While this team would do well on a basketball court, you are conceding WAY too many traditional fantasy statistics in order to compete.

You’d do well in FG% Pts, RB and competitive in Assists and TO

That team would rarely win: 3PM, FT%, STL, BLK

Even though Dwight Howard is ranked extremely low on Yahoo, if you have a top 3 pick, LeBron, Kobe, CP3 or Amare had better be on your team. There is little argument for anyone outside of those four as a top three pick.

will definitely be a learning curve year for you.

The thing about fantasy is that they get ranked in how they can produce on their own, and also relaive to the team you put together around you. Howard for instance, gets varied rankings depending on categories and also fantasy ranker opinion. The thing about Howard is that his FT% is so astronomically damaging because he not only shoots low (a lot of other centers shoot about the same, Biedrins, Bogut, Okafor, etc., but he shoots a lot of fts. I think he led the league in attempts last year. The only way you can make it up would be to surround Howard with high volume, high FT% players. Your lineup would have to look something like:

DHoward, Kevin Martin, Brad Miller, Maggette, Iverson, Kobe, Wade, etc., etc. There is a reason Dwight finished the year with a ranking close to 80 (one slump and he just kills your team).

The other thing to realize about fantasy is that you need to build your team with a certain philosophy and balance, i.e., are you a smaller team with steals, assists, 3s, ft, with care to shore up fg, blks, rebounds, or a larger team with just the opposite. LeBron and Kobe are at-the-top players because they are “hinge” players with significant across the board skills, while CP3 and Amare are at-the-top players because they are the best at their positions (though Yao may be even better than Amare, but he is never healthy enough long enough for us to find out).

Your biggest problem is that your team has no real dominant category (assists is closest, but Ridnour and Conley could end up victims of timeshare. If they don’t they may bring high TOs with their assists), and has already punted FT% and has high turnover players. That is not to say you can’t win any categories in your matchups, but it will be due more to your opponent’s weakness than your strength.

I put myself in the same position last year (though I had the luck of being a huge Marion fan, and he was available when I drafted, meaning I only blew a 2nd round pick on Dwight). You are going to need to roll up your sleeves, do your homework, and work the waiver wire like nobody’s business. On the plus side, you’ll learn a lot.

Here is mine… I’m not that crazy about it, but it should be decent.

PG: Chris Paul
SG: Kevin Martin
SF: Carmelo Anthony
PF: Josh Smith
C: Greg Oden
G: Mike Miller
F: Ron Artest
Ut: Chris Kaman
Ut: Raymond Felton
Ut: Zach Randolph
Bench: Samuel Dalembert
Bench: John Salmons
Bench: Randy Foye (May drop for Nene)