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2/28 - We notched the $1,000 in 2003 GuruPatron donations yesterday. That's a nice start to the year. What's also gratifying is that of the 30 people who have contributed since the first of the year, 14 were first-time contributors. While I'm hopeful that most old-timers will "renew" at some point this year, it is always good to attract new blood.

As a further incentive and reward for GuruPatronage, I'm offering two baseball opportunities. One is the establishment of a GuruPatron division for 2003 TSN Ultimate baseball, for those GuruPatrons who want to be in a competitive division. (Reminder: TSN's "early bird" price special is slated to end on Sunday.) The other is a prize offer for GuruPatron roto leagues, similar to the offer I made for this past Hoops season. For more details on these opportunities, see this thread at the message forum.

Today marks the end of February. March is one of the busiest months for site activity, as not only does the Hoops season continue in full swing, but the Market Madness game is launched, and baseball draft activity and analysis is in full swing. I have not yet configured the Market Madness game for 2003, but I will get to it shortly. The game will be essentially the same as last year. Historical tournament stats have already been updated to include last year's results, however. The tournament gets underway a little later than usual this year, with Selection Sunday still a little more than 2 weeks away.

2/27 - It feels like déjà vu all over again.

Last year, in late February, I remember picking up Elton Brand at the beginning of 5 games in 7 days. He promptly took a DNP, and when the prognosis didn't sound promising for his imminent return, I bailed. He promptly returned to action with 4 games of 44.5-62.5-63-52. That debacle really took the wind out of my sails, as I recall.

So it was with some trepidation that I even picked up Brand this week. "Fool me once,...", the saying goes. So this morning I awoke to see the (un)expected DNP. Blog! Well, unless I hear something pretty definitively negative, there's no way I'm bailing. I just can't misplay the same situation the same way two years in a row. With that in mind, your best move is probably to run away. But you make the call.

The top two price gainers yesterday combined for 5.5 TSNP last night. You already heard Brand's total. Add that to 5.5 from Antonio Davis and you have the rest of the story. It's hard to imagine how Davis could play 42 minutes and manage such a paltry total. Was he playing blindfolded?

I guess I'll go think about baseball for awhile. Hoops drives me crazy.

2/26 - After several days with multiple monster results, only two players topped 50 TSNP last night. The leader was Zydrunas Ilgauskas, who doesn't have much ownership at all. None of the top 100 teams had him. The other was Jason Kidd, who continues to make me pay for not picking him up this past week.

I'm sure everyone is getting ready to eject Kobe Bryant on Saturday. I looks like the big shift will be into Tim Duncan, a move made possible by multiple position flexibility. When you can get 3 Duncan games during a 4-day period with no Kobe games, it's an obvious move, assuming you have the appropriate positional flexibility and enough spare cash. Then, next Wednesday, everyone will want to reacquire Kobe, either from Duncan, or probably from another slot in many cases. We're at that point in the season when many of the top teams are all making similar moves, especially for a week like this when some moves are virtually mandatory. That makes it difficult to make up ground very quickly, but also to lose it. There are three teams ahead of mine in TSN Ultimate, and I have 6 or 7 players in common with each of them (though not always the same 6 or 7). The endgame - and that's what it feels like, in spite of the fact that we still have seven weeks to go - generally comes down to a bunch of 2-on-2, or 3-on-3, or 4-on-4 matchups, with the core of most rosters canceling out. Then means that the correct couple of cheap players can often be the critical factor in the stretch drive. Very difficult.

2/25 - Steve Francis is up to his old tricks again. After chasing away some owners with a DNP in his prior game, he had a triple-double last night. He was fairly heavily bought at the beginning of Houston's 6-games-in-8-days streak. So far, in the first 5 games he's produced TSNPs of 35.5, 12.5, 44.5, DNP, and 66.5. Mr. Consistency. As I recall, he was pulling these stunts last year as well, with a migraine one night and a triple-double the next. Maddening.

As many of you are aware, I'm am participating in a PROFL Experts League this winter. PROFL is a four sport league, and I am managing the basketball component of one team, with the other three managers being totally unaffiliated with RotoGuru. I'm doing quite well (I've led wire-to-wire so far), but I must confess that I really haven't paid any attention the other sports.

For the upcoming season, RotoGuru has been asked to manage a full team (i.e., all four sports). The PROFL year starts with baseball and continues through football, hockey, and basketball. Each sport is separately scored, and then a composite ranking across all four sports determines the ultimate winner. I've selected the following Gurupies to manage Team RotoGuru (forum name in parentheses):

Each of these guys has demonstrated excellence in their selected sport, and each has been a valued contributor to RotoGuru.com, not only financially as GuruPatrons, but also as helpful posters in the message forum. I'm thrilled to have such a strong group of comrades to represent RotoGuru.com, and although our competition will be strong, I fully expect to finish well.

