With the NBA finals about to begin, I thought it was about time I got this post done and dusted (almost a couple of months late), especially as it will give us a thread to chat about the finals. The comments should stay open until game 6, so if it goes to 7 Ill have to get a new thread going for that game...

For those of you that don’t know, during the footy off-season, we had a Too Serious fantasy NBA league on the ESPN site. We had 20 teams in it – all TS members – and there were only 2 that didn’t really join in the fun. Out of the remaining 18 teams, we were all pretty keen and competitive for the most part – about 3 or 4 coaches went MIA at various times throughout the season – but all in all, it was fantastic how everyone contributed throughout the season. Way back in August, we began organising the league, setting up scoring, rules etc, and we had our draft on September 30th where all but one of the 20 teams were represented live! FWIW Danny10 won first pick and chose LeBron James. We all got to play each other once during our regular season, and then had playoffs involving the top 8 teams. A very very belated congratulations needs to go to Dabombers and his team – Wade Machine – for his grand final win, and it needs to be noted that he only just snuck into the top 8 after a sudden death round 19 win over Chriss88 and Smitty (Co-owners of ‘Do Something Knicks’). DaBombers (or Dan as we knew him... but Ill use his regular user name throughout this writeup) went with the bold strategy of acquiring - either from FA’s or trades – injured players that others didn’t want, hoping that they would be right by the time the playoffs rolled around, and his plan paid dividends, as he stormed through the playoffs winning all 3 games by at least 133, and finishing the season on a 5 game winning streak! Well done mate. Congratulations!

So, in the real stuff, we’re down to Miami and Dallas fighting it out for the championship over the next week or so. Both teams have shown how strong they are in the conference finals, with amazing symmetry too. Both teams were up against relatively young and inexperienced sides in the Bulls and OKC; both won in 5 games; and both staged excellent comebacks and superior clutch play during their respective series’. Both teams have genuine stars in their lineups, and it should be an amazing finals series!

Over the break, I will preview the NBA finals; as well as review of our fantasy season – particularly the grand final::::::::::

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Miami Heat v Dallas Mavericks

These two teams faced up against each other back in the 2006 finals, and it was Miami that won – after Dallas had won the first 2 games, and were 13 points up with 5 min to play in game 3. Both teams are obviously different nowadays; Miami in particular only have 2 remaining members of the ’06 championship team – Wade and Haslem. This is the first finals appearance since that series for both teams, and interestingly: The Heat have not beaten the Mavs since that ’06 series! Not once, from 10 games!

Now onto this series... It’s pretty much all about the big 3 of Miami and Dirk from Dallas... or is it? If it was, you would have to say Miami would win easily; however that would be a huge oversight. Dirk’s support cast are far superior to those of the Miami big 3! And I should point out that I’m including Jason Kidd in that support cast! Despite his age, he has been performing at his usual elite standards throughout this season and playoffs, and will be hard for Miami to stop. They handled Derrick Rose alright, but that is a different story, as Kidd won’t be their main worry as Rose was.

Dirk Nowitzki is the form player of these playoffs, with game after game of huge performances leading into this series, and there are many other players at the Mavs that can step up on a given night and provide big plays and good numbers – Kidd, Terry, Marion, Stojakovic, Barea, Chandler etc – whereas for Miami, an argument could also be made that LeBron is bringing the best form into this series as well, with some huge clutch performances in the lead in. The big 3 – Wade, Bosh and LeBron – have shouldered a huge load, but it seems they are comfortable with that as they keep winning. A good example of their dominance was in the final game of the Eastern Conference finals where (approximately) the last 35 to 40 Miami points were scored by these 3 players alone, and they fought back from a 13 point deficit with about 3 min to go, to win by 3. What I’m getting at, is that despite the obvious reliance on the big 3, it shouldn’t matter much – they are comfortable with it, and dominant at the same time.

Defensively, Dallas need to limit the amount of Miami fast breaks, as Wade and LeBron are almost unstoppable in these situations. If they can get Miami into a half court pace game, that will go a long way to stopping the might of the big 3, and will suit their offence at the same time with Kidd able to dissect a half court offence like a surgeon, and Dirk being Dirk – excellent in the post and outside!

As throughout our fantasy season, this game can’t go without a tip... but it’s actually really hard for me to tip this series. After watching the Heat overcome the Bulls, I am so very tempted to tip them, but I don’t think they will be able to get the job done against Dallas. I’m tipping Dallas to win in 6 or 7 games.

