As the 2020-21 NBA Fantasy regular season comes to a close, 4 Penn Plaza closed out their season with a victory, one week after securing their place in the postseason.
Their opponents in week 14, the winless Ooga Booga, could have been our only trap game of the season. Those unfamiliar with the term “trap games” describe a weak team desperately searching for a win, which means their opponent doesn’t take them seriously, which sometimes costs them.
4 Penn Plaza have had an up and down season and didn’t want to end their turmoil season on a sour note. Thanks to a 377.40 point victory, the boys head into the second season on a high note.
In the final matchup of the season, 4 Penn Plaza swept the season series against Ooga Booga, who failed to find the win column.
Although we failed to reach our original projections by 97.22 points, our opponents were no match, no matter how many points we scored. Ooga Booga was projected only to score 867.33 points; they collected 915.90, which was still almost four hundred points behind our final total.
The matchup scores were never in doubt since the closest Ooga Booga got to us was on Tuesday, when they trailed by 170.80. We jumped out to a 172.70 lead on opening night, and the scores only got uglier from there. That Tuesday score was our smallest lead, before Saturday night when he compiled a 458.70 point lead. With limited players playing on the final day of the regular season, Ooga Booga shaved some points off the deficit and still wound up losing by 377.40 points, 1293.30-915.90.
We never trailed in the series, our third such week of the season. We averaged 184.76 points a day and ran a pretty good deficit in our favour of 280.89 points.
When we look back at our first season of fantasy basketball, we will always be impressed that we secured a playoff spot in our first attempt. However, our biggest disappointment will be losing the rebounds title in the final three weeks. It was such a minor goal that we felt was achievable, even after losing our hold on the category for most of the season.
In the season recap, we will examine our downfall, which is an overaction, considering how well we finished in other categories.
Except for the first two weeks of the season, we were the top team regarding blocks. We were all over the place in regards to steals but never ranked lower than 5th. These two categories were the heart of our game plan from draft day to our final buzzer, so to end up so successful in those two areas was a great accomplishment.
We didn’t expect to be so bad at scoring points or collecting assists, which were our sore spots on the scoresheet. To finish second overall in rebounds and turnovers was unexpected and were probably the big reasons we finished 8-6 on the season and secured a spot in the playoffs.
If you look through all 14 weeks of the season, you will see that the top teams secured their places in the standings pretty early, and besides a few shuffles, the top six were always the top six.
Damn KD ran the table from opening tipoff to the final buzzer, while Ka’Wine & Dine did everything they could to get into that top spot. Caldwell-Pope Mobile was our first loss of the season in week six, and from there, they went on to finish strong and claim that third seed. The Sauce Squad and Mamba Mentality swapped positions and used us as a punching bag on several occasions.
We finished in the sixth seed because two five-game streaks sum up our season. In the beginning, we were 5-0 and then dropped to 5-5 before swapping wins and losses to finish out the season, giving us a few extra wins over Giannis Akumpo.
When you win your matchup, and there are no categories involved, the bench numbers don’t have much of an impact on the final score.
The only regret we have regarding the handful of players who didn’t contribute on the scoresheet is the 34 rebounds we left behind. It was a huge hill to climb since we needed 141 to regain the league lead, but those points left behind would have made that number a little bit closer.
As mentioned in the previous section, we were chasing this unrealistic dream of regaining the league lead in rebounds. Of course, we made our roster moves based on players who collected rebounds.
Elfrid Payton (New York) was the first player dropped to make room for Andre Drummond (Los Angeles), who finally returned to the court after spending half the season out of the lineup.
We then cut Justin Holiday (Indianapolis) in favour of Terance Mann (Los Angeles) for one night. Mann was gone the next day after a disappointing night in favour of Pat Connaughton (Milwaukee). Connaughton’s stay was short-lived as Jusuf Nurkic (Portland) also made his return from the IL.
In the end, the moves we made did little to nothing to impact our quest to gather rebounds.
Weekly Move Total: 2/5
Season Move Total: 17/50
Follow 4 Pennsylvania Plaza all season long @keepingthestats or facebook.com/keepingthestats.
Keeping the Stats 