The Mid-Season Write Up
A Joshua Paul and Lospe Co-Production
Here it is, the long awaited mid-season write up. Scrutinized by the editorial board, rigorously fact and alternative-fact checked, it is a polished document, a sensory rich experience. Paraphrasing the wisdom of the peerless Virginia Wolfe, we give you much more than facts to add to the collection. We give you the creative fact; the fertile fact; the fact that suggests and engenders. That and a couple of thick purple-veined dick jokes. It was a Pelos pre-req. My apologies.
Power Ranking Tier 1 – The Cesspit of Dreams / in the Gutter staring at the vomit beside them
16. Malik’s Majestic Team:
“By the way my name’s Malik
the 5-foot freak
let’s say we get together by the end of the week”
Don’t we all wish we could hang with Malik at the end of the week, so we could politely ask him to unbench his fucking players? The optimist might say he is the villain holding Tyrese Maxey and Cade Cunningham hostage. I would be very careful about proclaiming Malik’s Majestic Team a villain. What started as a cute story, aka “hahah Malik picked Bronny James, he’s got a genius sense of humour, even sacrificed a roster spot to play a joke on us”, quickly turned sour when all came to realize Malik is a bot created by a technologically superior bot contending for the league. AI’s infiltration of Hoop Dreams is not exactly a surprise, but poor AIs which forget their yahoo passwords serve to remind us how far from our current reality Mission Impossible’s plot is.
Fun fact: Malik actually owns Malik Monk. No sorry, that’s not fun. Malik set his lineups for the first three weeks of the season. Never mind, that’s plainly something casuals do. Malik decided to set his lineup again after a two-month hiatus in week 13, in a matchup against…..our tailender. Who knew Malik’s primary and lone motivation all along constituted Ennio snatching last place.
Blasphemous rumor: Malik was struck in the head by an errant puck at a Montreal Canadiens game. He died instantly. Ironically he didn’t even want to attend but his boss invoked the team building clause. RIP to our Arabic King.
Team Grade: D-
Wire Comp:
“Where the hell is Wallace?” I mean, it’s not even close. Wallace dies in the 12th episode of the series. Malik comes back alive in Week 13 of Hoop Dreams.
15. Nick’s Team:
Nick’s been turning a lot of Mondays into Fridays. Woke up miserably for another week of slavery? It’s alright! You are playing Nick’s Team this week! You know how Yahoo gives you a default team nombre with your first name plus a lame adjective and the generic word ‘Team’ in the end? First of all, shame on the trio of folks in Hoop Dreams who benefit from this abomination. I guess having a personality is overrated. Anyhow, Nick went out of his way to actually log on and delete the unnecessary adjective in front of ‘team’. Next level disrespect.
Nick’s Team has been a running joke throughout the year, albeit a much subtler one. I guess nobody has taken a good look at his lineup, because if they did, you’d be equally perplexed about his performance thus far. This team is not bad at all! As easy a target as someone who doesn’t read the chat would be, Nick’s inexplicable tankathon warrantees no further roast.
Consider a not-so implausible parallel universe where a) Jaren Jackson didn’t suddenly turn into the league’s lowest IQ player, b) The NBA’s most annoying Mormon team did not tank unremorsefully and Lauri went for accolades instead. Sorry, we’re not done here Utah. This is a guy who could have been voted All Third Team at least twice, yet the scumbags running his squad decided it’s more important to try and draft 8th rather than 15th. Lauri will have dogshit to show his grandkids, only because there’s people out there dickstroking Danny Ainge’s patient strategic genius. Filth..
Blasphemous rumor: Word on Nick is he moved out of Berlin to Brandenburg. Famous for its fluvial landscapes, delicious pickles and abundant fascists. Evidently, he’s just listening to Joe Rogan and neglecting his fantasy team. And stockpiling water.
Team Grade: C-
Wire Comp:
D’Angelo. Nick had a solid first episode with a draft that many commended. Reign of potential protagonist role didn’t last long, his presence descending to irrelevance prematurely.
14. Quarter Court Fire:
I know what you’re thinking. What has Ennio done to deserve not being ranked last? And the answer is that Ennio is doing something that even his own erudite engineering brain cannot untangle. Has he taken fantasy basketball into uncharted artistic territory, a sort of post-modern fusion of the improvisation of calypso music, the cybernetic hybridization of AI and self, and a commentary on the art form from within?
