The Players

Bio time.  Plain and simple.  These are the fantasy aristocrats of Bust a Salary Cap.  They are fellow league members who appear in our blog posts.  Just in case not everyone knows who's who.

Alias:  Mr. Glass
Profession:  Poker Player
Fantasy Skill:  Data Analyst (Spreadsheet Making)
Quote:  "I just need to put my shoes on."
 Bio:  When not card sharking all over the world from London to Dubai, he's excessively breaking down stats, giving J-Smi grief, and blogging about it.

Alias:  J-Smi
Profession:  Investor
Fantasy Skill:  Strategic Theorist (Over thinking fantasy transactions)
Quote:  "Dominos? Yea, this is Jeff again."
Bio:  When not maximizing returns for millionaires and managing the finances of some of the largest estates in the world, he's spending 3 months deciding if he can drop Baron Davis because "at least he gets 1 steal per game".

Alias:  Dark Mounty
Profession:  Slave
Fantasy Skill: Foundation Expert (Solid Draft, never make another move)
Quote:  "What fantasy league?"
Bio:  When not justifying the cost of your IT department, he's trying to remember the URL for the fantasy league. 

Alias:  Charlton Cha
Profession:  Apple Quality Control (iPhone division)
Fantasy Skill:  Wealth Manager (Overpaying in Auction Drafts)
Quote:  "You're my f*cking birthday"
Bio:  When not 'testing the durability' of the new iPhone by spiking it onto cement, he's mortgaging his house to buy Kevin Durant for $250,000.

Alias:  Crime Dog
Profession:  Eskimo
Fantasy Skill:  Strategy Analyst (All-Center Team)
Quote:  "Let's get weird."
Bio:  When not snow shoeing, he's calling Dark Mounty to get the URL for the fantasy league.


Alias:  Z
Profession:  Bills Fan Club President
Fantasy Skill:  Socialite (Only have big name players)
Quote:  "Let me be truthful with you..."
Bio:  When not fielding calls from satisfied customers, he's finishing 'first loser' year after year.

Alias:  Big Cass
Profession:  Movie Critic
Fantasy Skill:  Acquisition Manager (Excessive Pickups)
Quote:  "Yes, I will 100% be there... You can count on me."
Bio:  When not giving Gene Siskel cancer, he's abusing waiver systems to field a team entirely built off of free agency.

"Don't Mistake Activity for Achievement" - John Wooden

The late John Wooden once said "Don't mistake activity for achievement".  What not a lot of people know is that he also went on to say "Except in fantasy sports, where activity is a necessity.  Hell, Big Cass won numerous football championships by using a flawed waiver system and sitting by his laptop all day on Sunday".  Some of you might be wondering, how does John Wooden know Big Cass?  Look, we all know that John Wooden was an accomplished fantasy sports GM and he definitely can break down splits and build a winning fantasy team but what we didn't know was that he was also a heated rival of Big Cass (the Pride of Tacoma, WA).

Back to my point though, in fantasy sports, activity is how the true professionals make their bacon.  Take a look at these standings.  Notice anything different between the top of the leader board and the bottom (besides having markedly better team names)?  Number of moves.  Every team among the top 6 had at least twice as many moves as the bottom of the bracket, and in many cases much more than that. To do some true investigative reporting, we went to the lottery teams and asked them why they weren't making moves.

Team:  BYE WEEK
GM:  Crime Dog
"I tried to make moves but I was building an igloo and living off the grid all season.  Besides, I'll rock all these other teams in W.O.W."

Team:  Boots to Asses
GM:  Kenny
"I was busy watching Tony Parker YouTube highlight reels and power lifting."

Team:  Stern But Fair
GM:  Dark Mounty
"I'm working, can you call me back later?  What?  You want to know why I didn't perform better in my fantasy hoops league?  What fantasy hoops league?  Look, bro... I just need to finish the last 9 hours of work today so I can sleep 3 hours in my office before tomorrow morning."

Team:  Cougs before Bennett
GM:  Teddy's Dad
"I had a baby and I lost my teeth and I live in Pullman and I coach soccer and I have red hair and I have no soul.  Ka-KA! Brrrrrr!!!! (licks fingers, wipes eyebrows)"


Well there you have it folks. Four owners who foolishly allowed real life to stand in the way of fantasy super stardom.  Good for them.  I hope the last 6 months of real life was worth it because I'm rocking a virtual fantasy trophy and there are at least 3 other owners in the league who I can harass about it!