The most public part of each league is the draft, which is carried out as a "slow" draft, and which includes the manager's commentary on each selection. For my basketball draft last fall, I kept a running commentary going at the message forum, not only to keep you advised of progress, but more importantly to solicit your feedback and ideas as the draft progressed. The baseball draft will begin next Monday (March 3), and Greg will soon be initiating a thread to lay out the rules and to start some discussion in advance of the draft. I'm sure your ideas will be as helpful to Greg as they were to me last fall.

2/24 - It's rare to get a triple-double in the NBA. Two on a single day are even rarer. So how about two in the same game? And both exceeded 85 TSNP. Congrats if you had both McGrady and Kidd. Not many teams had both, even though both have been popular guys to own this season. Sadly, I had neither. But even so, I had a respectable day, as there were a lot of big results. Nine players had at least 50 TSNP, and another eleven were in the 40s. That a lot of production for only seven games.

One of those big games was from Ray Allen, with 56 TSNP in his first game with Seattle. That wasn't his top output for the season (he had 60 against Minnesota last month), but it certainly was way above his season average. It's not wise to read too much into a single game (just ask those who picked up Brent Barry yesterday), but Allen certainly bears watching, especially in the TSN Ultimate game where his price is only $5m.

2/21 - Tonight's Milwaukee-Seattle game should be an interesting one.

Jason Kidd played more like, well,... Jason Kidd last night. In his previous 7 outings, his best effort was 49 TSNP, and three times he was below 40, averaging only 39 TSNP/G over that span. Now, 39 isn't bad, but it's not what you expect from Kidd. So maybe he was due. In any event, those who showed faith in him got a nice reward last night with his 62 TSNP game against Indy. He was just one rebound shy of a triple-double.

The stinker of the night was from Tim Duncan, whose 9.5 TSNP is his worst result in the last four seasons. In fairness, he got poked in the eye, which resulted in slightly reduced minutes. But he did manage to play 34 minutes before leaving, so that certainly doesn't explain a result below 10 TSNP. Duncan's recent and current schedule is such that he's not widely owned for now, although some teams had him - including 6 in the top 100 of TSN Ultimate. Duncan is the type of player that can sometimes produce enough points to overcome a moderate schedule. But not with games like that. Condolences to those that had him.

2/20 - There are some more injuries to consider today. Of immediate concern is Dirk Nowitzki, who sprained his ankle in practice yesterday. The Mavs play the Spurs tonight, so he'll obviously be motivated to play if he can. A dreaded game-time decision. Another concern for many has to be Steve Francis, whose minutes and scoring were limited by back stiffness. He's been a popular pickup the past few days, with Houston's dense schedule this week. But a heavy schedule and a stiff back are probably not a good combination. Stay tuned.

Nobody really busted out last night. Garnett led everyone with a (ho-hum) 52.5 TSNP game. The only other payer over 50 TSNP was Kenny Thomas (51.5), but that seems unlikely to be a consistent result for him. Perhaps the other most notable result was 39.5 TSNP from Tyson Chandler. He's averaged 44 TSNP/G in his last five games, and seems to be getting more minutes with Marcus Fizer out. But extra minutes aren't the whole story. He's averaged 33 minutes per game during that 5-game stretch, so he's getting 1.35 TSNP per minute, which is quite remarkable. Prior to this, he'd only been averaging 0.85 TSNP/minute. By comparison, Garnett averages 1.31 TSNP/minute, and Kobe gets just 1.2 TSNP/minute. So it's probably unrealistic to expect his 1.35 pace to continue. But at his TSN Ultimate price of $1.4 million (and rising), he certainly doesn't need to match Garnett's productivity to have enormous value.

The NBA trade deadline is this afternoon. There are plenty of rumors still floating around, but only one deal has been reported so far. By tonight we'll finally know whether we need to compensate for any schedule changes.

2/19 - I was surprised earlier this week when Kevin Garnett logged back-to-back $60K price gains in the TSN Ultimate game. How could that many active teams not have had him already, given his attractive post ASB schedule? All of the top 100 teams have had him for awhile. So I now wonder how many teams are missing Kobe. Will his 71 TSNP game last night induce a few more buys today - especially given that Shaq will sit out tonight's game as well?

