Weekly: Dec 30

We’re officially right into the new year and the NBA is heating up! We had a wild WK11 too, as four top teams fell, as we not only had our lone undefeated team taken out, but that loss was delivered by our lone winless team! So let’s take a look at the four teams who took out Chunky Monkeys, Space Knockout aka Team Thien, Sour Snails, and Fat Jubas!

Another Bad Creation (1-10)
Losing LeBron James hurts hunh? Chunky Monkey’s depth was exposed as James only suited up for one game and even though James Harden and the duo of Larry Nance and Clint Capela did their best to keep it competitive, our previously winless team took down the defending champs!

It takes an absolute hero to take down Goliath and DJ Augustin -- who caught fire last week and delivered 23.3 PTS, 6.7 AST, 3.0 3PT, and 1.7 STL on 52.8 FG% -- was that hero! Throw in Russell Westbrook, LaMarcus Aldridge, and fantasy lynchpin TJ Warren and ABC clearly should be better than just a one-win team. While Enes Kanter has slowed, Kyle Anderson is back to filling up the stat sheet and along with Marcus Morris has really fleshed out the rotation behind Westbrook.

Over the past month, ABC has been just around league average in offensive, defensive, and efficiency rating, ranking eleventh, eighth, and ninth respectively. Their main weaknesses are in AST and BLK but everywhere else they are highly competitive. We highlighted Oliver as a bottom-three owner last week, but with this huge win, we anticipate ABC stepping their game up over the back half of the season. Watch out for this giant killer!

Fob Stars (5-6) (4-6-1)
Last we checked, Fob had just one win to their name and was headed for an early date with the Toilet Bowl. A month later and Jimmy’s team has now won four in a row three in a row and tied one, and took down Squirtle Squad and tied Sour Snails in back-to-back weeks. For the season, Fob Stars are only 13/14/10 in ODE rating, but over the past month they’ve been at 5/6/3, which translates to being the fourth best team in SlamNation over that time. Coach Jimmy has done a masterful job managing his team over the past month and some of his cold slow starters, aka Jamal Murray, are heating up.

Add in the return of John Collins to the lineup, the emergence of Point Justise, plus free agent hits on Jordan Clarkson and Thaddeus Young, and it looks like Damian Lillard finally has some running mates. (But seriously, Point Justise is at 17.0 PTS, 4.8 AST, 2.6 STL and even 1.8 3PT per game while shooting 50.0% from the field. Here’s hoping Goran Dragic never comes back!) A recent trade of Jonathan Isaac for Rudy Gay sacrificed some future for the now, but it didn’t look like Isaac was going to make the keeper cut anyway.

Suddenly this team of youngish veterans looks like it’s ready to win now and if Jimmy can pull off even one win against Team Spade and So Buckets -- their next two opponents -- we’re comfortable saying that this once has-been will soon be a playoff contender. Great job Fob Stars!

[Edit: Wait, ESPN gave this matchup a 4-4-1 tie after the fact, so I guess Fob Stars is now 4-6-1, whoops.]

Team Spade (6-4-1)
Unlike the previous two teams, Spade hasn’t been a pushover that that rose to power, instead they’ve always had the promise of a title contender, and a great keeper core. But still, a win versus Team Thien makes the case even stronger, as Spade has now gone 3-1-1 after an uneven 0.500 start -- Spade won two games all of last season.

They took down Team Thien under a barrage of 3PT while winning both PTS and TOs, an impressive feat. Spencer Dinwiddie and Brook Lopez both dropped in ten-plus threes while Dinwiddie also added twenty-one assists on the week. Impressive stuff, even as Kevin Love and Will Barton have yet to see the floor for Spade and others remained injured last week.

So how high is this team's upside? Despite a low-ish GP and Moves number, Randall has used Kawhi Leonard, Devin Booker, and Danilo Gallinari to great effect while filling out the oft-injured roster with the likes of Dinwiddie, Monte Morris, and Bryn Forbes. While Spade has maintained their offensive and efficiency ratings, their ninth rated defense has fallen to fourteenth when taking into account just the past month’s numbers. That number should climb with Al Horford and Paul Millsap back on the court and there’s an intriguing WK14 matchup with Chunky Monkeys to see how good Spade can really be this this season.

So Buckets (6-4-1)
As we already covered Josh’s team in our last weekly, we’ll just briefly highlight how they took out Fat Jubas, delivering Eric just his third loss of the season. So Buckets would have won by even more categories as they lost by only one in both AST and BLK. The guard trio of Kyrie Irving, DeMar DeRozan, and CJ McCollum, plus the interior presence of Rudy Gobert and Noah Vonleh pushed the team to a big win. Buckets is now within one game of taking the Chamberlain Conference lead!

