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The overwhelming success of our fantasy football mock left us little choice but to follow suit for fantasy hoops now that the NBA Draft has come and gone. And let's face it - it's never too early to mock draft. The plan is to have four rounds done by Thursday, and then we'll pick things up again after the July 4 weekend. The participants: Jonathan Tom, esteemed Fantasy Basketball Cafe contributor and winner of the 2007-08 Y! Friends and Family League; a Yahoo! Sports triumvirate of Brandon Funston, Matt Buser, and Matt Romig; Justin Phan, an FBC and fantasybasketball.com contributor; and David Klyce of HoopsKlyce.com (and 2006-07 F&F league champ).

For settings, assume the standard nine categories (FG%, FT%, 3PTM, PTS, REB, AST, STL, BLK, TO) and roto scoring format.

Rounds 1, 2, 3, and 4.

I've got Butler/Billups/Gay/DWest and Camby/Wade/VC/JJ at the moment.

Thoughts?

Where are you bigs? I mean I realise camby is a beast but I think you need another big body. Yes I realise west is a pf but he doesn't block a lot of shots.

tkunit wrote:Where are you bigs? I mean I realise camby is a beast but I think you need another big body. Yes I realise west is a pf but he doesn't block a lot of shots.

I'm drafting more for value early on than positions considering we're not planning to go the distance (probably cap it Round 8 and barely fill out our individual rosters). There are still plenty of bigs that can be had in the next couple rounds anyways. The likes of Brad Miller, Bynum, Biedrins, LMA, Okur, Dalembert, and Oden are still available. I don't think a 2C roster setting has been established yet either. We're doing this more to get discussion going for ranking players rather than to see who can draft the best team.

I don't usually do it, but a couple days ago I had to post after the collective group of idiots chimed in on the quality of the mock. (I'm Coady S)

Mocks are always divisive. In this case you divide the fools who think that T-Mac is still a top pick from every who knows better. Ha...

I wouldn't say I completely agree with the slots all the guys got drafted in either, but that's not a comment on quality of the mock, that's just how they go.

I think Al Jefferson at 38 is low and Dwight Howard at 13 is really high, but other than that sure.

As for the two specific teams metioned in the first post I think I lke the first team quite a lot, while the second is just OK.

Team one is roto-tatsic IMO, and when you have Gay in the lineup you don't need to worry quite as much about West's lowish 1.3 BPG. Billups is a guy I hate drafting in HtH but for roto he's gold. Toss in butler (and pray for decent GP) and you have a very nice all round roto team. Little light on three ball and blocks, but, as you mention, thos eare available in subsequent rounds.

Team two could be fantastic, but you banking an awful lot on what could be the ultimate F&F mock draft all injury and disinterest squad. Both Wade and yao could be injury issues, and VC might decide to not show up for his rebuilding squad that's going nowhere fast. If everyoen plays you'll gold of course, but you need all three domino's to drop your way. My personal taste is to limit myself to one really risky guy per team. I guess this could be a go big or go home kind of draft strategy though.

Cheers

Round 5 is up.

Team 1: Butler, Billups, Gay, David West, Chandler
Team 2: Camby, Wade, Carter, Joe Johnson, Mike Miller

D12 at 13 was certainly a shock, especially considering we established a 9-category roto format and the manager who drafted him double-checked with us regarding the format before making that pick.

camby is way, way too high. howard, calderon and maybe even manu sould not be in the 2nd round. al-jeff should be taken in the 3rd. i wouldn't take a rookie in the 4th round when there are still great players to be had unless it was a keeper league. artes and g-wall won't fall to 5th in many drafts. overall it's solid so far. only 2 picks that i have huge problem with are d-how and camby

Hmm. I probably agree that Camby is too high, likely by at least 8 picks. Manu in the late 2nd early 3rd is right where he should be (he ranks out around 24 in most formats). Jose's a value pick this year, people are taking him high and banking on him repeating his stat-crushing tastiness. I think I'd wait until the third to get some of that action though, his stats to close out the year were way off his mid-season pace and not all of that can be put on TJ sulking.

Jefferson though, I'll do you one better - he's a second round pick in any format. Maybe very early third, but anywhere after that and people are asleep at the wheel IMO.

I'm really torn on Ron and G-Wall this year. Both guys are pretty risky. I think I'd be more tempted to draft them higher in a larger league where my draft position wasn't good and i felt I needed to make up some ground with high-risk/high-reward picks. In general I don't think I'd touch either guy before the late 4th round even in a 12 man league. My draft strategy is mostly risk adverse though, so for other guys who love to swing for the fences things look different.

Team One continues to be a clear fav too. Next round's going to need some three ball in it to keep that up, but there's lots of that left on the board.