Too Serious fantasy NBA season review

It all started with the draft on September 30th. Well I suppose it actually started with some trades prior to that - The biggest being between myself and Walesy, where I gave up my round 1 pick (19th OA), along with picks 139 and 222, for his round 2 and 3 picks (35th and 46th OA) and pick 246. I was able to snare this year’s actual MVP – Derrick Rose – with pick 35! Anyway, this is how the first 2 rounds went down:

1         Danny10 – L James

2         Chriss88 &amp; Smitty – K Durant

3         Cameron – C Paul

4         Steve – P Gasol

5         DaBombers – D Wade

6         Walesy – D Nowitzki

7         Jasmine – D Williams

8         Owen – R Rondo

9         Karlos – D Howard

10     Heaver – K Bryant

11     Elbonz – D Granger

12     Ruddy – S Nash

13     Fzilla – S Curry

14     Micka – C Anthony

15     Fez – A Stoudamire

16     Fudge – D Lee

17     Doobs – C Bosh

18     UnderAchievers – J Kidd

19     Walesy – C Billups

20     Stowie – B Roy

21     Stowie – J Smith

22     Anthak – Z Randolph

23     UnderAchievers – B Lopez

24     Doobs – R Felton

25     Fudge – A Iquodala

26     Fez – J Johnson

27     Micka – T Duncan

28     Fzilla – D West

29     Ruddy – C Boozer

30     Elbonz – G Wallace

31     Heaver – A Horford

32     Karlos – T Evans

33     Owen – A Jefferson

34     Jasmine – M Ellis

35     Anthak – Derrick Rose

36     DaBombers – R Westbrook

37     Steve – P Pierce

38     Cameron – T Murphy

39     Chriss88 &amp; Smitty – M Gasol

40     Danny10 – J Noah

And to put that into perspective, here are the top 20 performers (based on our points system) for the season:

1         James, 58.2 fppg

2         Paul, 55.5

3         D Williams, 52.5

4         Westbrook, 52.4

5         Love, 52.2

6         Rose, 52.1

7         Howard, 50.5

8         P Gasol, 50.3

9         Nash, 50.2

10     Rondo, 49.9

11     Wade, 48.9

12     Durant, 47.3

13     Griffin, 47.1

14     Stoudamire, 46.7

15     Aldridge, 45.5

16     Z Randolph, 45.4

17     Ellis, 43.9

18     Felton, 43.4

19     Jefferson, 43.2

20     Horford, 43.0

Final Ladder

After a long regular season where all 20 teams played each other once, the final ladder looked like this:

1         Owen – Run TMC, 17-2, winner of the ‘Too’ Conference

2         Heaver – Team HEAVER!, 14-5, winner of the ‘Serious’ Conference

3         Karlos – Kings of Karlos, 15-4

4         Micka – Westside hardcore, 14-5

5         Jasmine – Jasmine’s Mob, 14-5

6         Fudge – Fudge’s Sixers, 12-7

7         Anthak – Team anthak, 12-7

8         DaBombers – Wade Machine, 11-8

9         Chris88 &amp; Smitty – Do Something Knicks, 11-8

10     Walesy – Too Seriouseses, 10-9

11     Cameron – Adelaide Maggots, 9-10

12     Ruddy – Ruddy’s Cavaliers, 9-10

13     Danny10 – Dannys Lebronts, 9-10

14     Steve – Stevo’s Nuggets, 8-11

15     Stowie – Team Stowie, 7-12

16     UnderAchievers – Under Achievers, 6-13

17     Doobs – Doobia Dominators, 6-13

18     Fez – Team Fezkat, 5-14

19     Fzilla – Pikus United, 0-18-1

20     Elbonz – Team El Bonanzas, 0-18-1

Owen easily had the most dominant team right throughout the season, only dropping the 2 regular season games. Jasmine and Danny10 were right up there with him until about mid season when they started dropping some games. Jasmine recovered and went well, until she left the internet world for about a month and lost the last few games of the regular season; whereas Danny10 – after winning 7 of the first 8 games – went MIA for a large chunk of the season, just making it back in time to win 1 of the last two games. Karlos had lost 2 of the first 5 games, but then went on a huge winning streak – which secured the Dirk Diggler trophy – of 10 games straight, leaving him with the 2nd best record in the league. Micka and Heaver both had relatively patchy seasons, but in the most part were extremely strong – Heaver particularly so, as evidenced by his 2nd placing (behind just Owen) on the ‘points for’ ladder! The top 5 teams seemed in a league of their own for most of the season!

Fudge finished with the 6th best record, but had to fight hard for it after dropping his first 5 games! He stormed home winning 12 of the last 14 games, including the last 8 – his finals spot was still not mathematically secured in the final round. My team – Team anthak – apart from after my round 1 loss to Walesy, was sitting in the top 8 all season; however after some shaky form near the death, I was worried that I might not make the playoffs – after a 7 game winning streak mid-season, I then lost 5 of the last 8 games and only just scraped in.