Owner Ratings

It’s been a year of coming up with ratings for everything, so why not come up with a management rating? It’s going to be: Games Played + Moves + Wins. I think there’s probably something to be said for Moves not necessarily being correlated to Games Played and Wins, but let’s just let it ride. This is all for run anyway right? Let’s take a look at each owner category.

[Google Sheet]

Games Played
Unquestionably the biggest correlation to GP is good coaching, right? After some early season mess ups with games limits, most every owner should now manage their team to maximum value. Take a look at our current Games Played through ten weeks.

Our top five coaches are Roger, Eddie, Trieu, Brian, and Thien, who lead the pack in GP management. However, there is a giant outlier here, as Buffy only has four wins despite being the best coached team. Every other top team in the top nine GP ratings are playing at a 0.500 or above clip. On the flip side, Spade is only thirteenth in GP but has five wins... Still there's little debate that a high GP is essential to winning, right?

Our average Games Played is 24.7 GP through ten weeks, with a high average of 26.1 for Buffy and a low of 21.0 for Cameltoe. Most everyone is within ten GP of the average except Randall, Jimmy, new owner David, and Felipe. Perhaps a review of the Weekly Games Cap Explainer? The bottom three coaches are all on the hot seat, as they’ve racked up a combined sixteen weeks of early GP violations. That’s 53% of the time. Jimmy has largely worked out his GP issues as he’s found his rhythm the past month, but David and Felipe are still hitting the game limit early most weeks.

Moves
I’ve been trying to figure out what ESPN means by “moves,” and it seems like it’s mostly an add/drop action, and possibly a trade. We haven’t had a trade yet all regular season so I can’t quite tell. Either way, I only started compiling stats since October 31st, so missed the first two weeks of the regular season. Since then, these are the top five general managers: Thien (41 moves), Eddie (11), Trieu (11), Brian (8), and Josh (8).

Making a lot of moves generally means lineup activity and wins, which proves to be true, as our top five general managers are a combined 30-17-3, for a 60% winning clip. The two outliers as far as few Moves to Wins correlation are Chunky Monkeys and Fat Jubas, who are currently a combined 18-2 overall, meaning they probably haven’t had to shift players around much as they are the current two best teams in SlamNation.

Every other GM has made at least three pickups since Oct 31st, except for Roger, Randall, Brandon, and David, who each have made none! While their zero Moves is not entirely accurate — each of them has made at least one pickup previous to Oct 31st — it is reflective of a lack of GM activity since the starting weeks of the season. These bottom four teams are a combined 15-24-1, which equates to a 0.375 winning percentage.

Is Moves a better indicator of winning? Looking this over, there could be a case made for the idea that good general managing is more important than coaching! Or wait, is a coach and general working hand-in-hand the best? Looks like both! But seriously guys, Thien has more moves, forty-one, than the bottom twelve teams combined. The rest of us need to work that free agent bin! In related news: who is Rodions Kurucs?!

Wins
Well, we know which teams are winning, but to break it down, our top eight teams have 53 wins combined, while our bottom eight have 25 wins. That means our so-far playoff teams at the midpoint of the regular season have 6.6 wins apiece, while our presumed Toilet Bowl participants are at 3.1 wins each.

Best Owner
So if we combine all three ratings — by ranking each of Games Played, Moves, Wins and then adding up the total — we get the following list of best owners so far this season: Eddie, Thien, Trieu, Brian, and Evan. Our number franchise, Swamp Dragons, features the second-best GP, second-best Moves, and a fourth-best Wins rating. Looks like Eddie is really out to make the playoffs this season!

The bottom five owners: Randall, Brandon, Felipe, Oliver, and David. C’mon guys, fantasy football is over. 2019 is around the corner. Let’s pick it up! Or wait, are people tanking for Zion?!? Remember that our new playoff/draft format is designed to discourage tanking!

Weekly: Dec 17

Here's a second look at our teams at the almost midpoint of our regular season, which is twenty weeks long. We'll take a look at some teams trending up, up, and up, and one coming way down...

Fat Jubas (7-2)
Coming off a nifty defensive effort in WK9, Jubas notched their fifth win in a row by dealing Sour Snails their third straight loss off a thrilling STL/BLK Sunday chase down. Last we checked, Jubas notched two poor GP weeks to start the season but now Coach Eric is humming with a full complement of games each week. Since then Jubas have only suffered defeats to Evan and Thien, the only two teams ranked ahead of them in Russell Conference.

Since a month ago, Jubas has pumped up their defense from sixth rated to third while their offense has gone from twelfth to eighth. On top of that, their efficiency rating has gone from slightly below average to just above. And they are ranked top-three in AST, BLK, STL, and TO. Dare we say that a recent catalyst has been Emmanuel Mudiay?! Or perhaps more likely, the return of Bogdan Bogdanovic into the lineup has helped juice the offense. Or maybe it’s been the Robert Covington effect, which has also helped juice Jrue Holiday’s defensive numbers? Or… There’s just a slew of talent on this team as Jubas’ near dominant defense is getting team-wide offensive support in just enough doses to be winning.

