I'm leaving early tomorrow morning for a little over a week so I'm going to share my rankings here to get some **** talking going. I would put my own team somewhere in the top tier.
Tier 1 | | |
1 | caustic | Nuggets with slightly worse secondary starters but better bench. In Jokic We Trust. Probably not the highest ceiling, but the highest floor. |
2 | The Moops | Incredibly versatile defensively, passing (and Schroder being the only real PG) is what keeps them from #1. |
3 | Yo Mama | Lacks thee point shooting, but I like the team makeup. |
4 | Corporation | Most talented, I think, but downgraded due to Harden doing Harden things. |
5 | Trader Jake | Kawhi and Lopez are off to slow starts, Morant isn't playing BUT probably the highest ceiling (and maybe tier 3 floor). |
Tier 2 | | |
6 | FatMax | Toughest cut from the group above - I might be underrating them, but I don't love the DeRozan fit and the bench lacks offensive creation. |
7 | Son of Yo Mama | Should be great in the "regular" season due to defense and shot creation, but shooting sucks and would be exposed in the "playoffs". |
8 | nysfl2 | Offensively, this team will work, but Embiid can't carry this much defensive dead weight. |
9 | Frostillicus | I think this might be the best top 3 in terms of fit and talent, but worst bottom 12. |
10 | Desert_Power | Top 6 are pretty darn good, rest of bench is rough, a little skeptical of Wemby on a real team this year. |
11 | Eephus | Chris Paul should 100% start. Bench feels shallow, Westbrook and White are strange fits. Starting lineup (with Paul) works. |
12 | dunfee555 | Fultz as the PG with no shooting PG behind him kills this team for me. JJJ is also forced out of position. |
Tier 3 | | |
13 | Scoobus | I don't trust anybody to create good offense at a high enough level to compete in this "league". Hard to know if Cunningham is actually good. |
14 | Jayrod | Defense is getting smoked, worst centers in the league. |
15 | Son of PIK | This is the worst defense ever assembled - none of the top 6 picks are even average defensively. Fun offense though. |
Tier 4 | | |
16 | thecatch | Shai can't carry this mediocre team to success. Too many rookies/second year guys. |
17 | PIK95 | Defense optional… actually, just no defense allowed. Losing Time Lord hurts but he wasn't saving the Ball/Sabonis/Young triumvirate. |
18 | Chemical X | Watching Russell and Poole my-turn-your-turn to 6 of 19 shooting every night would make my eyes bleed. |
19 | Instinctive | Ben Simmons, lol. |
Teams I generally agreed on (had them within 2 spots):
the moops, caustic, Yo Mama, Trader Jake, FatMax, Desert_Power, dunfee555, Chemical X & Instinctive
Teams I had ranked 3+ spots higher:
Son of Yo Mama, Eephus, thecatch, Scoobus, PIK95
Teams I had ranked 3+ spots lower:
Corporation, nysfl2, Frostillicus, Son of PIK
Biggest differences were Corporation (4 vs 17) & thecatch (16 vs 6).
I figured my view on Corporation was going to flow against the masses here. Originally I was going to give slightly longer writeups and ended up doing seven of them before I decided I didn't want to do all 19 - two that I did do were Corp and thecatch....
@thecatch – Got caught going budget rather than talent while also drafting too many young unproven guys. Defense is going to be a little rough without anybody that is a big plus (Shai is a light plus, Chet might be). The team does have complimentary offensive talent, so with Shai and maybe a couple of the young guys improving, the team might look better in April.
@Corporation – I might be a little higher on these guys than most – the offense makes sense, the defense makes sense, the bench has a handful of capable replacements, the probable closing lineup (swap Martin for Claxton) has enough defense and shooting to work to Harden’s strengths and weaknesses. If Murray and Porzingis keep up their hot starts, this team is going to be goooood. Probably my favorite team that went cheap initially.
Here are the other five:
@Frostillicus – Absolutely love the fit and talent of Bam/Jrue/Booker but the rest of the team… not so much. Way too many one way players with pretty much the only exception being Kyle Anderson - kind of. Getting another shooter who is passable defensively (Max Strus type) or another top notch defender who is a decent shooter (Dorian Finny-Smith type) would have made a huge difference.
@the moops – This team is going to be ****ing incredible defensively when healthy and they continue to bring it on the bench with guys like Caruso, Dunn, Capela. There is plenty of offensive talent but shooting is probably somewhere around average or maybe slightly below, and the passing leaves a little to be desired. Top tier.
@nysfl2 – 80% of the way to a starting lineup that would have made tons of sense but a Cole Anthony/Donovan Mitchell backcourt is so flammable and Anthony doesn’t shoot it well enough to make it worthwhile. A defensive forward would have been a much better fit. The bench is probably one of the better benches but it doesn’t really solve the flammable backcourt issue. At least if a team is going to be full of mostly ****ty defenders, having Embiid solves some of that.
@dunfee555 – So close to making a great team but Markell Fultz as the starting PG (and nobody behind him that can shoot either) and forcing JJJ to be a full time center is a bummer. Otherwise, I generally like the talent on the team and there is some bench stuff that will make this a tough team to play.
@caustic – Rebuilt the Nuggets roster with a deeper bench and a slightly worse version of the three guys that aren’t Jokic and Murray. Like the real-life Nuggets, backup center is a problem, but that only exists when Jokic isn’t playing 40 mpg. We’ll see how all the support players look in a few months, but this is a possibility to be one of the top teams.