The evidence suggests that Kobe and Garnett are must-haves if you want to be competitive. (After all, can 100 out of the top 100 teams be wrong?) Now it will be interesting to see how the top 100 treat Tyson Chandler. So far, they've been somewhat skeptical, as only 15 of them had him for last night's game. I imagine he'll get a big boost today, with trades refreshed. My top team will still be sitting him out, however, as I just can't find an efficient way to fit him into my longer term plans. If I was sure he'd continue to crank out big games, I'd probably force the issue. And maybe he will. If so, he'll continue to be relatively cheap throughout. Remember that Amare Stoudemire never got above the $2 million mark in the Ultimate game. If Chandler follows a similar track, he'll plateau in the mid-$2m range, which is still another $1 million above his current level. But it will still be cheap for a player consistently producing more than 30 TSNP per game. The big question is whether he will.

2/18 - I guess today's big question is will Shaq play, and if so, will he be effective? He was on 72 of the top 100 (TSN Ultimate) teams 2 days ago, and 30 dumped him yesterday. I imagine more will fade him today, as the prognosis continues to sound rather iffy. Of course, 24 of the top 100 are already tradeless, so to the extent that any of those teams still own Shaq, they've got him for at least tonight. It sounds like Phil Jackson is trying to goad Shaq into playing (by suggesting that Shaq was perhaps suffering from "Ming-itis"), but Shaq is backpedaling. Often it's the other way around, with the player saying he can go, and the coach urging caution. We'll see.

Two players reached the TSNP 50s last night, and I was the only team in the top 100 that had them both. Garnett is on every one of the top 100, but Karl Malone was my opportunistic pickup of the day. There are two reasons that I had him: (1) I had accumulated some spare trades that I didn't expect to "need" in the next few weeks, and (2) I had decided to move from Shaq into Nowitzki, who had an off-day yesterday. So I simply inserted Malone as a transition trade. My general rule of thumb is that if you can get an extra stud game for a trade, it's a worthwhile expenditure. Malone has been pretty consistent lately, so I took the gamble and it paid off. So much for advance planning leading to military-precision-like execution, eh?

The snow has mostly moved off to sea, and with New Jersey being the only northeastern team at home tonight, I don't expect any more postponements. There's a lot of shoveling to be done, but roads are generally cleared and airports should be reopened. Rain is now forecast for the weekend in most of the snowstorm's wake. With several feet of snow on the ground, that should make for a real mess. Meanwhile, skiing conditions are now ideal in my backyard.

2/17 - Even with Shaq's DNP, my top team ended up with more TSNP yesterday than I expected. With 90 from Kevin Garnett, 67 from Tracy McGrady, and 56 from Ben Wallace, I had a lot of margin for disappointments. And other than Shaq, no one came in woefully under budget.

What to do with Shaq now? Beats me. The Lakers still have a great schedule, with 7 games in the next 12 days, including 5 at home. But if Shaq is hurting this much, you have to wonder what his production will be even if he does play them all. Given that concern, I bailed, but I'm not at all convinced that will turn out to be the optimal decision. In my case, I was able to make immediate use of some extra cash, so I pulled the trigger. But every team's situation will dictate the best approach.

The weather has postponed the Toronto/Washington game today. It's been rescheduled for March 4th. Hopefully, I properly adjusted all of the various schedule-driven routines (Assimilator, sortable stats projections, etc.). Let me know if you notice any errors.

We're expecting 14-24 inches of snow in central Connecticut today. Hopefully, electric power won't get knocked out. If I disappear for a day or so, that's probably why. Meanwhile, my wife and daughter left early this morning for a brief vacation to the Tampa area. Nice timing!

2/14 - Happy Day!

It was a mixed day for yesterday's top (TSN Ultimate) price gainers. Ben Wallace came through with a very satisfactory 40.5 TSNP, but Scottie Pippen's 26 TSNP was a little disappointing, as he scored only 2 points while committing 7 turnovers (although he did have 10 boards and 9 assists). Tracy McGrady's 51 TSNP was a good result, but Corliss Williamson's 10 was his lowest output since January 14. With cheapies, sometimes you get what you pay for.

RotoGuru site activity (as measured in bandwidth) has been up a bit this week, roughly 30% higher than January levels. At first, I thought it might be related to draft analysis for Season 2 of TSN Basic Hoops. But the extra traffic has persisted for the past few days, and I now think it's related to baseball drafting activity. There are already a number of drafting threads going on at the baseball standings forum. (The standings forums are good places to hold league-specific drafts, as they would otherwise be dormant until after the season starts.) If you'd like to hold your league draft at that forum, be my guest.