The next two weeks serve up Spade and So Buckets, the second and third best team in Chamberlain Conference, so Fat Jubas will really get a chance to see how they stack up to the rest of the SlamNation contenders this season. Fun fact: Chris Paul, Holiday, and Jeff Teague are all averaging over 8+ AST per game! And remember when we said Jubas was one of only three (now two) teams without a "gold" level guy? Seems to not matter!

So Buckets (5-3-1)
A month ago we warned: "So Buckets are likely even underperforming a bit at just 0.500… Watch out everyone, So Buckets could soon rise in their new Chamberlain conference digs.” Looks like the advanced numbers didn't lie as Josh’s team has gone 3-1-1 since then, and that one loss was only because Josh was at the hospital welcoming his new baby to the world. So congrats to Josh on his firstborn! 👶

His fantasy basketball baby has been stellar as well, with past month ODE ratings of second-ranked offense, first-ranked defense and first-ranked efficiency. So Buckets have improved upon their previous ODE 9/2/5 splits by quite a bit and is now the top rated team in SlamNation. Just one game out of the Chamberlain lead — they tied with current conference leader Squirtles in WK7 — it’s only a matter of time until Buckets emerge atop the charts.

This recent burst hasn’t been powered by new faces either, even if Noah Vonleh’s emergence as a legitimate fantasy asset with 9.5 PTS, 8.5 REB, 1+ 3PT/STL/BLK has helped Joel Embiid and Rudy Gobert on the frontlines while the offense-first rest of the team continue to thrive, led by the four guard lineup of Kyrie Irving, CJ McCollum, DeMar DeRozan, and Derrick Rose. It’s just all the same names playing well together and staying healthy!

The lone dark spot on the roster is the recent demotion of Jabari Parker by the Bulls — or maybe Dwight Howard’s continued health issues — but frankly, Buckets doesn’t need Jabari much as they are already leading the league in PTS, FG%, and REB, aka Jabari’s main contributions. Our next prediction: So Buckets are about to rip off a proper win streak and they’ll be the top Chamberlain team heading into All-Star break! [Editor: Congrats again on a baby Josh, and thanks for giving Funk a very not deserved win that week, woohoo!]

Sour Snails (5-4)
We didn’t expect to have to check in on Snails again for awhile as they started off 4-1 and seemingly restocked their roster to ridiculous depths. Any worries for another dominant season by Snails has been swept away though as they’ve lose three in a row — albeit to three strong teams in Spade, Swamp Dragons, and Fat Jubas. So who are the real 2019 Snails? Are they the world-beaters who are still rated 2/1/1 in ODE on the season or do the details tell a different story?

Snails have dipped to fifth in offense and fourth in efficiency over the past month, some of the blame can be attributed to Steph Curry missing some games, the loss of Caris LeVert, or the slight regression that was coming Kemba Walker’s way after a blazing hot start — not to mention Nemanja Bjelica’s reduced role. But still, a lineup with Curry, Kevin Durant, Kemba, Tobias Harris, plus Julius Randle and Pascal Siakam should seem better than fifth on offense? Bear in mind, that is still a very good SlamNation offense but we’re just used to better from this powerhouse Snails team.

More importantly, the bottom has dropped out on Snails’ defense as they are rated twelfth for the past month, which is very concerning and the real root of their recent decline. The duo of JaVale McGee and Montrezl Harrell are still pretty great at rim protection but it looks like Nerlens Noel is getting a full shot at helping in BLK, where Snails is ranked just thirteenth after being second overall just a month ago. Similar to Noel, Marcus Smart has been brought in as a defensive specialist, despite his many warts, to take over the LeVert role at shooting guard — GM Trieu elected not to make a move there. With a WK10 matchup against a 7-2 Thien team, we could soon be seeing a winless month for Snails, who woulda thought!

Note: Rumors are that Isaiah Thomas is nearing a return and we’re curious what he’ll add to Snails and the Nuggets.


WK9 Highlights:

• A 21/21 GP capped off battle between Hilt the Stilt and Cameltoe ended up with new owner Dave taking the win. The better stat might be Hilt’s six GP maxed out games so far this season to Cameltoe’s five, as both Dave and Felipe struggle to maximize their rotations.
• On the surface, it looked like Spade gifted a tie to Swamp Dragons in WK9 but their 20 GP week was largely due to injury as they had Kevin Love, Paul Millsap, Al Horford, and Devin Booker all out last week — not to mention still injured Will Barton. Seen in that light, Spade might have been lucky to pull out a tie despite being five games down.
• Our lone winless team, Another Bad Creation, had the slim lead heading into Sunday but Fobsters snuck out a win behind clutch free throw shooting by Jamal Murray, Jordan Clarkson, and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson. Plus a timely twenty-nine point explosion by John Collins, who is back to breakout status after 23.3 PTS, 12.7 REB, and almost a three and a block per game over the past two weeks.

