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By Jim McCormick, TalentedMrRoto.com

An analysis of your team and a complete makeover to complement it.

More from Expert Eye April 4: We Found One March 28: Playing Keeps March 21: Building Depth Expert Eye Archives

For these last couple of weeks of the season, we'll be revisiting former "Expert Eye" managers and offering an epilogue to their fantasy seasons. For better or worse, I wanted to find out how these teams faired after going through the process.

Throughout the year, working on this column, the most rewarding part of the process was talking fantasy with fellow hoops junkies. In chats and e-mails, we went back and forth on trade ideas, team needs and free agent finds. I was afforded the rare opportunity to enter a range of unique leagues and formats, from standard 10-team public leagues to intricate 30-team dynasty formats. I was able to laugh at all of the hilarious team names that are out there in the fantasy world, both appropriate and inappropriate alike. Some team names that come to mind, "Practice??" the kid was an Iverson owner; "Business Casual," this dude's whole team was wearing "suits" on the end of the bench at the time; "Derrick's Fisher Kings," a shout out to both the clutch veteran guard and the cult 1991 Robin Williams' flick, "Kwame's Cakethrowers," a fun jab at the mercurial Lakers' big man. I swear there should be site exclusively dedicated to the best fantasy team names, some truly deserve publication.

A Team Revisited

I got back in touch with fantasy hoops veteran Ketan Thakkar, from Chi-town, and his team "DaK Bulls." When I was working with Ketan in early November, we were able to establish his specific statistical needs and how to address to them. The reality is that Ketan's squad was limited from the jump after being subjected to the dreaded auto draft. We all know that one guy who for whatever reason was shut out of the draft. In Ketan's case, his network wasn't letting him enter the draft lobby. I've had tech issues in the draft before, and it's literally an excruciating experience for a fantasy nerd. No matter how you have your rankings set, you simply can't get the value that exists in a live scenario compared to auto-drafting. Let's check out just how things unfolded for Ketan:

From the November 22 article:

About my league - basically, it is 16 teams and the managers range in age from 13 to 40. They are mostly all from the Thakkar family here in Chicago, IL. There are close to 200 Thakkar families in Chicago from the original six Thakkar families in 1971, when I first came to the US from India. We get together and play basketball and so my bright idea to keep everyone communicating was to start this league. Well, it grew and we got to 16 teams.

Now from April 9:

Hi Jim,
This season I was hurt by Melo's 15 game suspension and lacked good forward performance in general. I mostly had too many guards, but that was a positive since I lost some guys to injury like Joe Johnson.

Summary of my transactions this season:

• Picked up Webber in December only to dump him in January, then he got better. • Picked up Al Jefferson and Brandon Roy in December and both were a big help. • I'm still holding Diaw, but he's been worthless. • I picked up Bargnani in January - he helped for a month • I finally picked up Nene and Zaza and dropped Kaman in late January. • Picked up LaMarcus Aldridge in March, but he gave me almost nothing.

Many other pickups like Delonte, A.Parker, Millsap, Walton, Mutombo, Jameer... that didn't bear fruit. It was a disappointing season - as the league had a live draft but my network connection didn't let me participate, so I got auto-picked. I was working from a hole.

Missing Kobe initially, then Melo, my games played were always behind. It was just in the last week, that I moved into 2nd place, and got a sniff of 1st (3 pts behind). I congratulated the 1st place team last week, since I could see that I wasn't getting any closer. Six weeks ago, we (the eventual champ and I) were in 4th and 5th, and the top 3 were just 100 games ahead of us in the count, so as they couldn't add more points, we started passing them up. Second place is nothing to be ashamed of in an Experts Only league. But my goals are higher. I'm in three Yahoo leagues and one other NBA.com league, and have 1st place in all, thus the disappointment. By the way, I could see three months ago that the 4th place team at the time would be the champ. I tried countless trades, but there were few trades that were transacted.

In the other NBA league, I made the following trade, which boosted an already strong team into easy #1 (Grand Theft Roto material, not obvious, but huge); I traded Dirk, Zach R, David West, Brandon Roy for Steve Nash, Lamar Odom, Josh Smith, Chris Wilcox. Wilcox provided zilch and I had enough scoring, but it gave me a big boost in blocks, assists and field goal percentage.

Regards,
Ketan

Ketan is essentially a fantasy perfectionist. He just isn't satisfied with second place, and I admire his competitiveness and confidence. Either way, he had a very solid season. His league trade market was cold all season, as only a handful of deals were executed, but he was still able to improve his roster through his attentive waiver work. In evaluating Ketan's progression during the season, you realize that fantasy teams are a motel of sorts, with an endless number of random players coming and going. Sure, we have our core players we try to hold onto all season, but there's also a certain liquidity to your team as you trade, add or drop players throughout the season. Its funny how in October, we all think our season comes down to how and who we draft, when most of us end up with completely different rosters come April.

Second place out of 16 teams in an experienced league is an accomplishment in my eyes. It may be true that second place is the first loser, but it still does count towards your fantasy reputation. It's also true that you can learn from your management mistakes, making you a better player the next season.

In the league that he was able to pull off the Nash deal, he proved the effectiveness of addressing team balance. He placed a specific value on the stats he lacked and was willing to pay a price for them. He actively pursued the blocks and dimes and parted with an elite player in Dirk since he believed it would diversify his production. I have to give props to Ketan for battling through his auto-drafted team and proving to be a fantasy expert in his own right.

Jim McCormick is a fantasy expert for TalentedMrRoto.com, which features free advice, news, stats and analysis for all fantasy sports. It was nominated for four FSTA awards, including best site. Contact him at jmccormick@TalentedMrRoto.com.

The views expressed by TalentedMrRoto.com represent only the views of the writers; they do not represent the views of the NBA or any NBA team.

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