Impervious Moves...

...Well not really, but I thought it would be a good headline for a scheduled post. I decided to start doing scheduled weekly posts so that I can be more consistent. I'll probably do 2-3, and Impervious Moves will come out on Sundays or Mondays. Hopefully, I'll be able to integrate it with all three sports.

I was going through my fantasy basketball lineups this morning and I noticed that over the last two months I have pretty much been stuck in the same position in the standings for the last two months in all three of my leagues. This particular league I was looking at is a 12 man league so free agency is usually scarce but I felt it necessary to make some changes. The first thing I did was drop Kyle O'Quinn and if you really just paid attention to what I just wrote you probably have the same thought I had: Why did I have Kyle O'Quinn on the team? I remember picking him up when he was somewhat productive, but obviously that didn't last too long. In fantasy basketball, you can't sleep on players who aren't producing as I had done, yet I'm wondering why I'm just floating around in 7th place. So he got dropped, and I picked up James Johnson and Paul George. With James Johnson, he's an interesting guy to have because he's producing off the bench and the players on the Toronto Raptors have been playing like they're in tank mode or something. Paul George, I had to stash him. Even though there's no definitive return date, we have a pretty good idea that he'll return around mid to late March, just enough time to make a playoff push. Other than that, I was a little worried because I also have Eric Bledsoe and P.J. Tucker on the squad and I don't like the Suns' situation at guard, but I'll keep it like that for now.



In the next league, I had actually dropped from 2nd to 4th place. Blame it All-Star Weekend I suppose as I didn't know when Yahoo! started restarted the fantasy season. I want to say it was Thursday, but I know there were NBA games on Tuesday. Anyway, this squad is primarily made up of drafted studs and amazing pick ups. There was only one player on the squad I saw as problematic and that player is Rajon Rondo. Rondo was just okay in Boston, but since he got traded to the Dallas Mavericks he's kind of disappeared. First he was inconsistent, then he had that orbital injury thing, and now he's back to being inconsistent. I went to free agency and I saw that Khris Middleton was available. He may not be a huge name in the real NBA but anyone who's been playing fantasy basketball this season and is reading this should be as shocked as I was when I found out he was available. So I picked him up and to my surprise I had an open roster spot. I went back into free agency and I found Mo Williams. I've always been a fan of Williams and he's been balling lately since he got trade to the Charlotte Bobcats. He had a 50 point game last season and I think he should remain productivity throughout the rest of the season.

In the last league, the easiest of my three leagues, but I'm in second place, I knew I was going to find someone good. There's only six players in this league and I think only one other guy and myself are still playing. I've dropped players like Dwight Howard and Kevin Love in this league and nobody picked them up. I'm never worried about finding players, but I'm still in second place. My concern was Brandon Knight. I had just picked him up right before All Star Weekend but he was still with the Bucks. Now that he plays with the Suns it makes me feel some kind of way. I picked up Robert Covington who could end up pick up of the year if Hassan Whiteside doesn't get it. I told you I knew I was going to find someone good.

Some Fantasy Baseball Links

We all know about sites like ESPN and Yahoo where you can get a ton of info and news for fantasy baseball. These sites are all good, but I wanted to highlight some smaller sites and blogs that can also be a great source of information for fantasy baseball.

Smart Fantasy Baseball
I found this site to be interesting because it's all about stats and analytics. If you're into that kind of thing, this is the site for you. The guy who describes himself as a nerd  has a niche for using Microsoft Excel spreadsheets to calculate winning, standings gain points (whatever that is), how to create your own rankings, and all kinds of interesting nerdy fantasy stuff.

Dear Mr. Fantasy
I like this site because it's kinda what I want PhantasySteez to be one day. Only difference is it is fully dedicated to baseball. The site though is eye-pleasing with news, merchandise, cool pics, MLB news feed, and it has a PODCAST. That's what I want for PhantasySteez, a podcast.

Pro Fantasy Baseball
This site is a resourceful site that can help you prepare for the draft and keep an eye for upcoming players. This site also has a PODCAST (yeah, I'm going to mention that for every site that has one).

Fantasy CPR
This site covers most fantasy sports including college basketball and hockey. The pictures are cool and honestly, I think it's ran  by Sports Illustrated, but either way it's worth checking out.

Maybe one day I'll put these on it's own dedicated page, but maybe after I get links for all three sports. One thing for sure though, I want a podcast.

Draft Prep

Baseball season is next and mock drafts and leagues are opening up on most fantasy sports providers. Usually I don't do mock drafts but being that I needed to do more research for this season, I thought mock drafts could help with this. So I've participated in a couple of mock drafts and I've come up with some interesting observations.