Weekly: Dec 3

We're here to take a look at our last three teams in the weekly series: welcome some of Russell Conference's worst teams!

Team Cameltoe (1-6)
No longer winless, Cameltoe got their first win versus Fob Stars this week despite only putting up 22 Games Played. In fact we’re not sure if Coach Felipe has been concentrating on football — he’s 7-5 and one above me in playoff positioning in our sixteen teamer — but it’s been three capped out early weeks for Cameltoe plus no GP of over twenty-three. But a first win is a first win!

Of course, Cameltoe could also just be waiting for their young kids to grow up. Prize rookie Marvin Bagley III, taken RD1.5, has been getting more minutes and very solid double-doubles now that the Kings finally give him steady minutes. Malik Monk, Josh Jackson, Harry Giles, and fellow rookie Michael Porter Jr. (on IR)  are all going to be key components for this team in future years but for a franchise that’s ranked near the bottom of the league in every category except blocks, that’s not much consolation.

We see holes all over the lineup, especially at point guard — although Darren Collison has been great of late — but there are some bright spots too. Buddy Hield has fully emerged as an offensive cornerstone while Anthony Davis and Hassan Whiteside still form one of the best big man combos in SlamNation. In fact, even with so few GP, this team is fourteenth in defensive rating based on a strong front line that now adds Bagley’s numbers. So congrats to Cameltoe for making it out of the cellar and let’s see if they can go back-to-back next week!

Fob Stars (1-6)
As for the team Cameltoe beat, the outlook isn’t great. After three straight years of about 0.500 ball, and playoff appearances, Jimmy’s team could be headed for the cellar. Is this all because of the Dame for Kemba and Tobias trade? Well, um, maybe? Kemba and Tobias are both having career years and while Lillard has been fantastic, he’s gotten very little help from the rest of the Fobs. This team actually has a decent efficiency rating, at eighth, but suffers from offensive and defensive ratings of thirteenth and sixteenth respectively. And we sense a common theme here, as Coach Jimmy has also hit four weeks worth of capped out games. Could better management take them to a few more wins? The answer is a solid "probably not?"

Jamal Murray has been ice cold to start the season and hasn't quite broken out as hoped. Rumors were that there was an All-Star trade offer made for Murray but that was declined. Fellow pre-season hype kid John Collins just returned to the floor and is still rounding into shape. That all-defense draft we talked about in the season preview? Well, this is the worst defensive team in the league according to ODE so you tell me. There’s potential for some growth in-season as the veterans are mostly solid, but there’s no doubting that Fob is going to have to fight for some more victories this year as they wait for Murray and Collins to grow up.

One enormous bright spot: Fob Stars are tops in FT%, and that’s even with DeAndre Jordon on the team, as Jordan has been shooting 75.6 FT% on the season. Hack-a-DeAndre no more!

Funk Coalition (2-5)
Another Russell Conference bottom feeder, our breakthrough team of last year has settled down in dumps with only two wins — one coming against Fob Stars. Armed with Karl-Anthony Towns and Ben Simmons, GM Jon thought he was on the doorstep to contention and went all-in on veterans for his draft. Bad news: Funk ain’t ready. Although Lou Williams, Rudy Gay, and Trevor Ariza have done their part, the young core has faltered greatly. It could be argued that every one of Funk’s recent trades have also left them weaker, as Khris Middleton, D’Angelo Russell, and Andrew Wiggins were diluted into Gordon Hayward, Taurean Prince, and Nicolas Batum — plus the Wiggins trade meant Josh Richardson was lost to dispersal.

Is there room for Funk to turn it around? They are league average in efficiency rating but have poor offensive and defensive ratings, and they have no built-in low Games Played skewing like Cameltoe or Fob Stars. The only thing this team of Simmons and Towns and all wings can do well is rebound, but nearly everywhere else they are below average. That’s, um, not good. At least KAT has returned to joyful basketball and top fantasy production with Jimmy Butler gone from Minnesota. However it seems like a team that was on the cusp of contention last year could be headed right back to their most comfortable space: another Toilet Bowl.

WK7 Highlights:

• Spade take down Sour Snails despite two less GP
• So Buckets and Squirtle Squad square off in Chamberlain and ended up with 2019’s first tie
• IL Conceived with a come-from-behind win versus Another Bad Creation on Sunday
• Snack Bears also with a come-from-behind win versus Swamp Dragons, behind Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Bam Adebayo’s one block each
• Standings two months in: