Wednesday, September 10, 2008

It's Fantasy Time


It's that time of year. Time to analyze who'll reign (and perform) supreme in the upcoming NBA season. ESPN.com's experts have broken down the Fantasy Picks for 2009. And falling in the Top 190 are six Jazzmen ready to make their mark.


The rankings are certainly interesting to note. Clearly, not all 'team' success is attributed to a player's individual stats, but, it's intriguing to see how one player stacks up to another based upon their performance. More noteworthy would be how a player performs against another based upon how much they're paid. ESPN.com ranks the Jazz players as follows according to their predicted fantasy output:



#11 Deron Williams
#28 Carlos Boozer
#62 Mehmet Okur
#90 Andrei Kirilenko
#130 Ronnie Brewer
#145 Paul Millsap


Within the positional rankings, Deron Williams rates as the 4th best point guard to select, while Carlos Boozer rates as the 11th best power forward. Memo falls to the 15th slot in the list of best centers. Aren't we missing someone? Where's Jarron Collins ranked?


Of note, AK47 doesn't show up in the top 15 small forward listing. Should we be concerned with Andrei and his production when he's not listed as a top flight small forward? When he's being paid top dollar, I think my answer would be...YES!


Of those players who are "Can't Miss" Fantasy Prospects, ESPN.com believes they are LeBron James, Chris Paul, Kobe Bryant, Amare Stoudamire, and Dwayne Wade. Fair enough! You can't argue with those picks.


However, there's one player on the Jazz who I believe will be a "Can't Miss" Fantasy Star, and it is...
#8 Deron Williams




3 comments:

Pasty Gangsta said...

In no league -- fantasy, real, Olympics or otherwise -- is Deron Williams the 4th best PG around. I will admit that one can make an argument for Chris Paul being better, but Nash and Iverson? Come on. This isn't 1999.

True story: a few years back I nabbed D Will for my fantasy team in the 8th round of the draft. I've kept him ever since, a wise move that has led to a number of league championships and tears from my competitors (primarily Crotty Kid).

Orlando said...

By "a number" of league championships, Pasty means "one" championship. Apparently nabbing Deron in a late round can't make up for selecting Jermaine O'Neal early or relying on Eddy Curry down the stretch.

D-Will is an incredible point guard in real life, but in fantasy I can see an argument for Nash over him. Iverson, however, is a fantasy team killer, as Rising Stock, our phantom contributor can attest.

Tucker McCann said...

Blah Blah Blah . . . fantasy basketball is the equivalent of playing NBA Jam late at night at Thorup's house.