fBasketballBlog

KD had a helluva summer. He should have a helluva NBA season, too. (Flickr/GAMEFACE-PHOTOS)

Nuclear winters, like Kris and Kim, are so yesterday.

If you’re a fellow NBA junkie, the past several days have been filled with suspicious joy — a happiness imbued with a faint fear that this delicate dream of a 2011-12 NBA season could collapse at any given moment. But as we read news outlets churn out rumors about Dwight Howard, Chris Paul and Rajon Rondo as if they had them stored up for a time such as this, it becomes easier to let down your guard and embrace the season to be.

As a fantasy basketball blogger, I’ll admit that the coming season fills me with 99 percent cheer and 1 percent fear — cheer because I get to participate in and write about the game I love again; and fear because of the rust I’ll have to work off while knowing the window for educated preseason analysis will only be open sometime after Dec. 9 and before Dec. 25.

So, it’s with a curious mix of joy, fear and disbelief that I present to you my updated rankings of the top 150 fantasy basketball players for the 2011-12 NBA season.

That haircut sure does help. (AP Photo/Claudio Cruz)

The title of this post is an exaggeration, of course — but only by a hair from Manu’s thinning dome.

Just kidding.

Remember that fantasy basketball preview in Dime Magazine I mentioned last week? Well, for those of you bums who either don’t subscribe to that glorious print publication or were too penurious to go out and pick up a copy of the issue, good news: it’s being posted onto DimeMag.com, piece by  piece.

• Top 101 Fantasy Basketball Players in 2010-11 (with commentary for the top 10)
• Top 10 NBA Sleepers in 2010-11
• How to Build the Perfect Fantasy Basketball Team
• The 24 Best Fantasy Basketball Category Specialists

Keep checking DimeMag.com for the rest of it.

Please bear in mind that all this was originally written back in early September. While I updated some stuff for the Web editions, I tried to leave as much of it alone as possible.

Feel free to love or hate on it to your heart’s content in the comments section below.

An assist is an assist, no matter how awkward it looks. Right, Kobe? (AP)

Here’s a quick roundup of just a small sampling of fantasy basketball resources available to use before, during and after your drafts:

• Give Me The Rock has you covered for all your ranking, scheduling and team-preview needs with its 2010 Basketball Draft Guide. Oh, and give the boys a bone. Pimpin’ (fantasy basketball goods) ain’t easy.
• Basketball Monster is just what it sounds like — in a good way. Even without a membership, get valuable access to player rankings, team analysis, trade analysis and schedules, among other things. I love that site, and not just because it uses colors, too.
• SleeperBot offers a clean, straightforward and nifty Tiersheet application to help you with your drafts. It breaks players down by position and tiers, and comes equipped with drag-and-drop functionality for individual players and for entire tiers. You can double-click to highlight players’ names and e-mail yourself a snapshot of your Tiersheet. Check it out for H2H and roto formats.
• If you’re looking for authoritative lists of average draft positions, look no further than busersports.com.
• Having a hard time thinking of names for your fantasy basketball teams? FantasyTeamNames.net can help.

• 

  Check out these links. (Stefano A/Flickr)

  I recently had my debut in Dime magazine’s print edition with my 2010-11 fantasy basketball preview. By the time it went to print there were already a few things I wish I could’ve changed, but I still stand by the vast majority of it.

• To continue the vanity, here are my posts on DimeMag.com about risk vs. reward players, and the 10 most intriguing fantasy basketball players with new teams this season.
• The guys at Give Me The Rock unveiled a podcast discussion about the Miami Heat. All three guys have wonderful radio voices. Patrick also posted his list of this year’s breakout players.
• Yahoo’s Roto Arcade is killing it with the stuff they’re putting out lately. Check out their head-to-head guiding principles, roto strategy primer and life-after-Don Nelson overview.
• Over at Weakside Help, Henry challenges many owners’ perceptions of delicate guys like Andrew Bogut and Troy Murphy.
• Lester’s Legends has a list of value picks that can help you win the three-point category.
• You want position rankings? Head over to Rotoprofessor (small forwards) and Damn Lies & Statistics (point guards).
• As always, Fantasy Basketball Daily has your daily dose of fantasy basketball news and notes.
• I’d like to end this post with a non-fantasy basketball item, but one I think most of you will enjoy: Brett Favre recently getting hit in his now-infamous groin with a football. Read into this what you will.

If Scalabrine can win a championship, why can't you?

October is here and with training camp in full swing, it’s finally time to unveil my completely subjective list of the top 300 fantasy basketball players for 2010-11.

The link to the page of rankings will always be found at the top of this site.

The rankings are based on nine categories, and a link to the Google Spreadsheet version of the list is available. You can download it in several formats (PDF, HTML, CSV, etc.), and if you’d like to save your own editable copy of the online spreadsheet, just click on “File” then “Make a copy.” This will allow you to sort columns and edit cells to your heart’s content.

That’s pretty much it.

If you want other perspectives, I recommend taking a gander at the rankings offered by Give Me The Rock, busersports.com, MFBarkley and ESPN.com.