Ennio’s season consists of three parts: 1) Full Court Fire will forever serve as a moral cautionary tale as well as metaphor for greed. Prioritizing schadenfreude and pettiness ahead of self-ambition, Ennio sought to make his no.1 draft strategy stealing Knicks players from Mike, or at the very least having Mike overpay for them. Not only did Mike end up drafting a triad of strong Knicks folk, he catapulted to the top of the league never to look back. Meanwhile Ennio….
2) Half Court Fire regrets the abovementioned admittedly choleric strategy. So what does he do to bring about homeostasis? He seeks to make the league as unpleasant for other contestants as it is for him. Trading 3 studs for an oft-injured perennial questionmark superstar, to a hibernating juggernaut no less, simultaneously acquiring half the Spurs roster so he could at least fall with pride. Through witchcraft which can only be explained via Dostoyevskyian planetary fairness, his bum nail returns to parallel his fantasy nightmare with real life suffering.
3) Quarter Court Fire is the epilogue. Ennio is finally serene. Butterfly position yoga in a rehabilitation clinic in Tuscany, where the unhinged artist calms down by a perfectly temperatured pool, smoking filterless cigarettes and making peace with the dark side he carefully cultivated over years of excess.
Blasphemous rumor: his draft list was actually a list of library books he needed to return. It included an introduction to jewellery making, the poetry of Philip Larkin, Zen Buddhist philosophy for everyday life, and a collection of essays by Jonathan Franzen. Excepting the cup of tea and his house slippers, the draft and the season built on it have been a dumpster fire.
Team Grade: D
Wire Comp:
Ziggy Sobotka. Cascading damage, irredeemable arc. Starts every scheme behind the 8-ball. Bad reads along with sorrowful execution. Constantly tries to make things work with hustles and swings, but feel for reality leaves a lot to be desired. Once Court Fire blew it, there was no way back. He’s our tragic hero and perhaps embodies the greatest dissonance between real world performance and fantasy.
13. Centers of Attention
A whole lot of GMs were frustrated with Boris during the draft. What was at the time argued concerned Boris taking a page out of the Ennio book and prioritizing trolling over genuinely drafting with the ambition to win. It immediately became clear that’s not the case. In a rather unsurprising twist, Boris has been caught consuming RFK Jr’s yahoo basketball blog on Rumble. The infamous nepotist was not the first person to advocate for a center heavy lineup that seeks to win every week by the exact score of 5-4, but he did pioneer the idea of contention despite your second best guard being Jordan Goodwin. Hold on, my bad, he was just dropped. I meant Egor Denim (aka Soviet Jeans).
Joke’s on you, Boris. Everybody have a look at our boy’s record in blocks, after 12 weeks of action.
Blasphemous rumor: Boris recently opened a trading card shop in suburban Montreal called Keeping up with the Card-ashians. And while he’s somewhat ashamed to admit it, the lion’s share of his sales stem from Pokémon and Magic the gathering cards.
Team Grade: D-
Wire Comp:
Weebey Brice. Who else is more likely to be keeping artificial fish in his prison cell, where he spends 85% of the series? After an overly aggressive draft, unafraid of mid stuff such as indignant reactions by other GMs or homo sapien logical reason, his downfall was so rapid he has become the absolute afterthought of Hoop Dreams despite holding a Top 3 team name. Get this man another pit sandwich and ‘tatah’ salad.
12. Ring Sizing
A bold team name. And no Pelos he’s not talking about a dick ring, he is talking about a championship ring. Which I guess you Gen-Zeers call a chip. Nico was once a force in fantasy basketball, but since the old Commish Bao-ed out he’s dropped off like KG on the Nets. ‘Anything is pooooossible’!, including rapid, breakneck speed decline. He was involved in an interesting trade and he showed a rugged individualism at the draft combine that had Michael thinking about Walt Whitman’s poetry and Joshua about Ralph Waldo Emerson’s transcendentalist essay on self-reliance. The pressing question rolling around in Andrei’s head is can he get us Box Seats at the Alba game? Let’s see. Meanwhile he’s still setting lineups and offering hot takes on the Fakers. So there’s that.
Blasphemous rumor: Nico intends to attend the Alba field trip and to buy a round of beers to contest prevailing representations of him as something of a beverage individualist.
