extra assists and a bit more usage from Mason at SF vs AC Green may have may thave made that a dominant team. 

The thing is tang the Gasol pick by it self doesn't make sense to a new owner in this league. What you have to really look at is that  Moses will always be in the game when Gasol is. Together they have above average rebounding, very good foul drawing, above average assists, very good to excellent scoring efficiency, fairly low turnovers and extremely low fouls per 48 minutes. Also take a look at AC Green's and Ed Davis' rebounding numbers at SF because those are excellent.

pretty amazing what one singular draft can do to change your opinion on someone.  Wow.

So vance did you decide to use the full Mullin? Gotta love his 3:1 draw to foul ratio.

Still not sure how someone like you that can see the big picture is dissing my Daugherty pick. He fits very nicely with Rodman and Chandler, if I use the 90D Chandler that still leaves me with an frontcourt D ave of 73 when those three are on the court, more than enough for this league. Plus he has a 2:1 draw to foul ratio, shoots 77.7% from the stripe and has high enough fga/min and poss/min ratios to keep the ball moving in the uptempo. His boards are like Stat's, but so is his efg, and when you have Rodman adding Daugherty does not drop your boards below the league ave, plus his ast% gives me the flexibility to use a pure 3-point shooter at SG without taking a hit for lack of ast%. 

16. ashamael - Ben Wallace, Manu Ginobili, Alonzo Mourning, Horace Grant. Nate McMillan, Jon Barry, Jeff Ruland

Big Ben was picked kinda early but I guess if you didn't want to start with a guard(Magic/CP3/Wade) then he's not a bad pick there. He's probably the 2nd best low usage D/Boards guy after Rodman. I thought you nailed the Ginobili pick. He should go 2nd/3rd round every draft in this league. He does everything you want from your high usage lead guard. The good thing about Big Ben is that he allows you to take virtually any scoring PF you want. He covers all flaws with his defense, low usage, and low to/fls. In hindsight, I guess you could have used that to your advantage to grab either Porter or Nash with the Zo pick and take a PF/C later. Can't really blame you though, none of the PF/Cs you would have got later play D like Zo and you really did run into some bad luck with Porter/Nash going in the 6 picks between your 3rd rounders. You got a steal with my favorite SF Ho Grant in the late 3rd. I know you weren't excited about it because of the PG situation but he really fits well with Zo/Ben. And since you have two positions with low usage guys, he should get more opportunities to put that 57% efg to good use. Ruland is an interesting backup to Zo. Great offense but he's as dirty as they get. McMillan/Barry form a nice PG combo for what was left of that position. The backup to Manu is going to very important - I'll be very curious to see who you use. Solid squad but it just doesn't have that "damn i dont think i can outscore them" feel most of your teams do. In fact, it looks like the defense is the teams strong point, rare from an ash squad. I think this team will go as far as Manu/Zo can carry them, which feels like 40-45 wins to me.

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You nailed pretty much how I felt about most of this squad.  I went Big Ben because I felt like I could take him and get one of the next tier big men later and have a strength up front defensively on top of a good rebounding/paint situation.  Duncan was my first choice here, but he went where he should have gone, so no bad feelings there.  I did the swap with you because I feel like I could have gotten the team I wanted if I got 2 picks in the 3rd round, and I almost did.  I went with Ginobili not only for his offensive prowess but for a guy in the backcourt that could guard Steve Nash's man (thought for sure he'd drop b/c of his defense) if necessary. 

For my first pick in round 3, I felt like I needed to grab the other big guy because I wanted my paint scoring.  This was my biggest mistake. I had a ton of point guards I felt like I could get 6 spots later (porter & nash were my top two... Barry was next (Ginobili's big ast% allowed that to work)... I even had worked Walt Frazier into the mix... but all 4 of those guys went right before me.  Then my next tier of guys didn't feel like was worth the 3rd round pick (some of whom simply because of Zo & Ginobili's usage) and one of them (Ward, Derek Harper, Dana Barros, KJ, Mark Price, Jose Calderon were on my list at the time) should still be available in the 5th.  But none of them were!  Arg!  I guess that's karma for trading Stockton to you! ha!  I've always wanted to use that partial season of McMillan, and I figured I could make a nice defensive rotation with Ron Harper, but that got spoiled for me, too!  Thank God nobody took Jon Barry, because I think I like that combo better.  I had a nice back up plan for Ginobili, but apparently someone just screwed that up, too.  lol.

