AJC > Sports > Hawks > Blog > Archives > 2007 > January > 26
Friday, January 26, 2007
You are on the clock!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The craziest and most intriguing fantasy basketball conversation broke out today after the Hawks’ shootaround practice at Amway Center (Yes, the TD Waterhouse Centre has a new name, and it’s that Amway, the monster company headquartered in my hometown of Grand Rapids, Mich.).
Here’s the premise: We’re scrapping the current NBA at midnight, tossing all 431 (give or take a few NBDL call ups) players into a hopper and allowing the 30 teams to draft 1-30 for three rounds. We’re going to go with three rounds of drafting players only, and anyone not drafted is in our free agent pool. The specifics on the first three rounds of our draft include each team picking 1-30 and then we invert the order for the second round and again for the third. So if you get the No. 1 pick, you also 60 and 61. If you get the No. 30 pick you also get No. 31 and 90.
That means each team will have a chance to draft a three-man core and then add free agents as they see fit, with a salary cap, of course. And we’re going to have a coaching draft as well, but that’s a totally different part of the process that we didn’t get around to discussing in detail (hey, there was a limited time to hash through this thing).
And this re-draft isn’t based on what type of player a guy might be in two or three years or what type of player he was two or three years ago. We’re talking about a draft based on a guy’s production as of Jan. 26, 2007.
Naturally, there were all sorts of names tossed around for the No. 1 overall pick. Joe Johnson said he’d take Kevin Garnett. Josh Childress said Dwight Howard. I said I’d take Steve Nash. Other choices for the top pick included Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and Dwyane Wade.
We also debated the merits of building a team - do you want to build an instant winner, with an established and possibly aging superstar? Or do you want to go young, with a budding and potentially dominant young star? There are truly no wrong answers when you’re reconstructing the league, I guess. Calculating a players value on his numbers alone, like we do in fantasy league’s doesn’t work in this scenario either. Because we’re talking about building a that would actually have to play together and not one whose stats are combined and then used in a scoring formula to determine a winner.
The opinions were flying around (me, I’d opt for the compete for a title now approach, hence my choice of Nash as the top pick so I could build the ultimate team around the league’s ultimate point guard). But not everyone was interested in that.
You could go in so many different ways. And I’m not sure there is a consensus on what players comprise the top 30 players in the league anyway, or if you’d even want to go that way once you consider other factors into the selections (such as what players would fit together best and which players would fit the specific system you wanted your team to run).
Not only does the premise intrigue, but the strategy behind it also made for some spirited debate. For example, what pick would you want? If you get the top choice you don’t pick again until 60 and then 61. You’d have to watch a ton of quality players go off the board after that first pick. You also have to take into account what type of team you want to be and keep that in mind while deciding on which players you want to draft.
Anyway, plans are being made to iron out the details before the entire package is fleshed out. But I had to include you. I know many of you are involved in fantasy leagues (aren’t we all). But those rules are much different. (This all sounded simple at the start, ‘gimme the best guy and I’ll worry about the rest later.’ But you don’t have that luxury. You have to really think this entire thing through from the start and then make sure you get it right or risk being the laughingstock of the new NBA). Think about that responsibility, starting a franchise from scratch with what you know right now about all these players and having to get it right. It wouldn’t be easy.
Still, I’m curious what you think. Who makes your top 30? Where do you want to draft? And why?
