See also: Fantasy tips, Game 3: No more tricks
What an outstanding start of the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague Playoffs! Only one team, FC Barcelona, managed to win both games at home. Partizan Mozzart Bet Belgrade became just the second team since the playoffs came back in 2005 to record back-to-back road wins at the start of a series. Maccabi Playtika Tel Aviv and Fenerbahce Beko Istanbul each recorded a road victory, stealing the home-court advantage from AS Monaco and Olympiacos Piraeus, respectively. A lot has happened, and the best is yet to come!
My team Gancedato had a good start of the playoffs, scoring 176.05 in Round 1, but not so good in Game 2. My sixth man Sertac Sanli of Barca scored negative points, and so did my head coach Georgios Bartzokas of Olympiacos. Even when I had a solid team captain in Barca star forward Nikola Mirotic, I ended up scoring 110.6 fantasy points, ranking 1,822nd overall out of over 110,000 teams. I would like to finish in the Top 1,500, which is around 50 points away from my current ranking. We will see.
Unlimited trading is allowed from now on until the end of the season, so I decided to start over and sell everybody but Vezenkov and Anthony Randolph of Real Madrid, his team's one and only option at power forward right now. I am getting five players stepping on court on Tuesday, and five more playing on Wednesday. My head coach will be Oded Kattash of Maccabi, as his team has a home winning record like no other this season.
Without Mathias Lessort, Alen Smailagic should see extended playing time and he will be my backup center. Since Kevin Punter is unavailable, too, I am going for Aleksa Avramovic, who has been red-hot lately. I am getting two star guards from Game 3 in Tel Aviv: Wade Baldwin of Maccabi and Jordan Loyd of Monaco. Aside from Vezenkov, I am buying Johnathan Motley and Nigel Hayes-Davis of Fenerbahce, Isaiah Taylor and Ignas Brazdeikis of Zalgiris Kaunas, and Mirotic.
You can take a look at my team here:
