“I’m not smiling. I am resplendent.”
“You smile. “You are smiling at everything you see.”
“I smile more than just at these people John Wall highlights. They are full of splendor. Thus? I. Am. Resplendent.”
This was me trying to quantify the Wall’s Clipper debut dopamine jackpot for my daughter. In 24 minutes, I scored 15 points.
He stopped, popped and crossed up. And he treated Austin Reeves repeatedly like a cat toy. He displayed some classic “accelerated acceleration” for a couple of painfully successful layups.
What was so special about this?
On his way up the tunnel, he gave a brief interview: “First game back for a while, great team…great competition.” Let’s be peaceful, man. Hell yeah.”
Hell yeah, I woke up Pasadena’s Bullets fan; my 14 year old son, who is proud to own more John Wall tshirts than anyone else in Pacific Time Zone. And I told him that he was going to school wearing a Wall shirt. It will be a pleasure to join the John Muir High School Wall fan club.
High school is a great place to start. High school, just like any NBA campaign’s opening week, is filled with a dazzling optimism. This is due to a total lack of perspective. It’s quite fun to live in absurd extremes. It’s okay for a week. But not for four years.
In a fantasy football season, a reasonable sample size is two to three games. It’s not a statistical problem in fantasy hoops. However, fantasy hoops is not as glamorous as John Wall’s. There are some teams and a few players who, while not remarkable, can be pleasant fantasy surprises.
So far, my two favourite lineups are:
Bojan Bogdanovic, Saddiq Bey, Isaiah Stewart, Cade Cunningham Jaden Ivey
Lottery-sourced upside. Expectations are low. Mediocre depth. This is what great fantasy lineups are made of — for three irrationally skewed NBA games. Someone has to be the best.
Only three games into the season? This is the NBA’s most potent offensive line-up by a metric ton. Averaged 57.7 PPG over 21.9 MPG. This is the most powerful lineup this season, by almost 10 PPG according to NBA.com’s EverythingMachineTM. How does this one week juggernaut perform?
You take more 3s than anyone (18.7). Making more 3s than anyone (8.0). Assisting in more baskets than anyone (14.7).
These are the traits you would expect. However, the secret sauce is the PFD column at the second row from the right — 11.0 Personal Folls Drawn. It also draws more fouls (11.0), which means more free throws are attempted (12.3).
Let me tell you, the truth is that Cade Cunningham It has been underperforming. This is why it’s important that you pay attention to teams in the Draft Lottery who are young and far away from contention. Upside, upside, upside.
Jaden Ivey is real. It’s not his 17.7 PG, 5.3 RPG or 6.0 APG or 1.7 3PG. It’s Ivey’s 23.5 usage rate, which is an early indication that Cunningham and he will be able to live together.
Saddiq was not because I am smart. He was simply too much in the eighth round for my draft board to like. He did not surprise you with some of the big games he played last season. You can see the 51 points he scored on the Banchero-less Magic.
Detroit is over-stuffed with high-lottery talent. Bey and Isaiah Stewart are two solid middle-first rounders who get heavy minutes. The fantasy upside is minimal.
Fantasy fantasy is where the question marks are. Are these going to be matchup-based timeshares? Bojan Bogdanovic, a fantasy’s most underrated late-round player PF, has been vacuuming up 31.1 minutes per evening. His efficiency from deep (3.7 3PG) is enough to allow him to make a dent.
It only includes three games. However, the combined MPG and Usage in this lineup are more fantasy-wise long-term than those 57.7PG.
Jakob Poeltl, Keldon Johnson, Devin Vassell, Tre Jones Jeremy Sochan
I remember years ago refusing to type Gregg Popovich’s name without considerable arm-twisting. I wanted to simply refer to him as The Vortex of Fantasy Doom®. It was my geek protest of the chaos his invention Load created
His management, his random rest of star players and his flat, non-name, low-MPG rotations, wreaked havoc on Fantasyland.
All are forgiven.
Popovich’s Spurs has become a reliable source of draft steals, with the exception of the last two editions. You will be a top-75 player in this starless Spurs universe if your MPG is over 30. These Spurs are not experts at any one thing. They’re strong at all.
Tre Jones is a great example of this “solid-at-everything” dynamic. He is averaging 29.9 mpg, 14.3 ppg, 4.5 APGPG, 4.0 RPG, 0.83 3PG, and 2.5 Blocks+Steals. This is with a mediocre 58.6 percent.
Jakob Poeltl is a top-100ish with 15.5 PTS, 10.5 RPG, and 3.5 APG.
Devin Vassell (19.8 PG) and Keldon Johnson (20.5 PG) are the two top-40 ADPs for eighth-round. This isn’t a great production, but these are the ROIs that late-round investments can bring to a championship fantasy team.
A beautiful fantasy team.