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Drive to the FinalsFirst, my apologies to all of my buddies who have written in, complaining that I let the cat out of the bag about the Weekly PSP advantage. In case you missed it, you have a significant edge for the weekly Sony PSP prize by signing up now since you have a full player pool to choose from as opposed to the limited one that everyone who has been playing from day one has at their disposal. I'm sorry, but not really.
John Schuhmann is right. Sometimes you've just gotta use your gut. Roll the dice a little. And if we've learned anything, we should do what John Schuhmann says we should do.
Of course, I'm stubborn. Instead of going with Manu Ginobili and his 42 PRA today, I decided to use my own brain again and picked Tony Parker and his 15. Amazing. Simply amazing. The negative effect I have on players is well documented.
Mavs-Spurs and Cavs-Pistons are going seven games. The results of these games are crucial to the experts. If the Mavs and Pistons win, we have all Pistons and all Mavs but Josh Howard available to us in the next round. In fact, if the Pistons win on Sunday and I decide to go with Zydrunas Ilgauskas on that day (still weighing my options), we will have every player available to us in the Eastern Conference Finals. That's right, we've yet to use a Heat or Pistons player.
That said, if the Cavs and Spurs both advance, we're... well, we're hurtin'. We've yet to use Zydrunas Ilgauskas (yup, still deciding) and Donyell Marshall, but otherwise any other pick of the Cavs is a guaranteed sub-15 PRA performance. Therefore, we'd be forced to dip into Heat players early. Nice having that cushion of a full Heat roster at our disposal though.
Let's take a look at the players we could potentially have available to us for the final two rounds of the playoffs. Keep in mind that at the most, we will need to use 21 players for three seven-game series; minimum of 12 for three sweeps.
First, the players who are definitely in:
Dwyane Wade - Heat (38.1)
Shaquille O'Neal - Heat (30.3)
Antoine Walker - Heat (22.4)
Udonis Haslem - Heat (19.4)
Jason Williams - Heat (15.8)
James Posey - Heat (15.6)
Anything beyond Posey is a major reach. However, we know things could get ugly in the Finals, so if Posey is the worst we have to pick we've done well.
Now, let's take a look at the pool of players from the remaining teams:
Spurs or Mavs (used Duncan, Parker, Ginobili, Josh Howard)
Michael Finley - Spurs (14.7)
Brent Barry - Spurs (13.0)
Bruce Bowen - Spurs (10.0)
Dirk Nowitzki - Mavs (40.4)
Jason Terry - Mavs (25.3)
Jerry Stackhouse - Mavs (19.2)
Devin Harris - Mavs (14.9)
Erick Dampier - Mavs (11.9)
Suns or Clippers (used Marion, Nash, Diaw, Brand, Kaman, Cassell)
Tim Thomas - Suns (23.3)
Raja Bell - Suns (21.3)
Leandro Barbosa - Suns (18.2)
Corey Maggette - Clippers (23.6)
Cuttino Mobley - Clippers (20.4)
Shaun Livingston - Clippers (16.7)
Vladimir Radmanovic - Clippers (14.2)
Quinton Ross - Clippers (11.2)
Cavs or Pistons (used Drew Gooden, LeBron James, Larry Hughes, and possibly Zydrunas Ilgauskas)
Donyell Marshall - Cavs (16.9)
Eric Snow - Cavs (13.1)
Flip Murray - Cavs (14.1)
Anderson Varejao - Cavs (11.9)
Chauncey Billups - Pistons(28.8)
Richard Hamilton - Pistons (26.5)
Rasheed Wallace - Pistons (23.9)
Tayshaun Prince - Pistons (24.6)
Antonio McDyess - Pistons (16.7)
Ben Wallace - Pistons (16.8)
Ok, let's break this down. Ideally, we want to use players who average a 15.0 or higher, but will resort to lower if forced to do so. Best case scenario for the Experts, we'll have the Pistons, Heat, Mavs, and Clippers advance. We have three Suns and three Clippers with over 15.0 PRA's, but we're deeper in Clippers in the event we need to go further into the bench. We have 18 players who average a 15.0 or higher from those teams. That would carry us through three six-game series, which seems safe.
Worst case scenario, the final four teams would be the Heat (automatic), Cavs, Suns, and Spurs. In that case, we would have 10 players with a 15.0 or higher. The bigger problem here is that we would have only three players in the West over this threshhold.
