Winning a Fantasy League with Dwight Howard

The 2009-2010 season marks my ninth year playing Fantasy Basketball.

When I started, I was like everyone who starts a new Fantasy Sport – I came to the draft completely unprepared. I picked players I'd seen on TV or remembered from their college days. My #1 pick that year…Michael Jordan. Great, right? Well…that was his first year playing for the Wizards and to be kind, it was not pretty. An old and out-of-shape Jordan scored 21.5 PPG, but shot 41.2% from the field and a whopping 22.6 shots per game. Ouch!

It was during that very long season, that I learned the importance of the percentage categories in a 4x4 rotisserie league and developed a draft strategy axiom of always protecting my percentages. I realized that you can always find points and rebounds; even steals, blocks, and assists on the waiver wire. However, the problem with waiver wire players is that they rarely play enough, or shoot enough to recover from a shot-happy poor shooter.

Over the past couple of years, I've written and spoken about how Dwight Howard will destroy your free throw percentage and ultimately doom your team. To emphasize the point, last year, I played in seven rotisserie leagues and the highest a Dwight Howard team finished was seventh. The highest point value for the free-throw category was…drum roll…three!

Being a math junkie and always looking for a challenge, I decided to draft a team with Dwight Howard as my anchor players and see if I could at least finish in the money or even win a league. I determine the best chance of realizing my goal was to attempt this strategy in an auction draft format, where I could control the type of players I had on my team. I targeted this experimental draft last Tuesday in one of our Fantasy Basketball Basics leagues.

The Strategy

I came up with two approaches to solve the Dwight Howard led Fantasy Team conundrum:

1. Concentrate on high FT% players such as Paul Pierce, Mo Williams, and Kevin Martin to cover the hole that Howard creates; or
   
2. Embrace the poor FT% and essentially punt the category and try to blow-out at least six of the remaining eight categories.
   

I spent hours modeling the projections of players to try and cover the poor free-throw percentage of Howard, but in the end, it proved to be a riddle I could not solve. The basic problem is Howard doesn't provide enough rebounds and blocks alone to win those categories and the players that do help in those categories, also have well below league average FT% (Emeka Okafor, Tim Duncan, Andris Biedrins, etc…). The players that help in free-throw percentages don't get enough rebounds and especially blocks to help. In the end, the contrasting players cancel each other out and you wind up with a middle-of-the-pack team.

Winning the league by punting the category proved equally difficult. In order to win a 4x4 rotisserie league, you need at least 72-75 points. If you punt a category, the maximum points you can get is 85 (96 maximum minus 11 points you give up). That means you must average 10.5 points over the remaining categories to win the league. You might be able to do that in a free public league, but in a highly competitive league like our Fantasy Basketball Basics league, it's very difficult. Also, since I was playing in an auction league, Howard would cost me 25% of my budget, leaving $150 to spread across 13 other players. To think I could get another stud player like Lebron James or Dirk Nowitzki and still fill out my roster with enough quality to average 10.5 point per category was not possible.

So what did I do? I compromised and followed a little of both strategies in constructing a team that would finish in the bottom third of FT%, win rebounds, blocks, FG%, and three-points, and finish strong in points, assists, and steals. The goal was to accumulate 72 points coming out of the draft and have bench strength across the board.

The Team

For blocks and rebounding, I selected Andrew Bogut for $5, and Shawn Marion for $20, a little pricey, but Marion should have a bounce back year and contribute strong across all the categories. In addition, I also drafted Wilson Chandler, Stephen Jackson and Carmelo Anthony that will provide decent rebounding, but not many blocks. However, Howard's projected 235.0 blocks provides 40% of the total needed to win the block category and therefore, I feel comfortable exiting the draft with only Howard and Bogut as my primary shot blockers.

For three-point shooting, I decided to focus on several players who could provide 100.0-150.0 three-pointers instead of picking three-point specialists such as Jason Richardson or Rashard Lewis. These somewhat one-dimensional players will not provide enough contribution in other categories to win the league. Instead, I picked Stephen Jackson, Steve Nash, T.J. Ford, Manu Ginobili, Kelenna Azubuike, and Wilson Chandler who provide both threes and something else such as assist, steals, or points. Beside Nash, everyone else cost me less than $15.

To win the assist category, I needed a stud point guard and therefore spent $40 for Steve Nash. I also got Stephen Jackson and T.J Ford who can provide a combined 12.0 APG. Is it enough to win the category? Probably not, but this is where Howard's price tag of $55 prohibited me from drafting another top-tier point-guard.

Every player on my squad should provide over 0.7 steals per game, but nobody will contribute elite contribution. I wanted Chauncey Billups or Jason Kidd, but finances would not permit. I hope to finish in the top third in the steal category.

I was criticized during the draft for spending $39 on Carmelo Anthony. A fair criticism in most drafts, however, most of the players I selected provided contribution in multiple categories but are not elite scorers. This is very typical in the NBA. Also, scorers in an auction draft demand a premium as most owners believe you have to win that category to win the league. This is a fallacy as points are the most plentiful asset on the waiver wire. You can easily win a rotisserie league by finishing in the middle of the pack in points, unless of course you draft Howard and decimate your FT%. I needed a scorer and targeted Anthony and his 25.0+ PPG. I would have liked Antwan Jamison as well, but injuries scared me off and that led me to Stephen Jackson.

As I prepped for the draft, I realized that the key to winning with Dwight Howard was to draft an all-around stud that was less than $15. The player best fitting that description was Stephen Jackson, which I generally avoid for the same reason I avoid Howard, he'll destroy your FG%. As it turns out, he's actually a nice complement to Howard and in the end, I have a team anchored by two players I truly despise…pretty cool!

What are my chances?

While I overspent for Howard and probably paid too much for Nash and Anthony, I came close to achieving the goal based on a number of pre-season projections. In running the numbers, my team finished in the top three of a number of prognosticators pre-seasons projections, including mine. In fact, one of the projections had me finishing with four points in the FT% category.

Do the projections mean I'll win the league or even finish in the money? No, but it does mean that barring injuries or Stephen Jackson blowing a gasket, my team should compete. Plus there is word out of Orlando that Dwight Howard will shoot 75% from the line this year; even coach Stan Van Gundy confirmed the projection. If that happens, it's game, set and match. However, I won't clear the space on my mantle just yet for the trophy; maybe by Christmas though…