Re-Draft 2010 Part 1- Guidelines

After conducting the contraction draft a couple of weeks ago (see previous post) I was speaking to an co-worker and he gave me the idea of doing a re-draft for the whole league. The idea behind this was to create a league where the overall talent was more evenly distributed. There are some teams that seem so poorly managed that it just doesn't seem fair that they are competing on the same level as a team like the Lakers for example. After mulling over the idea for a couple of days, I finally wrapped my head around how we were to do it. The draft was conducted under the following guidelines:

1. There would only be 24 teams in the draft. I briefly describe the reason for this concept in a previous blog, but in short, it's to ensure that all teams will have the same level of talent and it will be a better overall product throughout the league.

2. The draft was conducted by myself and one of my co-workers Jon.

3. A coin was flipped and we each picked 12 teams that we would represent.

4. We were awarded each 12 spots in the first round randomly. We then could pick which of our teams would occupy those spots for the first round.

5. The second round was a "snake" of the first round (same order only in reverse).

6. Rounds 3-12 were randomly selected using a free online fantasy draft generator. This was to add a certain randomness to it, almost like a lottery.

We were not limited on time for each pick due to the time constraints that each of us faced, and thus the draft took us roughly 2-3 weeks. Although I will not be going over the full draft tonight I will preview a couple of the items that we discovered during the course of the draft.

• There really aren't that many centers in the league right now. Of those centers, very, very few have polished post moves. After drafting the first 6 centers in the first round, we really were left with tough picks being forced to take someone with size even though there wasn't as much skill. I feel that this explains to some degree why the Jazz don't have a dominant center. Frankly, we might be lucky to have two guys like Millsap and Boozer for how polished they are down low.
  
• Regardless of how unbiased we tried to to be, unfortunately we began to favor teams. We also began to feel bad for some teams. Overall the teams are fairly even but there were some mistakes made and it took us a while to realize this.
  

Overall, I am pleased with how it turned out. Over the next couple of weeks, I will post a couple of different times about this project so please check back in. The ultimate goal will to be to use NBA 2K10 to simulate several seasons to see how this all plays out. It will also help us to determine the overall quality of the draft. So keep checking back for more updates!