Save Your Season, Part One: Establishing Dominance in a Majority of Categories

So it's the All-Star break, and your team isn't exactly tearing it up. You're languishing in the bottom half of the standings, and it's looking less and less like Lady Antebellum-type accolades are in the cards. So what do you do? Make like LeBron in Game 5 and mail it in? Stand pat and hope that several of your mediocre players suddenly transform into Monta Ellis? Well, would you stay in a job with a boss like Bill Lumbergh? Would you stay in a relationship with a nag like Susie from Curb Your Enthusiasm? So why settle for a bad fantasy season? Shake things up, and see if you can make a run. How? Well, I will provide some ideas in a series of posts. In this post, I'll explain how you can establish dominance in a majority of categories. In the next, I'll explain how to get the most out of your weekly matchups.

Part One: Establishing Dominance in a Majority of Categories

In head-to-head leagues you can completely suck at several categories and still win...provided you dominate at least one more than half of the categories. For this reason, sacrificing some categories to bolster others is the best way to turn your season around. Why? Because improving across the board is difficult. It requires making better pickups and trades than other teams. Trading numbers you no longer need for those you're trying to boost, on the other hand, is much more practical.

Here's how to do it:

1. Figure out which categories you want to punt and which you want to dominate. The best candidates for punting are those in which you are weak (obviously), which you are least likely to be able to improve, and which you can get the most for. The best candidates for dominating are those in which you are strong (obviously) and in which you can improve most easily (or cheaply). If you're weak in points, that is a great category to punt, because it's the toughest category to improve but easiest to sell. Dudes love points and the players who score a lot of them. Rebounds and assists are also good candidates for the same reasons. By contrast, threes and blocks are the best candidates to dominate, because they are undervalued and easiest to improve. One JaVale McGee or Ryan Anderson can goes a long way...and can be had for a reasonable price.


2. Go to Basketball Monster and generate rankings based only on the categories you want to dominate. For example, if you're looking to dominate threes, assists, steals, blocks, and FT%, enter only those categories for the league settings. This will provide an accurate sense of who is and isn't best suited for your new strategy. (Try different date filters to get a sense for who produced over the course of the season versus who might be coming on strong over the last month or week.)


3. Grab players off the wire who rank well in the customized Basketball Monster rankings. You will be surprised at some of the gems you find. Also use the rankings to determine which players to cut.


4. Get busy with trade offers. Use the Basketball Monster rankings to identify good trade targets (players ranked much better than they are in your league rankings). Also use the rankings to determine trade bait (those ranked much worse than they are in your league rankings). Your best bet is to trade a big name player for multiple players who are among the best in the customized Basketball Monster rankings. For example, using the categories mentioned earlier (threes, assists, steals, blocks, and FT%), Jrue Holiday, Jason Kidd, Rajon Rondo, Ramon Sessions, and Randy Foye are all ranked higher than LeBron James, Amare Stoudemire, and Carmelo Anthony over the last month. So trading one of the latter for two or more of the former would pay great dividends. And the great thing is, such offers have a high chance of being accepted, because most owners can't resist a chance to land a superstar. This year, I traded LeBron James and Rudy Gay (among others), and as a result have jumped from ninth place to third...and put myself in an even better position to succeed in the playoffs by winning a majority of categories.

Coming in the next post: "Save Your Season, Part Two: Maximizing Your Weekly Lineups."