Blogger's Note: I made this blog for NBA Philippines on October 8, 2012.
Strategy.
Sweet wonderful strategy.
There are two ways of playing fantasy basketball. You can be the silent assassin who’ll start and finish the season without saying anything in the forums and winning the prize altogether. Or… you can be the scheming hoop nut who will try every trick in the book (mind games, incite riots, etc.).
Advance class people!
SEARCH FOR LOOPHOLES
Ron Jacobs is an awesome coach. Not only did he make up awesome plays… he also knew the rules of the game. Only of his caliber can he milk and abuse the “magical” contraption known as the injury timeout. I remember seeing Olsen Racela, Mike Mustre, Nelson Asaytono, and the other San Miguel Beermen fall… they would rub their eyes… and the concerned mentor would call a timeout… and the SMB player would magically be alright. Not all rules are foolproof. Sometimes your weekly settings will not work in a daily environment. A two-day waiver period is a long time for a daily league team that lacks a bench and has a lot of injured people. Maybe your GM forgot to configure your waiver ranks or even the undroppable list. I know this is hard work (and sometimes these figures don’t matter) but you need to check out every feature of your league because it will help you in the long run… especially if you have a fighting chance to win it all.
DON’T HELP TOO MUCH
Believe me… this is easier when you’re participating in an online draft. You can easily turn off your Yahoo Messenger, your Facebook chat, or even your cellphone to escape strategy leakage. This is a different story when you’re drafting live. One way of giving away false trust is by making two sets of cheat sheets one is a believable and well-crafted cheat sheet with altered rankings. You can do two cheat sheets where you memorize what you want, and the rankings are still wrongfully altered. Another way to sabotage your cheat sheet is by purposely marking out undrafted players. In an office setting where work can get in the way of fantasy hoop junkies, the best way to have a smooth draft is by going to an unavailable player’s desk to find out his choices. I have this officemate who targeted my choices and when the talents grow thin, I try to hide my prospects by blackening them out of the page. Or the easiest thing of all… just saying yes to a bad choice is enough to give your opponent a season-long worth of hell.
Devious?
Yes, I know.
But who says you shouldn’t turn on your enemies especially if it’s a “winner takes all” league?
MAKE YOUR RULES FOOLPROOF
Here’s how I did this in my fantasy league. After the draft I “suggested” in the league forum. I was swarmed by negative feedback on how the league employs the “no changes must be made” rule. After getting almost 50 percent of angry GMs, I screen-grabbed the page and kept it on a vault (or some folder I have on my desktop). With this obnoxious brand of doing things, I all of a sudden know who are the active GMs on the forum, who think of the game in terms of long-term possibilities, and will have a cool JPEG file on how most of the league members are hypocrites if they try to amend the rules. You just don’t do this to piss off people. As I mentioned in the loophole part, if you see a problem in the rules, you either shout it or hide it so that a random unprepared GM will falter.
ONE BIG MOVE
I believe this part is reserved for the GMs who tried out Jeremy Lin during the infancy of Linsanity. Before Lin broke out, he was never even considered in the NBA’s Top 250. Of course, there are a lot of reasons why it’s better to be safe than sorry. I also believe though that a GM can’t win by just going through the motions. Sometimes it can be as simple as initializing an imbalance trade like giving up Amar’e Stoudemire for Marcin Gortat. Two seasons ago, this would have been a stupid move. Last season, however… the man known in basketball circles as STAT was less of a stat magnet compared to The Polish Hammer! This season, Gortat is third round worthy in deep leagues while Amar’e isn’t. For those who claimed Amar’e in the deep rounds, will he become your one big move? I bet he is… in a world where Tyson Chandler is not his teammate.
I like the NBA but I’m also a fan of reality television (the better kinds like Survivor, The Apprentice, and The Amazing Race) where swerves and competition make the game more exciting and entertaining. I plan to do more… but here’s the thing… sometimes you need to time your actions well. You can’t just dupe a GM every time because that will backfire on you. And for those who think I did something stupid for writing my intentions here… then maybe I’m doing this with a plan in mind.
But as I mentioned in my previous article, unless you have a flawless squad, then all of these schemes will be for naught.
I leave you with an image of a fit James Harden playing.
The A.I. just gave him the Houston Rockets colors and I don't know why.