Yeah, this is far from my typical squad... but my normal way of building teams hasn't worked in the $52m draft in a long time... so thought I'd try a little something different.  I know one thing - I ******* hate drafting 16th... I never feel like anybody is worth the pick there.

tang, there are guys still drafting and you mentioned an undrafted player in your above post, please remove his name, that's considered taboo here.

well, gents and gals! I got a meeting and I can't find my pillow to sleep during the meeting!!

You know nate you may be correct about Daugherty. I just think that at times taking the average high defense of your front court players and then thinking that it will make up for a weak defender at less than 40 is faulty reasoning. But we will see about that won't we. 

You may be right as well Vance, but I think often those low D guys come with other issues as well like too many fouls, not getting to the line, or a high tov, Daugherty doesn't have those negatives. And I'll say this, aside from a slight dreb% advantage Lanier is basically Daugherty but you trade off 45D points in exchange for fewer fouls and almost 6% in efg. After watching last season unfold and a team with an ave D of just over 66 win a division here, I'm sold that efg is far more important than D, as long as you don't drop below a certain floor (which is right around 64-65 IMO, but anything in the 68-72 range should be enough.) We also had a team here last time with an ave D of 85 that missed the playoffs. 

I do see your point though, because last time I had a higher ave D than a few teams in my own division that had lower efg% against numbers, and I had a SF as you know that did nothing on D, but he also could not pass or board. Maybe his really low D could not be covered, but I also used a sub-50 backup at PG and SG, so that may have played a role as well. I may add one more lights out shooter with a D in the 40's this time, but Daugherty may also end up as my only sub-50 guy, it will be interesting to follow the tradeoffs.

Oh and you dissed West as well. If you add the right 3-point shooting then West and his 90D can be as effective as the likes of Payton and Blaylock in this league. His RL numbers can also be a huge plus because his fga/m and poss/m ratios are higher than other guys in his usage tiers because he did so much more in RL. Yes this means he will shoot more, but it also means he helps to fight off the individual penalty for not only himself but the other players on the team when running uptempo. And he does not foul, and he DOES get to the line a ton and hit from there. Would I have welcomed Kobe instead of West? Sure I would have, but if you put the right pieces in place around West you can minimize the efg% hit he brings and maximize his strengths. The fact that he has a very high pf draw rate and a poss/min ratio should really pay off, he will lead this team in FTA's and hit them in the 82-83 range, his tov% is also way lower than the likes of many of the elite PG's, so I think he fits quite well as a 90D 10mpg PG and 25mpg SG guy for me.

To be fair I really didn't diss on West. The point was that I didn't think that after you picked Daugherty and West that the team was a contender. I actually like one of West seasons as a starter with a higher usage player with better EFG% I actually used West as my second scorer with Karl Malone as my # 1 guy in this league once. I also snagged Marion at SF and that team won 56 games. Then they got killed at home in game 7 in the playoffs by about 30 points against a dh555 title team. I never forgot that loss! One of the things that I have learned is that you need high usage high EFG% players to off set high usage low EFG% players. Last season sixernuggets used Penny along with McGrady and it was an excellent backcourt. Rodman and Chandler's high EFG% won't offset West's missed shots as much as you might think. Deron Williams assists are very good for the squad.To tell you the truth though I do think that you have a playoff team with a change to make it to the second round and maybe better. One question: Did you draft enough points. I haven't added it up but it appears that if West has a bad game there might not be enough offense to win. You did a very good job. The biggest mistake IMO was taking Chandler in round 2 when you already had Rodman. But its a good team man. 

vance ash or whoever (even 98) I'd like to hear evaluations - I'l share my thoughts if you share yours

Wow, I have an extra 2mil laying around.  Never had that before!   But I'm used to drafting defense first and foremost.  I guess eFG is cheaper than defense.   There is a ton of talent that didn't get drafted, so I will likely use Outlaw's 3 mpg season and replace him with Chris Andersen.  Then fill in some pf and sg minutes...