All the King's Men

This week should bring about a good matchup in my fantasy basketball league, the Syndicate. It's #1 vs. #2 as this week my WestCoast Lakers takes on All the KING's Men. Last time I wrote about this matchup she was in first place and I was in second. During that week she had some key injuries and I was able to slip past her to take claim to first. This week I don't expect it to be that simple.

Her lineup is beasting in most matchups this season. I see she picked up Rajon Rondo who was on the free agency until about a week after he came back. To compliment Rondo she also has Damian Lillard, John Wall and Trey Burke. Those are just her point guards as she also has Klay Thompson, Andre Iguodala, Andre Drummond, Blake Griffen, Greg Monroe and David Lee. I don't know if this can be an advantage or a weakness, but she has several players who play for the same team with Thompson, Iggy and Lee playing for the Golden State Warrior and Drummond and Monroe both playing for the Detroit Pistons. To me though, the main ingredient, the determining factor in this matchup is LeBron James, who is on her squad. James didn't play yesterday with a broken nose. Yet, he seemed absolutely fine shooting one handed threes from the bench in his suit Sunday. I'm not sure what's the standard injury time for a broken nose, but I couldn't imagine that it would keep him out all week.

Between the two of us, we own the top two players of fantasy basketball with James being on her team and Kevin Durant being on my team. It's no wonder why the two of us are just crushing the competition as these two players have dominated all season and one will be crowned MVP of the NBA. But just like there's a little bit of "controversy" with James, something I will need to watch when it comes to Durant this week also. Russell Westbrook was injured and while he was out Durant took full advantage. Durant stepped his game up in every way and pretty much carried the team on his back. Westbrook came back last Thursday and everyone is wondering how Durant will perform now with Westbrook back. I don't think it'll affect Durant too much. Durant won't have to take as many shots, but he already makes almost everything. If it does negatively affect Durant, I'm not worried because I purposely stashed Westbrook on my bench while he was injured specifically for when I play All the KING's Men.

Speaking of all the king's men, I'm glad I didn't listen to some people and tried to trade Dwyane Wade. During the first half of the season Wade didn't play every game. He would sit a game or two and when he did play he had average games but not Dwyane Wade type games. Recently however, Wade has been playing has been back to normal looking flashy averaging 20 points and 8 assists a game over the last week. If you have him, keep him. He'll definitely be a factor when the fantasy playoffs roll around.

A Trade That Effects My Teams

The over hyped trade deadline has passed and while no major moves were made, there was one move in particular that could have impact on my fantasy teams. Spencer Hawes has been traded from the Philadelphia 76ers to the Cleveland Cavaliers. I was hoping we could get him to come to the Lakers, but I guess that was just wishful thinking. The reason why this is interesting to me is because I have him on both of my fantasy basketball teams. I wonder how this move will effect him on the Phantasy Steez.

In my first league, the Syndicate, I picked up Hawes after missing the draft and feeling like a needed to pick up a center. In my random league I ended up drafting Hawes as a back up center. Even though Hawes' stat line isn't that impressive, to my surprise he has been a pretty good all around player from a fantasy point of view. He's averaging 13 points and 8 rebounds a game. Where his fantasy values comes from is his field goal percentage and the fact that he can hit the 3.

Hawe's is joining a very interesting Cleveland Cavaliers team. The Cavs have been pretty active during the season trading away Andrew Bynum for Luol Deng, and now with a new general manager he was itching to make a move before the trade deadline. Also, word on the street is the working environment in Cleveland is not ideal. The Cavs have Kyrie Irving, Luol Deng, and Dion Waiters, just to name a few. Hawes could have an immediate impact on this squad, but then you have to wonder what will happen between him and Anderson Varejao.

Varejao is having one of his better seasons this year averaging almost 9 points a game and 10 rebounds. He's owned in about 74% of Yahoo leagues. Right now he's injured but when he comes back he will resume the starting responsibilities. This could hurt Hawe's value directly as he will be going from a starter to an off the bench guy, not getting the minutes he's used to getting on the 76ers. Best case scenario would be if Mike Brown figured out how to utilize both of them, maybe by moving Hawes or Varejao to power forward. I don't know how long Varejao is going to be out, but I'm going to  have to come up with a back up plan just in case.

