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!