True Confessions: My Black Wednesday

It was Black Wednesday for the Chicago Bulls. They lost the last game of the season to the New Jersey Nets, thus dropping from the #2 seed and homecourt advantage versus the injury-depleted Wizards, to the #5 seed and a visiting date with defending champion Miami.

It was Black Wednesday for Joey Crawford, who saw the last day of the last season he'll EVER ref an NBA game go by the boards. Book it, Crawford is done.

It was Black Wednesday for the LA Clippers, who must have known that Golden State was walloping the Portland Trail Blazers and proceeded to get beat by the Hornets, adding insult to injury. They had the playoffs in their back pocket, but then they lost AT HOME to the Kings(!) and gave the edge to the Warriors and those guys never looked back.

It was also Black Wednesday for me, with so many teams in the fantasy basketball playoffs and so many bitter losses...in the spirit of true disclosure, I will share my fate with the world.

ROTO: I played in two Fantasy King's redraft leagues and one FK keeper league. I, Radar, won one of the redraft leagues (#1693-16 teams) and finished 5th in the other one, the "Best of" league(#13706-12 teams). I guess fifth place will qualify me for that one again next year, but fifth isn't too good. Congratulations to the winners of the other two leagues, Blue and Dutch, respectively.

The keeper league? I took over a three-year-old team abandoned by an owner who had made bad decisions and brilliantly took it all the way to...11th place! Wow. In an 11-team league(#2324-11 teams)! The good news? I get the first draft choice next year.

Roto Totals= 3 teams, 1 championship, 1 top-three finish.

Head2Head: I played in nine leagues, eight leagues either Fantasy Kings or FK/Rotokingdom leagues and one league run by an FK buddy each year. The results:

#699-16 teams-FK vs RK redraft-Finished 4th. DAtaris17 won this one
#35006-10 teams-dynasty- Lost in finals, 4-5, to SC BallerJ
#4036-12 teams-redraft- Lost in finals, 4-5, to ih8temichigan
#48497-12 teams-keeper-Finished 5th. SC BallerJ won this one, too.
#47162-12 teams-keeper-Radar Won in finals, 7-2 over CYoshi
#16267-14 teams-salary-Finished 5th. Dutch won this one.
#2332-16 teams-redraft-Finished 3rd. Payton won this one
#13876-12 teams-redraft-Radar Won in finals, 7-2 over Dutch
#32713-10 teams-dynasty-Lost in finals, 4-5, to Santa
(That last one really hurt, because I knew I had the best team. But every time I would play Dirk and Josh Howard, the Little General would bench them and every time I started them, he didn't play 'em. I also benched Bosh in the last game because, when I played him previously, Mitchell benched him. I also started Iverson but Karl shut him down. I just barely lost a couple of cats that I would have one if just once, for instance, Avery Johnson would have played his stupid players! AAAAArgh!)

H2H Totals- 9 teams (all 9 made playoffs), 2 championships, 6 top-three finishes.

Combined Totals- 12 teams, 3 championships, 7 top-three finishes.

But I lost three finals by the painful 4-5 score, plus lost a playoff for third place by a 4-5 score. It was a year I just couldn't quite get over the hump when I had a chance to really have a kick-butt season. On the other hand, I won way more than my share against veteran fantasy players, so I suppose the season was still a success...just not what I hoped it would be.

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Fantasy Kings versus RotoKingdom

Final standings regular season

Fantasykings 777-723-12
Rotokingdom 720-774-18

Top Six individual finishers

DAtaris17 - Champ (RK)
Dutch- 2nd (FK)
The Doorknobman - 3rd (RK)
Radar - 4th (FK)
Santa - 5th (FK)
Mikl - 6th (FK)

Congratulations to the overall champion DAtaris17, and to the winning forum, Fantasy Kings!!!

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My fearless playoff predictions for round one:
Pistons over Magic (ya think?)
Cavs over Wizards (ya think?)
Raptors over Nets (I was gonna pick Nets, but Bargnani is back)
Bulls over Heat (everybody should want to watch this one!)

Mavs over Warriors (But GS is better than three teams in the East)
Suns over Lakers (Kobe vs world)
Spurs over Nuggets (Hmmm. Nuggs could surprise me)
Rockets over Jazz (won't be pretty either way)

The first two Eastern Conference series should be largely unwatchable. Pistons and Cavs have no business even coming close to losing. The other two are your basic coin flips. Nets know the playoffs but the Raps are a better team and with home court. The Bulls are better than the Heat but lost that last game so that lost momentum might kill them off.

But every Western Conference matchup has some cache. Even the Warriors are playing great ball now and it is a shame for them that they wind up playing Dallas. I was rooting for the Lakers to lose and to see a Suns-Warriors first round matchup. C'mon, 139-136!