My personal reflection as the Yahoo! Fantasy Basketball 2025-2026 season has ended as I am now looking forward towards the end of regular season and to watch the Spurs finally back to the playoffs after so many years.
For two straight fantasy basketball seasons that I played in this league, I got my butt kicked by the same manager in the league where I was assigned the commissioner. Once when he knocked me out of the bronze medal game and the other one in the first round of the playoffs. I guess battling for the first round of the fantasy playoffs in a foreign country doesn't help.
Before the start of this fantasy season, I felt like I needed to do something different to get that gold trophy once more... And also to my other league where I gained a friend there to finally get the gold trophy and not just be a bridesmaid every time I get a chance to draft my own players in the league where he is the commissioner.
However, I can only manage to draft in one league, where I got my butt kicked for two consecutive times by the same guy. While I told my online friend that I cannot draft wisely if they are going to do the draft in the middle of my working hours [time zone difference]. So he has to remove me from his league [but of course we're still good friends in talking terms].
And so the draft day begins... I felt like the draft last year was more difficult than ever. Not only we were 20 teams, but there are a lot of good players who are out for a long term due to injury such as Tyrese Haliburton, Jayson Tatum, Damian Lillard, Kyrie Irving, etc. So out of those, you would be wondering who would be left especially when I got the lowest possible draft ever. 15!
Who would I be getting at 15? In other leagues, that's equivalent to a 2nd round guy or sometimes 3rd round guy in shallow leagues.
Based on the projections, my heart was choosing Domantas Sabonis or Alpren Sengun. I really liked the idea of having a non-point guard as my first pick as I felt it's easier to find a point guard later in the rounds. Unless of course it's Shai Gilgeous Alexander or Luka Doncic that we're talking about... Or even Cade Cunningham. I know last year I took Domantas Sabonis as my first pick and it didn't end well in the sense he wasn't there or injured at the wrong time (together with Chet Holmgren) to help anchor my team into getting out of the first round especially I knew that the score was extremely close and the opponent had to sacrifice a key player just to stream that player's spot. So I wasn't sure if I would do it once again if he fell on my lap. It's like my heart wants it, but my brain knew how he "failed" me during the time I needed him in the first round of fantasy playoffs.
Two picks before my turn, somebody picked up Sabonis and my mind knew that if the next one didn't pick up Sengun, I'm going to pick him, especially when I learned during his FIBA games that he was trying to become a point-forward aka the Jokic or Sabonis type of players.
True enough, I got him as my first pick. Then what was a bit surprising was my 2nd pick who is Bam Adebayo had times where he is surpassing Sengun on some days fantasy wise. It also helped that the offense ran through him when Tyler Herro was injured at the start of the season.
This fantasy season was a mixture of some eerie things going on, unbelievable ones, and perhaps I don't even know if I've been extremely lucky or I was rewarded with planning my picks.
Mind you, I noticed that my preferred players usually gets scrambled up by the time draft comes because the ranking changes and you don't know which default setting was used compared to practice drafts. So with my knowledge in data scraping, I have to apply what I learned from work to play, so I know which guys I will target and high chance that I could still pick them.
I didn't focus much on the first and second round as any pick would be okay, but the tricky ones were in the middle of the pack because some of those players would overperform based on their average draft position.
As the start of the fantasy season, I realized that based on my picks and the situation of various players especially the last few picks are quite questionable or unstable. What I thought was something I could pick up on the wire ended up I'm going to desperately needing it - the point guard position. After realizing Jared Butler (my last draft pick) was waived, I needed to find a substitute and found Marcus Smart for the short term. Then I realized Mike Conley was demoted to a bench role in favor of Donte Divincenzo, which means I not only lost one point guard, but two as I need to drop Mike Conley too. As for the Jared Butler situation, I thought I found a backup for Devin Booker as they are lacking at the point guard position. However, I am glad that I found Colin Gillespie in the nick of time at the free agent and realized he was the back-up point guard that Coach Ott wanted. So far, I was able to beat some formidable opponent, but I realized that sooner or later I might be bound to lose a game or two as what my usual fantasy season for this league.
As the weeks go on, I realized that my team was still unbeatable or even if there was this one round where I thought it's over, Shaedon Sharpe did something crazy that helped my team beat against a tough opponent that I was ready to pencil it as an L.