Fantasy Trend Emerging

Fantasy owners across the country are always looking to devise new tricks and strategies to get the upper hand on their opposition. Some of these strategies have stood the test of time and have become a staple of every fantasy owners repertoire. Take "category tanking", a strategy in which a fantasy owner determines before the draft or shortly after that they will concede one category per week. A team drafts Dwight Howard, Rajon Rondo, and Blake Griffin, conceding FT% each week but hoping to gain an edge in the other 7 categories. This strategy is tried and true. Not every owner uses it but it is accepted as a possible winning strategy. Another time tested example is "spot starting", originated in 2009 by Bronson Castellano of Tacoma, WA via Vancouver, WA (though some people, read: everyone, argue that this pre-dates Castellano and has actually existed forever). Spot starting has been known to be quite affective, though many league commissioners are taking steps to prevent this strategy, as it is seen as "cheap" due to the fact that it inherently bypasses an owners actual knowledge of the sport.



The most recent emerging trend is what hardcore fantasy freaks are calling "locker room guys". The basic idea is simple: when you are in an absolute must win fantasy playoff matchup, you never ever drop an injured player. The theory being that the injured players locker room presence will lift the play of his teammates. We've seen a lot of teams hanging on to Eric Gordon, Derrick Rose, Dwight Howard, and Dwyane Wade for this very reason. Despite the obvious scientific and logical backing of this strategy, it doesn't appear to be working so far. Last week fantasy aficionado J-Smi fell to 4th seeded Mr. Glass. Glass was using the traditional "do or die" fantasy playoffs strategy and was able to narrowly crush J-Smi and the Layup Drills 6-2. Trotting out Jarrett Jack and his season ending injury for more than half the week, J-Smi thought that Jack's moral support was really going to turn the tide in the matchup but after falling to 1-7 mid week, he dropped Jack. Not one to admit that a hair brained strategy didn't pan out, J-Smi commented that "Jack's leadership skills weren't good enough in a game of statistics where the players commonly do not play on the same team and may or may not even know one another. A better leader like Ron Artest or Matt Bonner could have really fueled this team." Z, owner of Stevie's Dance Acadamy, also deployed this strategy last week. Despite injuries to 3 of his top players, Z refused to part with his core for much of the week. Z, however, was able to discard the strategy near the end of the week and pull out a narrow victory. Z stated that he didn't want to drop the players but ultimately realized that injured players are not going to accumulate statistics which is what are needed to win a fantasy matchup. Glass sees it differently, as he told media members, "Look this whole Locker Room Guy strategy is a joke these guys don't even share a locker room. This is fantasy and everyone knows the only playoff x-factor is... HOME COURT ADVANTAGE (drops the mic)".

Local Fantasy GM Addicted to Customizing League Settings

Portland's own Fantasy GM and former Fantasy Basketball champion, J-Smi, recently announced what many had suspected for years. He is addicted to customizing fantasy league settings. Never content with using the "default" scoring system, J-Smi has added errors as an additional category to his fantasy baseball league.

This will go down alongside the "Year of the Assist" , in which J-Smi included both assists AND assist-to-turnover ratio, as one of his greatest commissioner mistakes. Some may remember "The Year of the Assist" as "The Year Chris Paul Automatically Won a Championship".

The Showdown For 11th Place

There were some things you could count on this fantasy basketball season: Dwyane Wade carrying fantasy owners and The Heat on his back; Luke Ridnour, Andray Blatche, Tyrus Thomas, and J.R. Smith getting picked up and dropped more often than a Saigon whore; suicide rates increasing in the early months of 2009 due to the losses of players the likes of Amar'e Stoudemire, Al Jefferson, Andrew Bogut and Andrew Bynum (historically to be known as the big-man massacre of '09); and because of all the injured centers, every team owner thinking at least once about picking up Eric Dampier, but then deciding not to upon remembering Shaq's quote of "I've been playing like Eric Dampier," said when referring to his struggles with a thigh injury in 2005.

Bust a Salary Cap's official fantasy league, NBA Jam T.E. has also had it's constants: Mr. Glass talking smack about me dropping Tyrus Thomas, HawaiianStyle63 ratting out his friends to yahoo for inappropriate team logos, high assist to turnover ratio teams dominating the league (and me as commish taking shit for it), but above all else, the one thing any fantasy owner in our league could count on... getting a win over Team and Team Injury.

As one might infer from their names, these teams' owners gave up on them long ago, and with Team Injury's star studded roster of A'mare Stoudemire, Chris Kaman, and Jameer Nelson, and Team's record setting one week of adjusting his lineups, they had the firepower to send them sprawling to the bottom of the rankings like an authentic Manu Ginobili flop.

Now that we are in the thick of the playoffs, I feel that some attention should be brought to this epic match of the worst our league had to offer.

Click for larger photo:



note: Somehow, the also appropriately named Team of Pussies made it higher on the consolation bracket, even after the injuries of Bynum, and Michael Redd put him in 2nd to last place. By still paying attention to the league, that lucky ginger has made it to the consolation semi-final.