League 1 held part 1 of its auction draft tonight. First Ottoneu Fantasy Basketball draft ever. Here are the results so far.
Warning: none of us know what we are doing.
Have at it with who did well, who messed up, whatever you like.
1 Like
I should add that we are picking back up Thursday night at 8:30p ET.
Looks like guards were at a premium. Westbrook for $39 looks like a steal compared to some of the other guard salaries.
1 Like
We finished our draft. Much cheaper on day 2. Link above should have everyone.
1 Like
Three Goggles won the draft, imo. I have Kevin Porter Jr highly projected and getting him for $11 is really good value.
Team Hoopla 
here. Wow, what a ride that draft was. I had no idea what to expect in terms of valuations, but as a long time ottoneu baseball player, seeing players casually going for triple digits or even 75+ was an adjustment for me. I knew going into the draft that my plan was going to be build young and maximize the amount of keeper value for next offseason as goal number one. This ended up leading to me passing on the biggest stars, but I wanted to be in the mix on Luka and Zion. After losing Zion at $99 (I was out after bidding $98, not sure the $2 going to $100 would make all the difference, but I didn’t push the button lol), I had to look further down the list of top NBA players.
In terms of players that actually made my roster, I’ve got 3 of the last 4 #1 NBA draft picks, stars out for the season with Kawhi and Murray, and the youngest roster in the league (even after I accidentally won $1 Danny Green in a frantic nomination). While my team obviously lacks star power, I’m happy with my core of C/F in Ayton, Collins, Holmes, and of course Time Lord, and I hope to have my guards grow into high performers (Cunningham, Edwards, & Lonzo Ball) to supplement LaVine. I probably would have liked to add even more prospects, but I was happy to land Mobley even in a draft room full of Cleveland fans lol.
Goals for this season are to be competitive and continue to build keeper value. I’m content with my depth of low cost NBA vets too, which I hope to use to build lineups that can get me wins in the H2H schedule, since there’s no benefit to finishing last. I’m hoping with my depth, and the 9 Category H2H format, there will be ways for me to use my roster depth to build flexible lineups to target the categories I think I’ve got a shot at for any given week… but we’ll see!!
Thanks again to Niv, draft was absolutely seamless, and it was a real thrill to build a team having no expectation of how things were going to shake out!
3 Likes
what was the total time to draft over the 2 days?
We did 2 hours on Tuesday and 2 hours last night and we got VERY far in the second night.
Piggybacking on this, I think 4.5 to 5 hours is a perfectly reasonable expectation for these first year basketball drafts if you wanted to finish with live auction
1 Like
I’m curious what everyone’s ideas were on roster construction.
I’m a baseball guy too, so I usually like to split my auction money as close to $200 as I can for both pitchers and batters. I’m having a tougher time with the distribution between G/F/C. There don’t seem to be many good bargain C’s after looking at this draft.
I don’t know that I’d look to allocate 45/45/10 or whatever by position like you might have a 65/35 (+/-5) allocation in baseball*. Rather, I think that you would approach this as you would football, where you’re just looking to determine replacement-level at each position, calculuate VORP (value over replacement player) for each player, and then maximize surplus value (projected value minus salary). At least when I do valuations in football, I don’t impose X% on QB, Y% on RB, Z% on WR, etc.
I haven’t played fantasy basketball in over 20 years and I wasn’t that sophisticated back then with player valuations, so I have absolutely no idea what to expect. But finding a target ratio across positions isn’t how I’m approaching valuation, FWIW.
*-65/35 or whatever in baseball was originally conceived of for rotisserie leagues and is an artifact of that. But in H2H categories in basketball, every player has the ability to contribute to every category, so there’s no need to force what’s ultimately an arbitrary allocation by position.
1 Like
The NBA is growing more position-less every year. Two PG are top-11 in rebounds while a C and a PF are top 6 in assists. I wouldn’t sweat allocating money to positions, but I’d be cognizant of format and how it impacts archetypes. If we comped two archetypes…
–The Classic Center: rebounds, blocks shots, defends the paint, shoots at a very high percentage but a very low volume, is low-usage.