The last playoff spot was closely fought out between Do Something Knicks (Chriss88 and Smitty) and Wade Machine (DaBombers). They finished on the same record, so it came down to WM’s superior ‘points for’ that clinched 8th place. But it really came down to the last round of the regular season as these two teams faced each other in a ‘do or die’ match where the winner went on, and the loser was out. WM actually finished the regular season with the 4th best ‘points for’, whereas DSK were 9th on the same list, so looking at that alone, he would have been unlucky to miss out, but it did come down to the final round, where DaBomers prevailed with a commanding 350 point win (1394-1042)! Chris88 and Smitty had actually done really well to still be in the running, after they started the season with only 2 wins from the first 8 games! They then went on to win 9 of the 10 games leading up to that mini-final against DaBombers.

Walesy finished in a clear 10th spot, but if it wasn’t for the footy season approaching and the new version of this site being sorted, he could have given the finals a shake, as his interest clearly waned at the business end of the season. Cameron and Ruddy both sat around mid table for most of the season with ups and downs along the way. Cameron never strung more than 2 wins in a row throughout the season; and Ruddy only won 3 on the trot once. Ruddy was particularly unlucky with injuries throughout the season, especially the news of his #2 draft pick – Carlos Boozer – going down prior to the first game.

Steve and Stowie both had up and down seasons, having mini streaks along the journey. Steve, despite losing the last 3 games, had won 6 out of 7, after losing 7 of the first 9. Stowie started and finished well, winning 3 of the first 4 games, and 2 of the last 3, but only had 2 wins in between those points.

Under Achievers lived up to his name, and Fez could be grouped alongside him as well. UA’s had a stretch of 5 wins from 6 games between (and including) round 9 and 14, however only won 1 other game in the regular season. Fez, despite just winning the 5 games, was extremely unlucky. Well I suppose it wasn’t luck, but he had soooo many close losses! Especially to close out the season: He lost 10 of the final 11 games, but in that stretch there was only one blow-out (a 456 point loss to my team ), 3 of the losses were decided by less than 40 points, and another 2 were decided by less than 100. The other 4 losses in that run were all by less than 205 points, and importantly were in high scoring matches where Fez scored over 1000 points in all of them, and all 4 were against top 8 sides! Very tough run!

Doobs’ was an interesting case: After attending the draft and selecting a kick-arse side, he didn’t show up for the first month (or so) of the season. Even still, his side was competitive, despite using the same 10 players week in week out (not the full 13), he still managed to win a couple of early games. When he did show up and work out how to change his team around, he won the next couple of games, but then his form slid dramatically and he only won 2 of the remaining 12 games. Fzilla and Elbonz were no shows for pretty much the whole season. Fzilla attended the draft, and set up his lineup for the first matchup, but that was it. We ended up having a mid season draft of all the players from these two teams, which spiced up the end of the season – Fudge and DaBombers particularly fared well out of the draft getting Stephen Curry and (a hot) Tony Allen respectively.

The Playoffs

As you may have realised in the ladder up above, the team that won each conference clinched one of the top 2 seeds – In our case they were Owen’s Run TMC and Heaver’s Team HEAVER!. Unfortunately, the top two seeds didn’t fare so well though, both being knocked out in the first round by DaBomers’ Wade Machine and my Team anthak respectively. Owen scored the 3rd highest score of the round but it wasn’t enough to match Dabombers on the day (week). In another upset, Fudge knocked off Karlos, who had the 2nd best regular season record. The only team left in week 2 out of our top 5 – which had been so dominant all season – was Micka who beat Jasmine in week 1 in the lowest scoring final.

The semi’s saw DaBombers beat Micka in a fairly close one – 1313-1155 – top scorers for each team were Wade (216 points) and Anthony (191) respectively; and my team easily account for Fudge’s – 1455-1088 – top scorers being Rose (255) and Aldridge (158) respectively, which saw the two bottom seeds make the granny!

