Offseason Beat: 2015 Draft Guide Preview
Rotoworld’s 2015 Draft Guide has arrived!
This year’s Guide is bursting at the seams with tools to help you dominate your drafts, including customizable rankings, projections, 300+ player profiles, schedule grid, position tiers, mock drafts, injury reports, and tons of exclusive columns.
A one-time payment of $19.99 will grant you full access to the Draft Guide, or you can bundle it with our NBA Season Pass for only $34.99. In addition to all of the Draft Guide features, the Season Pass bundle includes a year-long Player Tracker, weekly stat projections, customizable email updates, an exclusive playing time report, and so much more.
All of the features listed above are exclusive to the Guide, including the player profiles, rankings and projections. Rotoworld’s NBA crew has also written 20+ columns and counting, covering a huge variety of topics including:
Sleepers & Busts
DFS Strategy Guide
Over-the-Hill Gang
Top Offseason Transactions
2015 Rookies
Dynasty League Tips
Players Worth Reaching For
Fantasy Basketball 101
Percentage Killers
Roundball Stew
2015 Schedule Analysis
Punting Strategies…
…and that’s not even half of the columns already available.
Mock drafts will be steadily added to the Guide as we march toward the beginning of the season, providing insight on how experts and hardcore fantasy owners view the league. Will you be able to land Danny Green outside of the top-50? Where is Ricky Rubio going in 9-cat leagues? We’ll analyze our drafts round-by-round, to help you win yours.
Below are some excerpts from four columns you’ll find in the Draft Guide — Top Offseason Transactions, Punting Strategies, and Percentage Killers. The paragraphs quoted account for perhaps 1/10 of the full columns!
[…] Greg Monroe signs with the Milwaukee Bucks (three years, $50 million)
Monroe was pursued by the Blazers, Knicks and Lakers in free agency, but he spurned the league’s biggest markets for a less-than-max deal in Milwaukee. He was reportedly swayed by the Bucks’ no-nonsense pitch and the promise of a playoff berth as a frontcourt fixture alongside starters Michael Carter-Williams, Khris Middleton, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Jabari Parker. GM John Hammond said the team needed “a player that we can throw the ball to in the post,” and Monroe won’t have trouble exceeding the 12.4 shot attempts he averaged with Detroit last season.
Monroe had a fine 2014-15 campaign despite playing only 31.0 minutes per game in an awkward fit alongside Andre Drummond. He averaged 15.9 points, 10.2 rebounds, 2.1 assists and 1.1 steals, while making a career-best 75.0% of his free throws, which was enough to garner top-60 value in both 8-cat and 9-cat leagues. He’s only 25 years old and a bigger role with the Bucks is inevitable, which begs the question: can Monroe establish top-40 value as a featured option for coach Jason Kidd?
The answer is yes. Milwaukee had the league’s 12th-fastest pace last year but their roster is built to run, ensuring plenty of offensive possessions. The Bucks also scored 63.3% of their points off 2-point field goals last season, the fifth-highest rate in the NBA, a strength that will be emphasized with Monroe dominating the block. With Jabari Parker at PF and a reserve PF/C corps of John Henson, Miles Plumlee, Johnny O’Bryant and Chris Copeland, copious playing time is guaranteed for Monroe. The only knock on Monroe is that he doesn’t block shots (a mere 0.5 per game last year) but that shouldn’t dissuade fantasy owners from snagging him after the first three rounds. […]
[…] Andre Drummond and DeAndre Jordan are the modern bedrock of ‘punt’ discussions. Drummond was a mid-round value in 8-cat and 9-cat leagues last season, but without FT% he leapt into the top-10. DeAndre Jordan took an even bigger leap into the top-3 on a per-game basis. He didn’t miss a single game all season, so on a cumulative basis he was the No. 1 fantasy player (8-cat or 9-cat) with FT% excluded. Even Dwight Howard catapulted from near-irrelevance to the top-40.
There may be a temptation to pair a terrible FT shooter with a FT stud like James Harden or Kevin Durant, hoping they will cancel out in FT% — that could work with Hassan Whiteside or Rudy Gobert, but it’s a dubious strategy with someone like DeAndre. The combined FT totals of Harden and DeAndre last season were 902-of-1,295 — that’s equivalent to 69.7%. Since you’d have drafted Harden first, the decision to pair him with DeAndre would have decimated one of Harden’s greatest strengths. […]
Ignoring FT% is not the only way to successfully punt in fantasy basketball. Assists and blocks are two categories which are comparatively ‘scarce’, in that they are concentrated in a small pool of players. The competition for elite PGs and Cs is fierce in the early rounds, for good reason, but you can also have success by pushing back one or the other position until the middle rounds. If you were to Klay Thompson, pair him with a few top-tier big men, and then draft an underrated PG like George Hill, whose value isn’t reliant upon assists, you’d be well on the way to a successful punt-assists team. […]
Percentage Killers by Mike Gallagher
[…] Kobe Bryant – Yeah, taking over 20 shots per game and only making 37.3 percent of them is going to be a problem. Kobe was the worst player per-game for field goal percentage and he will likely be down there again. He may have more help this year, but Kobe was actually a bad shooter in catch-and-shoot. He made just 28.8 percent on those last year and he wasn’t good at the rim either, making just 51.7 percent from the line. If you draft him, you’re punting FG%.
Ricky Rubio – Rubio is usually one of the worst shooters in the NBA. He made just 35.6 percent from the field last year, but he only attempted 9.9 shots per game. Even though he is going to get some help, it doesn’t look like a big improvement is coming. On catch-and-shoot, Rubio made just 32.4 percent from the field. He’s also not good at the rim and made just 25.5 percent from 3-point range. He’s going to be bad news for owners, but at least the volume isn’t too bad.
Nick Young – He got a tattoo of Tupac on his right arm, so that arm isn’t strictly for buckets anymore. It’ll be P against the world for field goal percentage again. Don’t draft him. […]
Bold Predictions by the Rotoworld NBA crew
- Paul George, taken by many at the end of the first round in fantasy drafts, will struggle with injuries and conditioning this season and return fourth-round value, making him a bust.
- DeAndre Jordan will become the second player in NBA history to accumulate 1,200 points, 1,200 rebounds, 200 blocks and 100 steals in a season. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar pulled off the feat during the 1975-76 season and it hasn’t been done since. Jordan’s offensive role should see a marginal boost this year, he’s in his prime, and he’s missed zero games in the past four seasons.
- C.J. McCollum tears it up off the bench and wins Sixth Man of the Year in his third season.
- The wear-and-tear of endless playoff runs finally catches up with LeBron James and he doesn’t return top-10 fantasy value. Now 30 years old, James posted his lowest scoring numbers since his rookie season last year and will have a hard time fending off up-and-coming players like Klay Thompson and Rudy Gobert for his spot in the top-10.
- D’Angelo Russell will pan out to be a fantasy bust as a rookie. He already has the odds against him being the No. 2 overall pick, and he had a very underwhelming showing at Summer League. Partner that with the fact he’ll be playing alongside Kobe “I don’t pass the ball” Bryant, and I think it’ll be tough for him to have a meaningful rookie season.
- The Bulls will trade Taj Gibson at some point this season: Chicago has an embarrassment of riches in their frontcourt right now, but Gibson appears to be odd man out with Nikola Mirotic, Joakim Noah and Pau Gasol all ahead of him in the rotation. Tom Thibodeau absolutely loved Gibson, but new head coach Fred Hoiberg is going to want to push the pace and Mirotic seems like the better fit for his system. […]
To access the full columns and unleash an avalanche of NBA draft prep resources, just click here!
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