Fantasy Basketball Playoffs !

Do any of you play fantasy basketball on YAHOO! or ESPN? Well what fantasy basketball is pretty much you draft your own NBA team compiled of many NBA players and total the statistics. Statistics includes many categories, such as points, field goal percentage, field goals made, field goals attempts, free throw percentage, rebounds, blocks, steals, assists, turnovers, etc. 

So every week for about 22 weeks or so, you manage your own team by adding and dropping players to accumulate the most stats to match up against your weekly opponents. Most leagues draft their teams before the season starts, and fantasy playoff times is always before the actual NBA playoffs. 

This year in YAHOO! Fantasy Basketball, I am in two different leagues. So I have two teams to manage. Around this time of year is the typically Fantasy Basketball Playoff week! Both my teams managed to make the playoffs. Each league typically has about 12 teams and normally top 6 goes into the playoff bracket.

Here’s a picture of how the match up looks like with the stat categories. My team is ‘Kobe Land is Great !’

click to enlarge the picture.

As you can see, it is pretty much an average of your entire team and the compilation of each player’s night to night statistics for the week. 

Here’s a picture of what the roster look like. 

click to enlarge the picture.

It has each player and their individual stats for the week and it is easy to compare to your opponents side by side.

This year I’m not that satisfy with my team because it isn’t as good as I want it to be. I used the wrong draft strategy by drafting 3 rookies and ending up dropping 2 of them. This is my 4^th year playing fantasy basketball, and for the past 3 years, my draft pick was pretty high. This year I got booted all the way to the end. Therefore I wasn’t able to draft my favorite player Kobe Bryant. There’s no correlation here, but maybe mentally I believe that if I have Kobe on my team, I have a higher chance of winning and overall I would just like my team more since my favorite player is on it.  

Another factor that effects fantasy teams a lot is injuries. The likelihood of athletes getting injured is very high. So in fantasy, when a player gets injured, we either drop them or pick up a free agent or we wait for them to get back in the lineup which can take from week to months. For example, about two weeks ago, Rudy Gay injured his shoulder, a week later the doctors concluded he will have to undergo a season ending injury. Therefore there is no point in keeping him on the roster cause he won’t be playing for the rest of the year.

For week 1 in playoffs, my team hit a major bad luck streak. Four of my starters got injured L Players like Rudy Gay, Luis Scola, Aaron Affalo, and Deron Williams. I was pretty sad because I don’t know how I will make it past round 1, but luckily the free agents I picked up performed on par, therefore I’m not onto round 2. However, these backups don’t look like they will consistently perform well, so I probably will not make it to the champions.

Also in YAHOO! Fantasy sports on our own player profile; we get a Trophy displayed next to our name if we finish top 3. Sadly, I only have 2 trophies; both are second places from 2007 and 2009. This year I might be able to fight for the bronze, but we will see what happens. But I will definitely come up with new strategy next year and try to win it all. One of these days, I will finish on the top spot …

Bollywood Night !

On March 16, 2010, the Golden State Warriors held NBAs first ever Bollywood Night! The Warriors are the first sports team ever to hold a culture event like this. I was lucky to join in on the festivities since I attended that game as well. This game was also broadcasted on national television on ESPN as well as broadcasted live in India! Meaning all the fans in India was able to witness this great event and game happening as well! Too bad Warriors lost though …

The game was at Oracle Arena vs. Dallas Mavericks. Everyone that attended the game got free t-shirts too. On the front of the shirt, it says 'Got Curry?' and on the back is a big logo saying 'Bollywood Night'. 

During the game, in between time outs and halftime, there were many cultural performances. The Warriors Girls even dressed up and performed cultural dances. And during post game, they had American Idol finalist Anoop Desai to perform two songs lives as well. Fans were able to sit in the lower level and watch the post game show if they wanted to stay. Not only did they have American Idol star to sing, the Warriors also had a Q&A session with Stephen Curry post game along side with Warriors Vice Chairman Vivek Ranadivé, the first Indian-born member of an NBA ownership group.

Here is a link to the Highlights from the night :  NBA Videos

I think Warriors did really well by having a first ever Bollywood Night. Throughout the season there are always many Heritage nights and events, but no one has came up with this idea yet. And there are a lot of Indians that love sports as well. Even the LA Lakers hasn't had an event like this before. And as an attendee, I must say this event was very successful. Normally during post game, everyone leaves already and no one wants to stay behind due to it being late, and not wanting to be stuck in traffic. Surprisingly, lower box sections 116-119 was actually filled completely. A friend of mine that works for the Warriors said that normally for post game events, they only open up one section, but for this event they opened up 4 and surprisingly fans stayed behind for the Q&A as well as the music performance.

Maybe the San Francisco Giants should have a Bollywood Night as well, since they are big on having Heritage Nights as well. The Giants last year had it first Thai Night. It would only be fair to have a Heritage Night for all heritages in every sport.

Sprite Commercial !

Have you seen the new Sprite Commercial for Asia yet? Well last week was when the commercial was filmed in LA. Really cool collaboration going on; we have Jay Chou and Kobe Bryant working together. Let’s take a look at the commercial:

So for those who do not know who Jay Chou is, he is a very popular singer, music composer, and actor from Taiwan. But for those who have watched movie "The Green Hornet” will probably remember him as Kato. He was the personal mechanic and martial arts expert in the movie.

I think this is a very cool collaboration because it brings different cultures together. I've always listened to Jay Chou's music and watch his films, but I didn’t know he was into basketball though. I never really read or heard anything about him even being interested in basketball. The two didn’t just collaborate for a commercial; Kobe is also featured in Jay Chou’s new single. In the making of the music video, it is quite hilarious to see the mini petite Jay Chou compared to the huge Kobe Bryant. Jay Chou kept getting swatted left and right every time he tries to put a shot. However, the skateboarding to dunk scene was a little silly though. This is the parts of the new single and all the scenes from shooting the commercial:

As for Kobe, he is very popular is Asia. He has a lot of fans there. Kobe was in Asia during the Olympics in 2008 at Beijing. He spent his 30^th birthday there. And many fans were there to cheer for him during exhibition games and such. Here’s Kobe cutting his cake that year =)

In 2009 during the NBA off season, he toured all over Asia. He held basketball camps and was just playing basketball with the locals at local playgrounds. He was also giving away free Kobe shoes to a lot of people. He even went to the Hong Kong Disneyland during his stay. 

Although it is cool to see a special commercial like this, there is still something weird about it. Sprite used to have a contract with Kobe back in the days. It wasn’t until about 2003 where Kobe was stuck with a court case regarding sexual assault in Colorado. Shortly after that happened, Sprite decided to use a different athlete to promote their product. They went with LeBron James at the time, shortly after he came into the league. Now after years since the court case, Kobe’s public image is restored already. So the Coca Cola company probably finally got over the old news and decided to use Kobe to promote their product Sprite again and this time along with Jay Chou, since this is pretty much being broadcast all over Asia. And the company knows that Asia loves their local artist Jay Chou and the fans in Asia love to watch Kobe. Therefore, piecing them together would be a great way to advertise and market. See what winning more championships can do, it brings up the popularity of an athlete even more, and a good way for companies to use them as a marketing tool.