My friend Victor has been reluctant to try fantasy baseball because he's somewhat confused on how the lineup works and most importantly, he's confused about the draft strategy, as am I. The thought of a fantasy football draft can seem daunting but it's not as intimidating once you've realized two things. First thing is to remember that just like in any fantasy sport, your primary goal is to put together a fantasy team that has a solid core plus a decent amount of productive role players which combined forms the ultimate team that will dominate throughout the fantasy season and playoffs with minimum maintenance. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against picking up players from free agency throughout the season, but why when you can draft the potential studs for the season? Free agency is a weapon for players who are trying to climb position. Why climb position when you can draft a first place team right? Second thing to remember is unlike in most fantasy sports, the talent is abundant in fantasy baseball. Of course there are studs like Mike Trout and Clayton Kershaw, but there are so many talented players in the MLB that you'll find yourself in the later rounds of your draft and you'll still be able to find quality players instead of players you know you're just going to drop later on.

Okay so there's more than two things to remember and the last thing is the unique position that is the pitcher. I think pitching confuses a lot of people because of the way it's set up. In most leagues that I've played in there's one spot for every position except for outfielders and pitching. Naturally there are three positions for outfielders, but there are eight spots for pitchers and all eight of there spots are starting.  So it's important to keep a balance when drafting so you won't end up with strong hitters but weak pitchers, and vice versa. To make things more interesting, you want to make sure you have a good mix of starters and closers because starting pitches rarely gets you saves and closing pitchers rarely gets you wins.

As far as the draft though, it isn't as long as I had figured it would be. On average during these mock drafts I've spent about an hour completing the drafts, which isn't bad considering you're drafting nineteen starters plus five or six bench players. My strategy which I like the most is to alternate each pick between hitter and pitcher so that one pick I'm drafting a hitter and the next pick I'm drafting a pitcher. This is where draft position comes in play because this strategy definitely works better if you have one of the top two picks or the last two picks. In most fantasy sports these four spots are advantageous and the same is true in fantasy baseball. These spots allows you to alternate between hitter and pitcher and being that your picks are close, you have a greater chance to get the best two available players at those two positions. When the pick was closer to the middle the strategy didn't go as planned and some picks I was able to stick with the plan, but for the most part I ended up just picking the best player available. It didn't come out too bad, but if I had my preference like in most drafts, I want either the first two or the last two picks.

Some last little things to remember, every draft is different because I'm sure there's gonna be someone who is not taking the draft serious at all and is screwing it up for everyone. Also, outfielders are the wide receivers of fantasy baseball. There are many of them, so don't get the urge to draft your outfielders too early. #PhantasySteez

The Liebster Award

So the other day I was checking out the stats for PhantasySteez, you know things like how many visitors I have and things like that, when I notice that I had a new comment on my post. It was weird because no one ever leaves comments, usually they hit me up via Twitter or Google+ but this was an actual comment. It was from my good friend Stephanie Smallsen who authors Meet the Smallsens and she had nominated me for the Liebster Award. Naturally, I didn't know what the hell the Liebster Award was so I googled it and I found out it's an award for bloggers who have less than 200 followers. It's nothing that's recognized by like the bloggers association (if there is a such thing) or anything like that. In fact, I'm not even sure if you actually win anything. However it's a good way to expose PhantasySteez and link up with other bloggers, so I decided to participate.

The Liebster Award is directed towards blogs with smaller followings, as a way to help get their name out there in the blog world. One can only be nominated by a previous Liebster Nominee, and in order to be considered, a nominee's blog must have less than 200 followers. I heard that this has changed to 1,000 followers, but for the sake of whatever I'm going to nominate those with less than 200-1,000 followers, if that makes any sense.

11 Facts about Marcus Nickerson

1) I've lived somewhat of a nomadic lifestyle. I'm from Los Angeles and have lived almost everywhere in Los Angeles, and I've also lived in New Orleans, Oklahoma City, and Birmingham, Alabama.

2) I love sandwiches, burgers and Mexican food.

3) I have a half sister who is 10 weeks older than me. I met her for the first time in 2003.

4) Earlier in life, I wanted to be a scientist or a scientist.

5) I don't watch much T.V. unless it's sports or SportsCenter. Actually, I've been trying to watch a little more of it just for social purposes.

6) Speaking of sports, I love sports. Even soccer.

7) I like conversation and hanging out, but I really like hanging out and talking to myself. I'm like 70% introvert and 30% extrovert.

8) I don't have any tattoos or piercings because I'm scared of needles. I hate going to the doctors to get shots.

9) I went to Dillard University from 2000-2002 and studied Biology. These were some of the greatest times of my life.

10) I used to be a DJ and even though I wasn't that successful career wise, I was good and sometimes I still get calls for gigs.

11) Last but not least, I love music... all kinds of music. Hip-hop, R&B, Rock, EDM, Reggae, Classical, some Gospel, all kinds.

Questions from the person who nominated me, Stephanie

Stephanie and I in Santa Monica/Pacific Palisades

1. What inspired you to start a blog? I was hanging out with one of my partners in crime and we we're getting wasted. I took out my phone to check my fantasy football team and I thought to myself, I could start a blog about this. Starting a blog was something I had always wanted to do but I didn't have any idea of what to write about. So the next day when I sobered up I went straight to work on the blog and thus PhantasySteez was born.

 2. If you could be a journalist - what magazine/newspaper would you write for and what would you write about? I'm supposed to be finishing school majoring in journalism or English, but that's a different story for a different day. I digress, I would write for ESPN and I would probably be like a fantasy sports analyst or a contributor to ESPN the Magazine or the website.