2/13 - The Lakers won by 11 in a blowout over Devner. The margin was 33 after the 3rd quarter, and Kobe Bryant sat out the last 16 minutes. Consequently, although he led the night (and the season) in real points with 51, his 56 TSNP were only fourth best. And frankly, for the Ultimate game, it doesn't really matter whether he had 5 TSNP or 500. As of yesterday, every single team in the Ultimate top 100 had him. However, in the TSN Basic game, limited resources make it virtually impossible to own more than than two studs, so his points do make a difference in that version.

Wednesday's two unlikely TSNP leaders both play for Chicago. Jalen Rose put up 65 TSNP, while teammate Tyson Chandler was a scant 3 TSNP behind. It's hard to figure where Chandler's production came from, as he had only topped 20 TSNP once in his last 13 games, and that was only a 24.5. He's been in constant gravity in the Ultimate game, and unless he attracts some buys today, he'll drop below $1 million. Maybe yesterday's Dion Glover buyers will sashay over. Glover followed up Tuesday's 50.5 TSNP effort with 3.5 TSNP last night. Of course, if they moved into Glover from Robert Pack, they're already ahead by 3 TSNP.

2/12 - And they're back!

Tim Duncan was yesterday's biggest price loser in the TSN Ultimate game. Those who held him got the last laugh, though, as Duncan's 76.5 TSNP was almost 20 better than anyone else. And the guy that most teams moved from Duncan into, Kevin Garnett, was almost 30 TSNP behind. It's often a crap shoot when choosing between two studs on any given night, and in this case, Duncan's schedule makes him less attractive over the short term, while Garnett has a great upcoming schedule. So, unless you had a premonition about the game results, making the Duncan=>Garnett move yesterday was reasonably timed. And although the TSNP results were adverse, the trade was $220K cheaper to make yesterday that it is today. Is 30 TSNP worth $220K? Probably not, although the true answer depends on your marginal utility of that $220K over the balance of the season. There are situations that could make it worthwhile.

I spent a good bit of time this morning plotting out my trade plans for the next few weeks. I had pretty much ignored my hoops teams over the break, so the time had come. Over the next 3 weeks, Detroit has the best schedule of all, playing 13 times. They don't play tonight, so it's actually 13 games in 20 days, which is 2 more than any other team over that span. That makes guys like Ben Wallace rather intriguing, even though only 4 of those 13 games are at home. Some of the cheaper Pistons may be even more enticing, such as Corliss Williamson, Chauncey Billups, or even Mehmet Okur. We'll see. And am I picking any of them up? . . . Sorry, I ain't sayin'. No point in tipping my hand.

2/11 - In deference to David Stern, let the elegance begin!

All but 5 NBA teams are back in action tonight. Memphis, Milwaukee, New York, Philly, and Toronto wait until tomorrow. Fifteen teams start the second half with back-to-back games. So we should get off to a fast start, elegant or not.

In the Hoops sortable stats, trailing 7, 15, and 30-day averages will ignore the four days of the All-Star break. For example, tomorrow's 7-day averages will include tonight's results plus February 1-6. Clearly, this is the most sensible way to do it, since there is no useful information gleaned by tracking the 4-day break period.

As a follow-up to yesterday's baseball comments, I updated the team affiliations in the baseball sortable stats yesterday afternoon. I didn't keep track, but I'll bet I had to update at least 100 players. I really haven't paid much attention to off-season player movements, and I must say that I was surprised at some of the shifts. Hopefully, I'll be able to stay reasonably current as additional spring transactions transpire.

2/10 - As promised, I devoted some time over the break to getting baseball stats set up for 2003. So far, I have the MLB schedule generator updated, and I also have the sortable stats set up for the two TSN games. I'm still working on the Assimilator, and hope to have something available soon. But, as Joe Torre notes, "we don't have to figure it all out for a while."

Individual player pages still show last year's team affiliations and game details, and they will remain that way until opening day. Team affiliations in the sortable stats reflect those initially listed at the TSN site. I need to review these to adjust for trades made after the TSN prices were released. If anyone notices an incorrect team affiliation, feel free to send me an email and I'll get it corrected. I'm sure there must be some by now.

The major change in the sortable stats this year is the need to accommodate multiple position eligibility. For hitters, I'm using a position code that reflects all eligible positions for each player. Using standard numerical codes, catcher=2, 1B=3, etc. All outfielders are listed as 7, since there is no distinction by outfield position. Thus, a player coded as 357 is eligible at first, third, or outfield. That player will show up in any list of first basemen, third basemen, or outfielder. In addition, for the TSN Basic game, although the codes are taken from the Ultimate game, first and third basemen are effectively merged (i.e., choosing either 1B or 3B will list both positions), and ditto for 2B and SS. Hopefully, the coding and processing is intuitive.