Team Grade: C-
Wire Comp:
Jay Landsman. Crude, at times perceptive, Jay understands fantasy but only does exactly what’s required to get his fantasy pension and no more. His actual basketball knowledge is hidden behind porno mags and homophobic insults.
Power Ranking Tier 2 – ‘Meh’: Mediocrity
11. Bao – What can be said about Bao’s team that hasn’t already been said about Santa Barbara after the wild fires last year? It’s full of burnt out vehicles, twisted metal, and a scorched silhouette of hopes and aspirations. Did Bao take out an insurance policy on the smoldering trash heap he’s looking at? Historically a cunning GM, Bao has fucked off to Brazil and seemingly lost sight of his custodial duties. I like Daniels and harden’s breaking records but no one fears Lakers Rodman. Was that before or after he played in the British pro league? Ya Pelos, true story. Fucking Google it.
Bao did freak out Pelo during the draftpalooza. He was tilting every time someone stole a player of his by wagering a miniscule amount, reminding one of every degenerate blackjack player at the casino ever when you hit King on 12 while he’s sitting next to you salivating with an 11. Sorry Bao, you weren’t gonna grab Bilal Coulibaly with 1 dollar. You ain’t the only one watching boxscores of France-Senegal in July friendlies. You are lucky to be sitting in this tier, holmes.
Blasphemous rumor: After securing German citizenship, Bao has fled south to evade investigations into financial negligence of the venture capital firm he worked for. They were chiefly invested in “Games” – from tic tac toe right through to Assassin’s Creed.
Team Grade: C+
Wire Comp:
Clarence Royce: Showing promise and ambition he seems willing to try and short circuit his success. Then he gets in with String and loses to Carcetti. And he’s out of the show. An alderman at the end of his days? Bao’s glory days seems stale and the beginning of his end only arriving.
10. Daniel’s Dandy Team
Another entry where the player has deemed his time spent on yahoo fantasy as so lacking of value he hasn’t even bothered to devise a real team name. Dan, Dan, Dan! He’s not reading and he’s not listening. It’s too long and too irrelevant. Dan is too intelligent and too results oriented to waste his time speculating about the photographic merits of Louk’s Goat Series (Vernissage forthcoming @ Du Beast) or whether the Kings should sign Ben Simmons next year. They should. Dan did his thing, extracting value from the draft in a way that makes you wonder if he doesn’t have his own fucking money ball algorithm. But The Daniel Page Waiver Wire Containment Act clipped his wings and brought parity to the league. Always a threat, always waiting with some killer in the IL set to rejoin in late February, he’s not the ‘23-24 champ and ‘24-25 runner-up for nothing.
Blasphemous rumor: Dan has been playing fantasy this year in Hoop Dreams completely sober. In a parallel league he is using performance enhancing drugs. And he’s killing it. Not all drugs are good….some are great.
Team Grade: B-
Wire Comp:
The Greek. A high-level international drug kingpin Dan is choreographing a global operation that just stacks mad paper. Is Ennio his Frank Sobotka? Probably. He will occasionally spit wisdom: Lambs go to slaughter. A man, he learns when to walk away, then disappear for episodes. Oh and of course, he’s not even Greek.
Power Ranking Tier 3 – Play-In Hell Scrappers with Shoulder Chip
9. Peja Vu
It all went wrong when Louk got COVID and had to miss the draft. He never recovered. Indeed he would go on a string of misadventures including witnessing public primate sex, being followed by goats, orthoscopic knee surgery and a nasty, debilitating infection that left him in isolation contemplating the meaning of everything. After a raft of tests and lab analyses, it was eventually determined to be Joel Embiid. But he has Book aka boring star and he took AG off Dan so there’s that. Will he stay in the playoff hunt? After a 3rd place finish a couple years ago, Louk has underperformed as a fantasy GM. Meanwhile his work in the Minotaur organisation has him as the forerunner for a GM of the year repeat.
We are not reading much into his recent turn towards hypochondria. Guy has been through a lot the past 7 months. Imagine if that tropical illness had hit Mike or Alex. Dreadful. Absolutely dreadful, foken bollocks, innit? Most importantly, he has given birth to the poetic concept of Newspaper Food, a team name for which at least 5 GMs will have to fight to the death over next year.