–The Volume Scorer: lots of points but needs lots of usage to get those points, high scoring, low FG%, shoots lots of FT, doesn’t contribute on D or in rebounds, sometimes is an asset with assists, is often high turnovers from the high usage.
…we would get different values by league format. Let’s take two All-Star level players, Gobert and Beal.
Gobert per game: 14.3 PPG on 5.5/8.2 shooting from the field and 3.3/5.3 at the line, 13.5 REB, 1.3 AST, 2.7 BLK, 0.6 STL, 1.7 TO.
Simplified points: 30.7
Traditional points: 45
Beal per game: 31.3 PPG on 11.2/23 from the floor and 6.8/7.7 from the line, 4.7 REB, 4.4 AST, 0.4 BLK, 1.2 STL, 3.1 TO
Simplified points: 38.9 – Brad Beal is worth 26.7% more than Rudy Gobert
Traditional points: 42.7 – Rudy Gobert is worth 5.4% more than Brad Beal
Big swing.
C who fit this archetype by nature are going to dominate 4/9 categories in H2H. They shoot almost exclusively within 6 feet (FG%), they dominate the blocks and rebounds categories, and they use the ball less than the rest of the league and are prone to fewer turnovers as a result. It should be hardest to get value at that position, I believe.
1 Like
Has there really only been one league that has drafted so far?
Yes? I don’t know what kind of answer you want here.
I think a few drafts are scheduled next week. There are only 8 other filled leagues right now. 10 or so looking for more managers:
I was just looking at highest/lowest salaries and saw that those values were the same. Curious if only one league had drafted yet, or if the data had not been updated since that original draft you posted about. But now I know. thanks!
2 Likes
Yeah sorry I posted my response pre-coffee 
1 Like
The first traditional points league completed our draft tonight. Some interesting choices with cap, but it went smoothly otherwise.
4 Likes
We definitely had both extremes of cap choice.
I planned to go young and stockpile some gambles for a buck or two and wasn’t ready for the rookies to go for as much money as they did. I figured Bouknight in the late rounds for a dollar would be an easy get, and he went for $7. Thought I could get Giddey for a couple bucks and he went for $12. Budgeted $3 for Sengun, he went for $10. I was surprised by the two Jalens, Green ($33) and Suggs ($30) going as high as they did, in the same range as some younger guys with a track record of being effective on both ends of the floor in the league like Collins ($31), Wood ($35), JJJ ($31).
Outside of the lottery picks the rookie prices plummeted, and I don’t see that much gap between a late-lottery pick like Bouknight ($7), a just-outside-the-lottery pick like Sengun ($10) and the guys who came shortly after Sengun, so I was happy to scoop up Jalen Johnson, Cam Thomas, Jared Butler, Sharife Cooper for a dollar each.
2 Likes
I really liked your draft. I had noticed we were going after the same guys and jointly price enforcing.
I was surprised too by how much these young guys were going for. I had Kevin Porter Jr. penciled into my team for $20 and was expecting Giddey to go for around $3-5. I would say there is a gap there in terms of value with the younger, proven guys that you mentioned and rookies. Give me guys who have produced in the NBA any day.
My strategy this draft was to look for value guys and build a deep roster. I think we’re going to see a lot of resting and injuries with the return to an 82 game schedule. I splurged on guys like Russ, Vuč, and Dejounte because they’ll be such consistent night-in-night-out point earners. Other than that, I was looking for a lot of surplus value not tied to positions. I was really happy with TJ McConnell for $5 (my projections had him as a $30 player) and Harrison Barnes for $4 (a $25 player).
I also thought we both got good value with the $20-$30 guys. There’s something to be said about having Jokic, who will probably score 4,000+ fantasy points this year for $125, but I feel like getting a bunch of those solid $20-$30 is the way to go. I was upset you nabbed Rozier from me, but I can’t complain about settling for Brogdon.
2 Likes