As always, if you discover anything that appear to be miscoded or working incorrectly, please send me an email (davehall@rotoguru2.com). Hopefully, we'll get the kinks worked out long before opening day.

Thanks to Gurupie Mr. Nice Guy for suggesting today's quote.

2/7 - Break time!

Time to reassess and reload. Rethink and restock. Regroup and retool. Or maybe just relax.

I adjusted my various Hoops programs to ignore the All Star break, so all projections will now start on Feb. 11 by default. Also, as games resume after the break, trailing averages will simply ignore the 4 day layoff, so that Feb. 11 will be immediately preceded by Feb. 6. No sense letting the break foul up the averages with a 4-day gap.

I'm going to try to get some baseball reprogramming done over the break. If all goes well, I'll have a version of the sortable stats for TSN baseball up and running by next week. The multi-position eligibility feature will require some work, but I should be able to focus on it now that other daily activities are back-burnered. Maybe I can even get the baseball Assimilator up and running. We'll see. I haven't even downloaded the new season schedule yet. Lot's to do.

2/6 - For many teams, there's no shortage of things to worry about this morning. For example,. Kenyon Martin left the game after one quarter with a knee sprain. Robert Pack had his second consecutive game with very limited playing time. Tim Duncan left the game briefly in the 4th quarter with a knee problem, although he did return. Matt Harpring took another DNP after returning for 37 minutes in his prior game. Jason Kidd played only 27 minutes and barely topped 31 TSNP. The All Star break affords many NBA players a good chance to recover from lingering aches and pains. And it looks like it will also offer a lot of fantasy managers a prolonged and necessary opportunity to reassess their trading plans for the next few weeks.

After today's freeze, the Assimilator will incorporate Season 2 prices for the TSN Basic game, since Season 1 prices will no longer have any relevance. If you want to make use of the Assimilator's projection capabilities while assembling your Season 2 roster, you'll have the benefit of appropriate prices.

2/5 - Quick - what century is it?

If you looked at last night's NBA studs, you might have to stop and think about it. The top two guards were Pippen and Jordan, who combined for 115 TSNP. They weren't the only players to have big nights, however. My players on my top TSN team outproduced their collective average by 50 TSNP, and a quick survey of the landscape shows a lot of teams with big results.

There are two game days before the break, and only two teams play both days. Expect players from the Spurs and Sonics to benefit at the expense of those on the nine teams who are done until next week. Of those nine "early vacation" teams, Toronto doesn't even come back until next Wednesday. But some of the others - notably Minnesota, Dallas, and Chicago - have very attractive schedules after the break, so it's certainly not a given that those players must be dumped for the next 2 days - unless you're playing the TSN Basic game. It ends after 2 more days, so there isn't much upside for Basic teams to own the likes of Garnett or Nowitzki at this point!

2/4 - Ma-ma-ma-ma-mia!

I just looked at the top TSNP producers over the past week, and the 4 leaders all have last names starting with "Ma". Three of them even start with "Mar". The quartet was led by Karl Malone, followed by Marbury, Martin, and Marion.

And the plot thickens. Yesterday's top producer was Donyell MARshall. And aside from those mentioned already, the only other player to top 50 TSNP was Jamal MAshburn. The next closest to the 50 mark was Troy Murphy, who obviously "suffered" because his name is not "Marphy". Holy alliteration, Batman!

You just won't find MARginal analysis like this at any other sports site on the web! MARvelous! ReMARkable!

2/3 - There are currently eight NBA teams with fewer than 20 wins. There were only six games played yesterday, but six of those eight "Lebron-seeking" teams were represented. Three of them even won, although two emerged from head-to-head matchups. From a fantasy perspective, that doesn't really have ay significance, as far as I know. It just struck me as I was looking at the scores this morning.

There are only four more game days before the All-Star break. At that time, the first TSN Basic season ends. If you're within shouting distance of the top 500, you might want to spring for an extra trade or two to get you into prize territory. On the other hand, there are probably a lot of prize-ineligible teams among the top 500, so it's possible that finishing #600 or lower could still qualify you for a $10 prize. And, in case you're wondering, it is possible to win a prize without spending for extra trades. I expect to do it, and I know there are a number of other Gurupies who will accomplish the feat as well. Bear this in mind when you consider whether to enter a Basic team for the second half.

For the TSN Ultimate game, the rules indicate that there will be no price changes on Friday-Monday. So once you get your Thursday lineup set, you might as well fuggetabout your team for a few days. Of course, that assumes that TSN will administer the game as advertised. But especially after a similar hockey snafu at Christmas-time, I expect TSN to get it right this time.

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