Blasphemous rumor: Louk is currently looking to relocate to Mauritius for tax purposes and is still trying to finalize a 3 way real world bet with fantasy consequences involving Pelos, at least two wild goats and a 3×3 game (Mike, Janitor Ennio , Alex and I)to be played shortly after the ring ceremony at Pelos’ nuptial celebration.
Wire Comp:
Lester Freamon. Patient, methodical, and attentive to detail. But don’t forget while quietly moral he does end up with that hot Stripper. So there’s known unknowns there. Mysteries beneath the iceberg. He’ll follow the money and we’ll try and see if it leads him out of the pawn shop division.
Team Grade: B
8. Greatest Show On Court
“Ohh, I had to put my daughter to bed and dozed off a bit hehe”.
“I didn’t know Kispert only plays SF and PF hihi fuck me”.
For a renowned academic and the brains of this whole Hoop Dreams Operation, the Commish sure does have a lot of excuses. If only he could somehow replicate his real life hustles and refusal to go down easy, maybe he’d find himself fielding a team that aims for more than the play-in. Of all the people occasionally forgetting to set their lineup, Joshua’s case is by and far the most infuriating.
Josh’s aversion to trades can only be paralleled by his aversion to placing bets. He blatantly refused a Sengun for Shai trade, for the record. Commish manually adding players to his team, ostensibly because of ‘heavy injury misfortunes’ has been suspicious as much as futile. It’s a hole in the water, buddy-O. Directly reminds us of his signature Minotaur plays where he’ll leap for a Rodmanian rebound or Wembanyamian block, only to miss a wide open layup on the other end.
You can’t hate Josh. Much as he’s the heart and soul of the Minotaurs, he can be characterized as the flesh and bones of HD. Perhaps microdosing is making him complacent. Perhaps it’s fueling a false optimism. It is with regret we must say that Josh is officially the wildest underachiever of our humble league.
Blasphemous Rumor: Josh can’t persuade his family to go to a Greek wedding with ample meat offerings, so he convinces Mike to scheme a fake stick-up at the Bulgarian border. Their families are then taken to the mountains for a 3-day luxus hostage crisis, which Mike pays with the money he made off bets with Lolo on World Cup games. Meanwhile they are supposedly taken to custody to be interrogated regarding their President’s plan to annex the entire Balkans following the Greenland fiasco. Of course, Josh ends up eating 2 kilos of lamb and puking from his ears at 7.30 am while dancing to mid 1990s Greek pop at a fascist village in Kavala while Mike caresses his bicep veins.
Team Grade: B-
Wire Comp:
Dukie Weems. He’s bright, he protects the weak, he all about the right values. What could go wrong? It’s always something outside of his control, you bet. It could have been the greatest show on court. Instead, Josh’s 2025/2026 fantasy season will be remembered as the cute, smart, loveable underdog who unceremoniously ended up smoking crack in trashy Baltimore alleys rather than going to college and prospering as an 8-seed landmine.
Power Ranking Tier 4 – ‘I got two tickets to paradise, won’t you..’Play-In Paradise Juggernauts Hidden in Plain Sight aka 8 Seed Landmines
7. Steph Infection
Where do I start? Fuck where do I end? Lolo has a good name that may have forecasted Louk’s medical malady. But he turned on Dray and has generally pivoted to the Magic? Dick riding the Wagner Brüder. I mean I guess we all knew he was a Disney NBA fan. He’s been overperforming much to the chagrin of the entire fucking league. How does he do this every year? Podz. fucking podz. Williams has been good when he plays and he’s got a colonial force in Spensanity. Even that Milwaukee fiend who spent a year in PAOK for beating his girlfriend after a rough night betting on dogfights has been beasting. Lolo is holding on for dear life thanks to acquiring unprecedented value from cannon fodder contributors, same way the Warriors will retain false hope towards contention once they completely dismantle their future in favour of a last push with Markkanen or MPJ.
An objective viewer might think Lolo’s gambling addiction is nearing deleterious heights. A less half full glass of a person, however, knows this is nothing more than loyalty disguised as degeneracy. And if the Warriors end up with a better record than the Knicks? Sky’s the limit. He might even lose less than 180 dollars by season’s end.