For some reason I don't know what's going on. It's either my opponents happened to have injured players when I play against them or maybe they forgot to activate them. Then I realized that Domantas Sabonis kept getting injured that made him sit for a long time and eventually was out for the season. The one who took him was someone I respected as a fellow co-manager and co-commissioner in the league. He has been a veteran in our league for a long time so it's kind of disheartening that his team wasn't performing as what I expected of him year after year whenever we play. It doesn't help when he picked players that were injury prone or pretending to be injured because they are on a tanking team such as Michael Porter Jr.
I believe that alone perhaps changed the trajectory of my fantasy season. Imagine if I was the one who has Domantas Sabonis, I wonder what would happen to my roster? I mean I have players who got injured such as Bennedict Mathurin. But in Mathurin's case, because he is underperforming based on his draft position, so it would be better if he was seated in our INJ slot for a long time while looking who could be a possible replacement.
I wasn't complacent enough yet even if my fellow co-commissioner felt that that season it's going to be something magical for me... I wasn't complacent because I haven't faced a lot of tough opponents yet. I just knew I would have to be active and aware on what the opponent was doing... and I despite the tough matchups, I still managed to win those series and when I saw my two remaining opponents are somehow inactive going into the fantasy playoffs, I knew that all I just need to do was to prepare the playoffs.
When I realized that I'm going to win it all in the regular season, I felt like I have to win this all because I don't know if this would happen ever again, plus I don't want to be called a choke artist or a fraud. So I reviewed my roster and knew I would have to give up the guys that I picked up on the wire and never look back. Those are Derik Queen and Jaylon Tyson. Two guys that I picked up on the wire and gave me nice numbers for weeks, but with the return of Dejounte Murray for the Pelicans and James Harden getting traded to the Cavaliers respectively proved that I would have to drop them and find something else.
I realized that I was really researching so much not only the players, but as far as their contract situation. Never have I thought researching if a random scrub is on a two-way or regular contract as to avoid the random rest or out due to their contract situation. I am so glad I encountered the problem early on before the start of the fantasy playoffs.
Then fantasy playoffs arrived, I am currently at the 1st seed - an unbeatable record facing an 8th seed. I know I have to do my job on who's in front of me, while also wondering who I'll be facing because all I knew was I have to do my job by activating the lineups and drop the players who I needed to drop. I mean who would have thought that for that round Bam Adebayo decided to get the highest points scored in a single game behind the Kobe Bryant in that round? Imagine 83 points was equivalent to around 102 fantasy points. Enough to scare the opponent.
Onto the next round, I knew it's a tough opponent. If I would use our scores last week, I would have lost already and he did beat a higher seed. Because of that, there is a reseeding and I end up facing him. I felt like I needed a little bit of miracle to win the match against him. It doesn't help that he is very active and we both live in Asia which is harder to match-up against since you don't have a time zone advantage to make your moves. For some funny reason, he has players who are on and off on the injured list and he has Kawhi Leonard not playing a single game or two. I know I had players random resting too, but for this round it's VJ Edgecombe and Justin Edwards who came through pounding the opponents with their high-scoring fantasy points... enough to overpower the opponent especially if the opponent made a few blunders such as picking Josh Minott who ended up having a DNP-CD if I remember it right and he maxed out his moves already.
Now into the finals. I was against someone who kicked my butt for two consecutive times. I know my fellow co-commissioner was already cheering me on hoping that I would win it all. I knew I'm a bit lucky on this one because Stephen Curry is still on the shelf and Jalen Brunson only has three games for that week instead of four or five games which would be brutal if that happens. For some reason, he only just activated his lineups and made switches on his injured players, but never made a move on who to add or drop. I mean I don't know what is going on onto his end. It would have been nice if he made a move or two as to make it more competitive. So in the end I was able to beat him by a huge margin. This time Alpren Sengun finally came alive at the most important time of the matchup. I know his performance maybe an icing on top of the cake, but regardless who knows if the opponent make a move to throw you off guard right?
I mean to be honest as much as I never had a perfect winning season coupled with getting the gold trophy, maybe it wasn't as heart thrilling as I thought it could be like the first time I got it. I am not sure perhaps my love life suddenly fell apart during the last week of my championship round and having this trophy might be the prize that appease my sorrows? I mean I don't know. Maybe it was a bit of a blessing my opponents aren't as active that they're used to means that I don't need to think about much of my moves too, because as much as Alpren Sengun suddenly played well on the last day of the fantasy season, some of my players are a bit meh, but then the scores of the opponent aren't huge enough to scare the heck out of my team too.
I don't know which NBA team winning the finals I could relate my fantasy season too, but whatever it is it maybe a little lackluster, but a trophy is a trophy.
So here it is, my second gold trophy!
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