All Star Break Moves

There isn't another NBA game until Tuesday, so that gave my guys about four off days. My team sure could use it because I got four dudes, Mike Conley, Russell Westbrook, Kevin Martin and Andrew Bogut who are injured right now. Of the four, Conley is on the Can't Cut List. I wouldn't think about dropping or trading Westbrook. I'm feeling 50-50 ish on picking up someone for Martin. When it comes to Bogut, he might be getting the axe this All Star Weekend.

Bogut has been dependable for the few weeks I've had him on the team. However, since I picked him up I've been waiting for him to get injured, which he has. One advantage for Bogut is he leads my team in rebounding, probably why I picked him up in the first place. Martin has been dependable most of the season.  He's fourth in 3 pointers made and second in free throws made on my team. The rest of his stats are mediocre.

When I looked at the free agency list, two names stuck out to me immediately, Kyle Lowry and Robin Lopez. Both Lowry and Lopez have been pleasant surprises this season. In my opinion, neither one of these players should be in free agency as Lowry has become somewhat of a top point guard in the East and Lopez looks better than ever on his new team the Portland Trail Blazers.

I decided that I would take a closer look at these "injuries" of Martin and Bogut. Martin is going to be out for a couple of weeks and I probably could get more productivity dropping Martin and picking up Lowry. Actually that last sentecne is an understatement. I will get more production picking up Lowry for Martin. On my social networking sites I asked Kyle Lowry or Kevin Martin. I didn't get any response on Twitter but on Google+ it was an unanimous decision Lowry over Martin. So now I have Lowry on the squad.  I'm still struggling with releasing Bogut, the leading rebounder on my time. The problem is I haven't gotten any recent injury updates on Bogut. Even though Robin Lopez's scoring has improved,  Bogut has nearly 150 more boards than Lopez. I guess I'll keep him on the team for now, but he could end up getting moved before the end of the week.

Morning Glory? Not Exactly

I woke up early this morning, a little earlier than usual. As I thought about everything that was going on in my life, I felt good and confident. I felt like writing, but about what? I got on the bus on my way to work and I checked on my fantasy basketball teams so I could change my line ups when I noticed I lost in both of my leagues yesterday. In my main league I'm still in first place but in my random league I've fallen to second place.

The lost in my random league isn't that significant. I had a slim margin between myself and the person in second place. I won my matchup as far as winning the majority of stat categories, but with me only winning 5-4 and the person ahead of me winning 6-2, he took a one game lead over me.

The lost that interests me the most is the lost in The Syndicate. This lost was significant for two reasons. First, it is only my second lost of the season. Secondly, the lost was to one of the better players in the league. This was our third time playing each other this season in what I think have been epic battles. When the league first started and the draft was complete, I was fussing about David's Team because in my opinion he had one to the top 3 teams. I remember telling Big Mike that he had the Dream Team of Fantasy Basketball. What made matters worse was that I played him week 1. I wasn't too thrilled about playing him week 1, especially since I had missed the draft and my team was auto picked. To my surprise, it wasn't that bad. In fact, I ended up winning by just a few points. Crazy part about this victory was I was losing the whole week and I somehow managed to sneak up on him that Sunday.

The second time we matched up was week 8 and this time it was nothing like week one. I won the match by 241 points. There was two things that I can attribute to this win. First, I had Russell Westbrook in the lineup. As you all remember, Westbrook didn't play his first game until a few weeks after the start of the sesason and when he came back he was lighting it up. I didn't have Westbrook available the first time I matched up with David's Team. Secondly, Michael Carter-Williams got injured during the matchup for David's Team. I didn't really know who Carter-Williams, but I sure knew who he was after week 1.

Last week was somewhat similar to week 1. All week it was pretty much neck to neck. There were a few lead changes, but it remained close throughout the week. On Saturday I slept though. I was watching college basketball and sometime around 1:30 I decided to change my lineup for the day. I was too late because the Milwaukee Bucks were already playing and I had Brandon Knight on the bench. I believe this was a critical mistake because my other two players on the bench, Mike Conley and Westbrook, are injured and I needed to start as many players as I could. Sunday morning I was down by a few points and even though I had Kevin Durant, who went for 41 points yesterday, it wasn't enough. Durant did his job, but Rudy Gay and Spencer Hawes didn't show up... especially Hawes as we witnessed Blake Griffen hold his own slam dunk contest against the Philadelphia 76ers.

So, right now I'm down but I'm not out. I'm still holding down the #1 spot for now, but I know real soon imma have another matchup with All the Kings Men. On the bright side though, I play Big Mike this week. Perfect matchup to bounce back from a defeat...