Blasphemous rumor: Gwen has booked flights to Munich for October fest, Lolo plans to propose atop the Eiffel tower, and the trip ends at a pizzeria in Rome with a view to the colosseum and a three piece band (mandolin, guitar and accordion) playing “Roma nun fa’ la stupida stasera”. Lolo chuckles to himself, sips his local wine and says to Gwen as he gently holds her iced out hand with his model like palms, “You remember Josh, I think he still lives in Germany somewhere.”
Team Grade: B+
Wire Comp:
Bunny. Pragmatic and willing to think beyond the architecture of prevailing wisdom, Lo experiments and while his critics scorn his recklessness, the performance data sets him free. Hamsterdam, yo. It works. Kinda. The game is rigged but you cannot lose if you don’t play.
6. The Injury List
When I (Joshua) invited Basti to this league I thought I had brought in a real casual. Knicks gear because he went with dad to the big apple and didn’t know any better. Turns out he’s a hoops junkie and an analytics wonk. And he’ll trade until he’s crafted a team only possible in NBA 2K. Basti bet big on health, this for a guy with a chronic shoulder injury is uplifting to see. And if his bet pays off you’ll know. He will snatch rebounds away from you, hit floaters over you, toss alley oops above you and generally leave you feeling furious. Just ask everyone he played at the EMI. They know what I’m talking about.
I (Pelo) have spent a not insignificant number of working nights wondering if Basti would sell off his geriatric human resources colleague if the value was good enough. What if polymarket set her odds at getting dementia a few years later at 4 to 1, and avoiding her eventual suffering outweighed the value of her living her pre-pension years in misery? All that is to say, his seemingly neoliberal Goliath crushing David killer of a move might not have been motivated by an inherent wish to suck the league peasant’s (Ennio’s) blood, but rather to assist in the latter’s euthanasia. What started as irritation, namely everybody in the league…’singing his praises’ (I will not write dickride, I will not write dickride, I will not write dickride), has evolved into inexorable admiration and appreciation. We take our hats off to you, Sir.
Wire Comp:
Prop Joe: Smart, diplomatic and ruthlessly business oriented, he will analyse your roster and entice you with mathematically paired trade offers. He’s a gangster with a suit in his Charlottenburg loft apartment. And he will leave you a cadaverous mother fucker on Monday morning as he kisses his mother in law goodbye after a champagne brunch.
Blasphemous rumor: Basti owns an autographed Tim Thomas jersey he plans to give his son for his 16th birthday. He will then challenge him to 1×1 and absolutely fucking annihilate him. Telling him “box out!” as he grabs an O board and hits the put back.
Team Grade: B+
Power Ranking Tier 5 – ‘I coulda been somebody, I coulda been a contender’: The Ex-Contender who shot himself in the foot
5. Alekos: Apologies for making a discriminating exception and not including the team name here. These pieces are meant to last, and Alex’s Team Names last no longer than a Neukolln Minotaurs losing streak. There is zero indication that his current fabrication as of the time this paragraph is being written will survive the period until the publication date. Jokes aside, as well as Joker aside (oops), the Hypochondriac Master has been a formidable contender since his fantasy debut. And that’s despite what we, as close-minded minions, decided to view as efforts towards self-sabotage. AND YET. If Jokic doesn’t come to recapture his magic post-injury, in conjunction with anticipating Kawhi’s renaissance and snatching him for the cheap price of Paulito Bumchero, Aleko’s genius shall be discussed for years to come.
All that said, there still exist strong rumours he has been suffering from sleep apnea ever since panic trading away Nikola. Whether the move was truly motivated by a fear of missing the playoffs altogether, or the greed of not wanting to fall outside the top-4, well that my friend is a question only comprising subjective answers.
Make no mistake though, our favorite assistant coach never sleeps. Kawhi still is for the taking. Perhaps nothing better summarizes Alex’s incessant activity than the moment he thought he would get Cade for Kawhi….somehow forgetting that the GM who holds Cade is Malik. It was a perfect encapsulation of the yahoo fantasy predicament. Even the most astute and calculated GMs are at some point to be filled by an utterly irrational conviction. The conviction that Malik would reply to a whatsapp message, that is.
Blasphemous Rumour: All of the blasphemous rumours you’ve heard about Alex are neither blasphemous, nor rumours. “Nah,” you’ll say, “except that one really inappropriate one, right?”. Nope, even that one.
