"As a fantasy owner, I find this season frustrating because of all the injuries. For instance, in one of my leagues I have 12 players with eight active roster spots. Everyone has a game on Friday. Only problem is, everyone includes Andrea Bargnani (out), Ty Lawson (likely out), Spencer Hawes (maybe playing but would probably be limited since he's been out awhile) and Tayshaun Prince (who at least isn't actually injured but did miss the previous game because of personal reasons).
I know, a lot of you have had to deal with far worse on the injury front. I'm just saying: It's frustrating.
As a fantasy analyst, I find this season frustrating because even though the lockout-altered schedule makes a huge difference in the quality of play, I'm not seeing many ways to exploit these unique circumstances. Here's an example: NBA teams on the third night of back-to-back-to-back games. You'd think this would be automatically bad for your players, that they'd see fewer minutes or put up ugly stats out of fatigue. You may think it would present an opportunity if one of your players is facing an opponent that's lacing it up for the third night in a row.
The problem is NBA teams are actually 9-6 so far this season when playing for the third straight day. Now, they have been less successful of late -- only 3-6 since Jan. 10 -- but there are some huge, surprising outliers here. For instance, the Chicago Bulls and Oklahoma City Thunder have each won all three games of a back-to-back-to-back set. When they played three straight, the Sacramento Kings lost the first two -- then defeated the Milwaukee Bucks on Jan. 5. Even though they were playing for the third time in three days, the Atlanta Hawks annihilated the Bulls on Jan. 7. Even the Charlotte Bobcats have won when playing on the third night in a row, and absurdly, they scored a season-best 112 points in that Jan. 14 win against the Golden State Warriors.
I guess there are two primary reasons you can't make too much of the unique circumstances of this season:
1. It's the same for everyone. Every NBA team must deal with it. Same goes for every team in your fantasy league.
2. Anything can happen on any given night. In other words, the rules of small sample size still apply."