Too Serious fantasy NBA grand final

The granny was played over 9 days with both team’s players’ playing about 60 games each. Wade Machine (WM) got off to the better start, including a massive Day 2 where, led by a 66 from Baron Davis, they scored the highest individual day score for the granny with 308 points, and led 531 to 285, almost doubling Team anthak (TA) after 2 days, TA missing points on Day 1 from the game time decision of JSmoove to sit out the Atlanta game, with 3 fit and scoring players sitting on the pine. WM did not have anyone suit up on Day 3, which allowed TA to catch up slightly – on the back of a 70 point Derrick Rose game they narrowed the margin by 99. However, WM then just exherted their dominance with two more big days, outscoring TA 428 – 291 over that period to stretch their lead to 284 points with 4 days remaining. The next 3 days saw tight tussles with margins of only 15, 26 and 4 points between the two teams, effectively ending any hopes of TA’s as the margin was 277 points with just the one day to go... In junk time, TA was able to post their second best score of the week and catch up 91 points, but over the 9 days they were no match for WM who stepped up and put in huge performance after huge performance right throughout the week... Well played Dan! TA used all 5 acquisitions for the week, trying to find a winning combination, while WM only had to use the 4. WM used 17 players throughout the matchup compared to TA’s 18 (although Josh Smith did not play a game for him before being dropped [and picked up by WM later in the week]), and WM held a slight advantage in games played with 61, compared to TA’s 60. WM was led by Nowitzki with 235 points from 5 games, and he was supported well by Barea (151 from 5), Wade (150 from 3!) and Davis (149 from 5); while TA’s best was Rose with 245 from 6 games, closely followed by Durant with 242 from 6, and they were well supported by Harden (141 from 6) and Z Randolph (130 from 3).

Here is a basic box score for the granny (in order of each players ave score during the matchup):

Wade Machine

Name, Games played, Total score, Average score

Dwayne wade, 3, 150, 50.0

Dirk Nowitzki, 5, 235, 47.0

Luis Scola, 2, 81, 40.5

Mike Conley, 4, 138, 34.5

Jerryd Bayless, 3, 93, 31.0

Jose Juan Barea, 5, 151, 30.2

Baron Davis, 5, 149, 29.8

George Hill, 5, 127, 25.4

Al Horford, 5, 126, 25.2

DeAndre Jordan, 4, 93, 23.3

Tony Allen, 3, 60, 20.0

Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, 5, 82, 16.4

Josh Smith, 2, 32, 16.0

Carlos Delfino, 5, 53, 10.6

Fransisco Garcia, 3, 27, 9.0

Christian Eyenga, 1, 8, 8.0

Charlie Villanueva, 1, -7, -7.0

TOTAL, 61, 1598, 26.1967

Team anthak

Name, Games played, Total score, Average score

Zach Randolph, 3, 130, 43.3

Derrick Rose, 6, 245, 40.8

Kevin Durant, 6, 242, 40.3

Chase Budinger, 2, 80, 40.0

Tim Duncan, 1, 39, 39.0

Anthony Tolliver, 4, 113, 28.3

James Harden, 6, 141, 23.5

Eric Maynor, 2, 40, 20.0

Earl Watson, 5, 93, 18.6

JaVale McGee, 6, 108, 18.0

Ersan Ilyasova, 1, 17, 17.0

Gordan Hayward, 3, 42, 14.0

Spencer Hawes, 5, 65, 13.0

Delonte West, 5, 46, 9.2

Eric Bledsoe, 2, 10, 5.0

Patrick Mills, 1, 3, 3.0

Reggie Williams, 2, -2, -1.0

Josh Smith, 0, 0, na

TOTAL, 60, 1412, 23.5333

TROPHIES

Owen was a clear leader, winning 7 trophies and gaining 19 stars. Micka and Heaver both won 4 trophies each and had 8 stars each, and I matched them with 8 stars as well. Winners of our main trophies were as follows:

Champion – Wade Machine - DaBombers

Minor Premier – Run TMC - Owen

Conference Champion, Too division – Run TMC – Owen

Conference Champion, Serious division – Team HEAVER! - Heaver

Most total points for season – Run TMC – Owen

Fewest total ‘points against’ for season – Westside Hardcore – Micka

Most total ‘points against’ for season – Fudge’s Sixers – Fudge

Dirk Diggler award, longest ... Winning streak – Kings of Karlos – Karlos

Conclusion

So that’s about it I think... If anyone wants to know anything in particular that’s not outlined above, just ask in the comments below, and someone will surely be able to answer it for you. This was my third time playing fantasy basketball, but my first playing Too Seriously, and it was a heap of fun. I loved the trade discussions most of all, as almost all of us took it seriously enough to actually have in depth discussions about trade proposals. Great fun! Thanks to everyone for contributing throughout the season! And a special shout-out goes to Steve for doing the write-ups several times when I couldn’t, Thanks mate. We all made it such a great league to be a part of. Hopefully next season there is actually an NBA season, and hopefully we can get a league of some sort going again!

And, once again, the comments below will stay open for almost the whole time the NBA finals are on (well get into trouble if it goes to 7), so we can all use this space to chat about the games and stuff. I don’t really care who wins, but should be a good series to watch.