Posted 5:29 AM by Andy
The start of the NBA season is always exciting. There are various questions that will be answered in the drama of the League. How will the revamped Lakers fare with Kobe as top dog? Will Grant Hill survive through an entire season after multiple surgeries? Can the Rockets blast off with Tmac and Yao forming a new tandem? I'm busy assessing my fantasy team too. It's a twelve-team league with my SMIC coworkers, most of whom are hardcore bball aficionados. We set it up to be head-to- head which provides more uncertainty and a lot of room for strategy to be employed.

I drafted second and took Duncan after KG was taken first overall. The rest of my lineup is as follows:

C Duncan, PF Antoine Walker, SF Lamar Odom, SG Mike Finley, PG Mike Bibby, G Brent Barry, G Jeff McInnis, F Hedo Turkoglu, F Dwight Howard, G/F Desmond Mason.

I really like the balance of this team. Through two campaigns, I am 10-8 (we compete in 9 statistical categories each week.) Both times I came from behind to edge my opponent. This week Jeff McInnis is substituting for Finley who is on the injured list. So far I haven¡¯t made any trades although I did propose trading Odom for Nash. I rescinded the trade offer after a few days and a couple good games from the 6'10" forward.
Being good at fantasy bball requires a skill that is used in another hobby of mine, investing. Everyone has the same resources in terms of stats and rankings, but you have to assemble the best team based on a constantly shifting landscape. Then you have to micromanage to ensure that each week you place the best team on the floor against that particular opponent. The winners are the ones that pick the players with the best situations for them to excel and not necessarily the true franchise players in real life. The losers pick players based on reputation and don't take into account actual game situations. For example, Baron Davis is a beast because nobody else on the Hornets can handle the ball and create. I love Tmac as a player but in the fantasy universe, he is overrated. This skill of projecting future results based on an evaluation of past performance amidst the flux of the present is called valuation. If you are good at this in the markets, you can make a killing. Too bad I have too little capital to deploy. Some trends I am monitoring are housing in Shanghai, the appreciation of the yuan/devaluation of the dollar, and growth of online gaming (check SNDA, the largest gaming operator in China.) I think Google and Ebay are great businesses but are overvalued. With the lockup expiration, Google shares will dip for sure with more float. Yeah I know it's easy to be an armchair quarterback, but I have to be prudent in managing my own assets if I want to own real estate here. Next step is to sell my car and redeploy that balance once I am certain I will be in Shanghai for the long term.

My all-time lineup of ballers who are my friends would be as follows. Keep in my mind this is a roster based on two attributes, my friendship to the individual and his basketball ability. This means even though I played with other great players, if we are not really friends, then they don't make my roster. Of course I'll run the point in my starting lineup because I know when to get my guys touches.

Starting Five:
C Dave N W, 6'3", Columbia Law, attorney
PF John H, 6"0", Notre Dame Law, student
SF Leon K, 5'11", SF State MBA, bank auditor
SG Rob Y, 5'6", Stanford MSEE, customer engineer
PG Andy P, 5'7", Syracuse MA IR dropout, biz developer

Bench
C Tim K, 6'2", U. of Miami Ohio, teacher
PF Allen C, 6'3", JC, freight forwarder
SF Anthony L, 5'11", Stanford Econ, consultant
SG Dave C W, 5'8", Cal CS/Social Welfare, software developer
PG Gideon L, 5'7", Stanford, marketing analyst

Will I ever play with all these guys at the same time? Not likely since they dot the map in every time zone in the US and across the oceans. But it's fun to imagine.