 3. Would you rather do a post that was all words and no pictures, or all pictures and no words? It really doesn't matter to me. I know some people have blogs with no pictures because I guess it gets tracked easier by the web crawlers. My blog does have pictures, but I think I have one or two posts without pictures.

 4. If you could take a weekend, a week long and month long vacation - what 3 destinations would you visit? There's a lot of places I want to go, but if I had to pick three, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, and Amsterdam, Netherlands.

 5. Big city girl with a never ending job and socialite parties - or small town girl where you shop online and grow your own garden? Substituting girl with guy, I'm the city guy with a never ending job and socialite parties.

 6. What's your go-to for takeout/delivery when you're too lazy to cook? A hamburger joint, not fast food, but a real hamburger restaurant.

 7. Do you have a signature dish that you swear you're the best at? Nope. I can't say I'm into cooking, but I'm okay at it.

 8. What inspires you for your home décor choices - do you have a theme? I like plain, earthy and bold settings. Something that's not too fancy, but at the same time shows off that grown and sexy steez.

 9. What book should every child read, and what movie should every child watch? Every kids should read the Chronicles of Narnia, the original one. Every child should watch Kids, but probably not until they get in their early teens.

 10. What does your ideal Sunday look like? Church, sports, an alcoholic beverage, a plant to burn, and if applicable the person I'm dating.

 11. What blog post of yours were you most proud to write? All of them. I'm proud of all my posts because it gives me the motivation needed to continue doing whatever it is I do.

My nominees for the Liebster Award are...

Jordan Walker of Aphrodite+Kidd 

G.T. Nina of Nuestro Futuro: Dia y Noche

Anna-Maria Winter of On The Edge
David Stein of David's Place
Rakesh Reddy of Rakesh Reddy
Charlotte Brokenbow of Turropia
Pink Owl in Black of Pink Owl in Black
Justin Jackson of Smo Struggles
Nashia Anthony of Makeup and Beauty Mayhem
Louise Linddal Klarskov of My Creative Corner
Sydney Kuezner of Sydney's Life In Pixels

My Questions for the Nominees...

 1) When you were younger, what did you want to be when you grew up?

 2) What motivated you to start  your blog?

 3) Where do you see your blog in the next 2 years?

 4) Do you write your blog for fun, or are you deep in blogging with SEO and affiliate marketing and all that other blogging stuff?

 5) Does a bear shit in the woods and wipe his ass with a white rabbit?

 6) Do you like sports? If so, who's your favorite team(s)?

 7) If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?

8) What do you like to do for fun?

9) Have you ever written a guest post for someone else's blog?

10) Is it true that whatever happens in Vegas stays in Vegas?

11) What rhymes with orange?

Well, it's been a fun. Once again thank you Stephanie Smallsen for the nomination and the connect. I had to find people to nominate because amazingly I only have two friends who blog. If you've been nominated before,  I didn't mean to waste your time, but hey, could you share my blog with your peers? I'd really appreciate it. Good luck to all the nominees should you choose to accept.

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Fantasy Stud or Flavor of the Month?

One day Hassan Whiteside decided to he wanted to improve his NBA2K ratings and he had a monster game getting a triple-double with 12 blocks. Ever since he has been buzzing in the fantasy basketball community. I've heard mixed reviews and different impressions from players and experts, and for the most part the verdict on Whiteside is split down the middle with some believing he's this year's fantasy player of the year and others saying he's just the flavor of the month.



Surprisingly, this is Whiteside's third season in the NBA, but only his first with the Heat. He spent his previous two seasons with the Sacramento Kings where he was virtually irrelevant. This season he probably would've been irrelevant also, but when Chris Bosh got injured, Whiteside got more minutes. When Bosh came back a few weeks later, Erik Spoelstra did not reduce Whiteside's minutes and he has benefited from the time. He played 14 games from the time Bosh got injured up to but not including the triple-double game and during that span he averaged 6.8 rebounds per game and 2.4 blocks per games. The next four games from the triple-double game to now he's averaged 15.5 RPG and 4 BPG. With all 18 games together that puts he's averaging 8.7 RPG and 2.7 BPG since Bosh got injured. He's also averaged 20 minutes per game since Bosh first got injured. I don't take Whiteside as much of a scorer, but if needed he can also drop some close range buckets. Now keep in mind that these stats do not include the games before Bosh's injury where Whiteside was getting garbage minutes.


Numbers don't lie and by looking at these stats he's not about to blossom into Anthony
Davis no time soon. However, despite what some fantasy players and analysts are saying, I believe that Whiteside has some incredible upside from a PhantasySteez point of view. He may not be a top scorer but he isn't going to take many shots either, not to mention that the shots he do take will be high percentage shots. He only seems to be getting better with more game time and it shouldn't be long until he's averaging double digit rebounds. Especially in stat category leagues where it's essential to keep a balance team in all applicable categories, Whiteside could be that piece you need to improve some of your rankings.