Team Grade: B+
Wire Comp:
Stringer Bell. Intelligent, stat-disciplined, terrified of volatility, perhaps occasionally outsmarting himself. Bails the moment something looks unstable. Cutting bait on people (“Jokic is on the block”) the moment they complicate his clean model. Much like Stringer’s, Alex’s moves always looked logical short-term. It remains to be seen if they will age equally badly and lead to a premature playoff death.
Power Ranking Tier 6 – ‘They not like us’: The Consensus Contenders
Strong disclaimer: Thanks to abominable trades, Basti should technically be part of this tier. However, due to his propensity to keep trading for unavailable potential, he might just altogether miss the playoffs.
4. Knüpp Doggy Dawg
It all started with a Skal jersey. Pelos was the only Minotaur to correctly identify the Haitian sensation, currently playing for the Kings G league affiliate. Pelos entered the league talking shit like a gym bro high on a cocktail of human growth hormone and testosterone. He told Ennio they would need crash site investigators to identify him when he was through with him. Ennio forwarded his dental records, the consummate professional that he is. And he said things like “gonna stomp you bitches, all day”. Which Louk has put on the next generation of Mino merch. Now while he hasn’t quite dominated like he jawed he would, he’s been good. And he kinda blew some amateur minds with the “games played in march thesis”. Fuck me, did we just invite Bobby Fisher into the league, Mike whispered at the draft combine. Well let’s see, it’s all amitus in odio and we’re all looking forward to his wedding celebration. Better have veg options, homie. He brought “Mediterranean” desserts to the draft combine which confused many excepting a certain 7 year old who asked for thirds. And he scoffed at my Gujarati Mix saying to those who could hear, I don’t want no BJP snacks bro. Keep that Hindu nationalist crunch to yo-selves.
Blasphemous Rumor: At his first Minotaur post-game party at a Neukölln bar, Pelos wandered into the dank toilets dexterously navigating the crowd with his libation, Störtebeker Atlantic Ale, not a drop was lost in the sweaty mass of human flesh and cotton. He flung open the door of the drug den, colloquially known as The Pharmacy or The Periodic Table, depending on who you ask. A motley crew that may or may not have included currently rostered Minotaurs greeted him and gestured to the hand mirror being passed around. It arrived in Pelos left palm at which point he asked if anyone could tell him about the social relations of production under which this blow was produced and transported to Germany. A cacophony of laughter swelled in the Pharmacy or the Periodic Table, depending on who is telling this story. Pelos smiled widely, put his sweaty locks behind his head in a neat if briskly stitched together man-bun and hollered back, you bitches never met a Cocaine Communist before? My sources ended the narrative there. What happened next is the stuff of fantasy.
Team Grade: A-
Wire Comp:
Tommy Carcetti: Ambition dressed up as anti colonial agit-propoganda, the radical rhetoric has faded with each name change finally settling on Knupp Doggy Dog, a reference of course to the NBC Olympics broadcaster. Pelo, you see, was shitting in his pants when Snoop dropped Doggystyle. But I hear he calls all his sweatshirts Earl and on holidays with his fiancée has been known to say are we going to see Frank today, as a clever way of saying going to the Ocean. The future is odd. Plans to remake Baltimore into a progressive utopia where a social system cares for the vulnerable are dashed upon the rocks when the gubernatorial option opens up. Pelos isn’t talking about boycotting, divesting and sanctioning again till he wears the crown. If you’re going to do this, you gotta do it all the way.
3. Michael E. Heisley is a Thief
When I’m recruiting new GMs Ezra is always part of my retort to claims of not being any good or being worried about being dead last. I always say, look in places 1-15 we’ll have https://youtu.be/Zhs0JD6XJyQ?si=-Hr2uIpOG6EcoJta and in 16th place Ezra. Then he auto drafted himself into relevance and figured out how to click “set for the week”. Can he sustain this? Probably not. Does he know he owns any NBA gear? I don’t think so. His roster is stacked and need setting lineups. Will Ezra take the 25-26 crown? Pelos has at least one bet suggesting yes.
Blasphemous Rumor: Ezra pretends he only gives a shit about that thief who stole a trash Canadian NBA team in favour of a trash American NBA team. You may be thinking “Nope, he’s been engaging in trades with me, he likes my players, it’s just that the rest of you have shit squads“. Buddy let me tell you; Ezra has been engaging in trade talk with everyone including Malik. Naturally, he doesn’t do so in order to actually trade, but rather to jinx the players on the other side of the trade so they get a toe sprain for the 16th time in the last 7 months.
