Just Right

My personal reflection during the time I played for Yahoo! Fantasy for the 2024-2025 season.

As the 2024-2025 NBA season is over... so does my 2024-2025 Yahoo! Fantasy Basketball season.

Coming after a year's hiatus of playing Fantasy Basketball the previous season, here I am starting to be a newbie again in drafting and adding/dropping players for six to seven months.

And for the third time in a row in the other fantasy league that I was playing where I was the one drafted my own players, I got another silver trophy.

I don't know if I have a curse in that league I'm playing where for some weird reason, I suddenly don't even stand a chance on beating the opponent where it matters the most. The commissioner, who already become one of my friends online even told me that I better get one after he was eliminated by the eventual winner of the season that we played in fantasy basketball. Historically if I look at my statistics some matches you knew that you're toast, others you feel like your team is a powerful force until something happened to them that you either lost them due to unfortunate injury or their seedings are already secured that the team elected the players to rest.

As for this year's league, I think aside from the highest draft order that I got in like forever, I felt like I have a good team. Yes, there were a bit of stumble if you would see on my draft record on the picture posted here, but I got a good pickups along the way such as taking advantage of someone dropping Onyeka Okongwu and Brandin Podziemski. Those are stable gems. I know the Okongwu stock has increased due to Jalen Johnson being out for the season due to his shoulder injury and for some reason I have zero idea how did Podziemski improved, but I'll take whatever at some point.

Entering the final week of the fantasy regular season, it seems like I have fate in my hands on which opponent I would rather face or which path. Still in the 6th place prior to the final week of the fantasy season, I was going against someone who is in the 5th place with him having a win ahead of me. I knew that I'm going to win the tiebreaker and whoever was in the 4th spot that time knew that whoever won the match would have to face him. Knowing that the current 4th seed lost his best player in Victor Wembanyama, it's an easy win in the playoffs and a sure-ball semifinals granted all of my key players would play and losing would mean that I would have to fight with all my might against the defending champion who is also our commissioner in the first round of the playoffs.

I calculated my odds and saw that dodging the 2-3 seed is the best option to have a sure silver in the final round as I noticed that the 4th place is beatable and the one who held the 1st seed is currently limping with injuries on her key players. So I fought my best to beat the current 5th place and I got the 5th spot as the fantasy regular season is over.

Entering fantasy playoffs, it seems like my team is unstoppable. Imagine if I go on head-to-head against all of them for that week, I would have won easily. But at least some managers either doesn't feel anything as they still lost or they feel like they dodged a bullet that it wasn't them I was going against with that time. In fantasy as much as it feels like it's strategy, it also involves luck.

So into semifinals, I also won a comfortable margin against the 8th seed (who toppled the injured 1st seed), while the opposing bracket have to dispose all their possible adds entering the finals.

Now into the finals, I knew my team have a chance to beat the opponent who has Jokic, Randle and other formidable players. The problem, my players started to drop like flies... not because they're injured, but 3 of my top 5 players already locked their playoff spots in their respective conferences by a huge margin. Huge margin in the sense they might as well not play the rest of the week and they would still have their spots secured and the remaining 2 out of the top 5 happened to have a hopeless case in getting into the play-in so they just say that he is out for the season or they are already locked into the play-in and there's no point in tiring them out as the season winds down.

Meanwhile my opponent has teams who are fighting for playoff seeding; thus would need all of their players active to keep on winning. Then you also have the issue of you end up picking up players despite them being "scrubs" were too good for the team that they are ruining the team's chance to get a better lottery position. How weird was that isn't it? I feel like it's the first time I've encountered young players who are considered scrubs are started to be treated like veterans because they are so good. That's how weird this year's NBA is.

So looking back, could I say I drafted the right players? I mean if I would based it from last season, Minnesota, Oklahoma City and Denver were fighting for the first seed up until the final regular season. This season, OKC was a runaway winner of getting the 1st seed and they just keep on resting players to prepare for the post-season. Could I also predict that the Cleveland Cavaliers were going to take the 1st seed in the East? No.

In the end, drafting players is really going to be a combination of strategy and luck in terms of the players you've drafted are not only healthy - but also competing for the post season seeding. With the hiatus I had last season, I think getting a silver is already such a remarkable feat in the competitive league I'm in. I guess I couldn't ask for more.

Here's hoping that one day I would be the bride in the league that I was playing whose commissioner now turned to be my friend instead of being a bridesmaid for a very, very long time.