Team Grade: B+
Wire Comp:
Prez: Initially incompetent and protected by his relation not to Valcheck but to the Commish, Prez turns a corner and shows analytical and detective skills. But just when things are going well he kills a kid and has to quit the Bodymore PD for the Murder land school system. Yikes, let’s hope he makes it to the playoffs.
2. Jokic’s Horses
The champ had a big off-season addition and I’m not talking about the KD trade which brought Phoenix some decent talent. I’m talking about his baby girl. Many hoped this might leave him sleep deprived, prone to errors of judgement and vulnerable. But Dre is looking as rough as ever. Systematically taking apart his opponents faster than Trump dismantled a federal agency created by Congress.
Mofo is pristine. Unassailable. Best we could come up with is a lame ass Russian joke, but Hollywood has already done all of them. Naturally he was the beneficiary of Pelo’s tilt trade, snatching the MVP and a suddenly spry DDR from the indignant Greek who was considering signing off a bomb threat at Ennio’s house. In fact the only thing keeping him from grabbing no.1 on this list is a delusional hope that the disrespect will blind him and lead him to go berserk, similar to when Vladimir sensed NATO was covering his borders with ‘Murcan bases and flags and said ‘fuck it’.
After all you could count on us to make a racist joke.
Blasphemous rumor: Andrei has actually been playing fantasy since Yahoo was the leading search engine worldwide. He was on AIM strategically discussing lineups in the fall of 1999 in his parents basement in St Petersburg. He’s bullshitting us with the lost rookie narrative.
Team Grade: A
Boris, why always Boris his name is Sergei. Taciturn, dry humour, professional and simply mad gangsterish. Do you have a face? Do you have hands? Then you’ve not played Andrei yet.
1. Bookie of the Year
First they ignore you (Mike is not a serious fantasy player). Then they laugh at you (What kind of idiot would give Doncic away on the cheap). Then they fight you (Knicks suck, Herro is always injured, Edgecombe will fall off). Then you win (Mike has his kids recite that to themselves every night before they go to bed).
Rookie pickups? Immaculate. Squad name? Exquisite. Hygiene? Well, he’s our league’s no.2 hypochondriac, can’t go wrong here. Productive guys from his favourite team, not permitting real life compromise fantasy? All day. To the chagrin of many opponent managers, Michael James Navarro’s dream of a season could hardly be giving him more conspicuous elephantiasis. With the exception of the Kalk trade which is yet to be decided, this being quite a dark irony by the way, he fleeced his fellow GMs on two memorable occasions.
To add salt to our wounds, Mike is no longer even a top 3 gambling degenerate in Hoop Dreams. Infection, KnüppDawg and Peja Vu lead the league in the metric by a rather significant margin. Meanwhile, Mike’s mental and physical health is flourishing. Toxical positivity, you’ll say. He’s earned it. Let’s celebrate Sr. Navarro before simultaneous injuries thoroughly derail his season.
Blasphemous Rumour: Mike called up his Italian grandma’s sister while in the bathroom during the 3rd round of our fantasy draft and asked her to voodoo the entire Mazzon household. “Quell’idiota mi sta facendo pagare 85 dollari per Brunson. Maledici lui e la sua squadra fantasy di merda. Fallo arrivare ultimo, fallo schifo e perdi tutta la ragione. Se non funziona, fai ai suoi compaesani un’offerta che non possono rifiutare.“ “Sì, sì figlio mio”, she replied. Oh and one last thing, he retorted: “Assicurati che anche l’unghia del piede malandata ritorni“.
Team Grade: A
Wire Comp: Mike will almost certainly either win the league or lose in the first round. We shall thus regretfully create a second exception and pick two characters, one for each equally likely scenario.
Marlo: Voracious & greedy glutton looking to further his empire with no regard for other GMs. Never happy with his already impressive performance. The Barnes trade, along with all the unfair trades he offered but never happened, serve as excellent examples. Kalk is every dead soldier the Baltimore streets buried.
Cheese: Equally voracious and volatile, without the eventual respect he thought he should be receiving when all is said and done. That said, the comic relief he provided throughout the year shall not be underestimated.
It’s been a blast, homeboys. Love you all. Till the next one.