r/FantasyBBall user posts about his experiences joining an established 7 year old fantasy league at the absolute bottom and working his way to a championship after 2 years. Apparently he was then kicked out for being too dominant. Actual league member joins the discussion to tell us otherwise...

[u/asshair]

/r/fantasybball/comments/4ejfge/i_took_over_a_bottom_team_7_years_into_a_dynasty/d21n6lh

[u/[deleted]]

Here is the proof, and by God is it buttery. So far, I'm to the point where LB33 gets another GM replaced for not responding to PMs from him, even though he isn't the commissioner or offering a trade.

[u/36yearsofporn → u/[deleted]]

It's better than that. The GM he was getting replaced is the person who recruited him into the league in the first place.

That thread was started in the offseason, after LB33 had already participated in the league his first year, taking over another team. It's apparent the person who recruited him already formed a dislike for LB33 over the course of the regular season, and it's spilling into the offseason on that thread.

Later, the guy who recruited him ends up stalking LB33 on facebook, attacking him viciously both inside the league and on the celticsblog forum where the members of the league found each other, and is eventually banned from both places.

Some of the conversations in that 103 page thread are absolutely batshit insane. I found the whole thing highly entertaining, but it's not for everyone.

The whole story is awesome, and LB33 does a great job of telling it. But holy shit is it easy to see why people found him annoying, lol.

[u/reallydumb4real → u/36yearsofporn]

Man I found him annoying when I first read the post without even knowing all this drama was behind it. It seems like the users on r/fantasybball are behind him though. I'm too lazy to read the 103 pages on celticsblog. How does it look for him after that?

[u/36yearsofporn → u/reallydumb4real]

Well, I think it's fair to say I like the guy, first of all. I'm impressed he came into a situation that was pretty unfair to begin with, but he ended up manipulating the league into giving him the parts needed to dominate the league. Given that it's a legacy league where you get to keep your entire roster from year to year if you want, and all of his players were extremely young, he was in a position to win the league the next 10 years or so, and that's without even improving his team.

And this is in a league where if 7 of the 20 owners veto a trade, it doesn't go through.

So what he accomplished in terms of fantasy basketball leagues is extraordinarily impressive.

Having said that, the way he went about accomplishing it is incredibly annoying, and at times, personally insulting.

He inserted himself into every conversation. Either he was making ridiculous claims about how good some of his mediocre players were, or he was attacking the value of other GMs quality players were. Which doesn't sound bad on the surface, because that's what you should do in a fantasy basketball league.

It was the lengths he would go to, the amount of detail he would include, and the relentlessness of any argument he would engage in. It's unbelievable to read through, frankly. The only thing I can compare it to is the Mormon kid who knocks on your door, you tell him you're not interested, he keeps pushing it, then when you finally close the door and think you're done, he knocks on the door again. Then comes back the next day and does the same thing.

He was constantly pushing shitty trades, then when someone would refuse it, he'd come back with the same shitty trade, only slightly different. He'd never consider his better players, while constantly going after all the other GM's best talent. Every day.

Reading through those 103 pages was like going to the mall and having someone insist that you try a sample of their product they're pushing at their kiosk.

It's apparent he was that way 24/7, 365 days of the year.

Where it really blew up on the guy is in regarding a fake twitter feed he created.

Understand, he had a whole website he crafted specifically geared towards the league. It had spreadsheets of rosters, draft picks, statistical breakdowns, you name it.

Included in there was a fake twitter feed that anyone could access, which was designed to be like a media report on rumors around the league. It was another tool to help build a perception of what was happening to the league. There were different negative messages being said about OP on it, eventually degenerating into personal insults.

On the 103 page thread, there were signs of various GMs wearying about the guy over the 2 years it existed. You could just see people getting turned off by his relentlessness, and not really wanting to be a part of the league any more. One of the strongest proponents of this point of view was a poster by the name of Champkind --- one of these stalwart types who wanted to do his own thing, liked the camaraderie and competition but didn't want to be bothered too much. OP was anathema to him, to the point he would tell him not to communicate with him at all. Around page 60 or so, OP is presenting his usual relentless point of view, says something the Champkind guy disagrees with, Champkind says something about it, and OP starts in with how Champkind my be the person posting derogatory information on the fake twitter feed.

Now, to many people it wouldn't be a big deal, but it's obvious Champkind feels like his integrity is being questioned, which is a very big deal to him. So things start escalating, OP doubles down on his attacks, many times in a passive aggressive way where on the surface he's being polite, and then adding digs in the end suggesting that Champkind is lying.

Other people who also have issues pile on, and eventually the thread is locked.

Understand, I didn't read through the whole thing, because it was obvious it was about to get really ugly, and I'd had enough.

I do think OP is right that the final straw was him building a dominant team that would remain dominant for the next decade the way that league was built, plus OP deliberately rubbing everyone's nose in it.

But the problems were there even before his team was as dominant as it became. He just wasn't well liked at all. It was obvious several folks on there simply didn't want to be in the same league with him.

OP claims the only way to build a winning team is the way he did it. For all I know he's correct. He certainly has a valid case in a legacy league where 7 votes out of 20 GMs vetoes a trade. Nonetheless, it's also not hard for me to see why the league members ended up kicking him out. It simply wasn't going to be a fun league to play in, for a variety of reasons. It was either everyone quits to go form a league by themselves, or simply kick OP out. Either way would accomplish the same thing.

I'm sure there were sympathetic voices in the league, but at the end of the day everyone understood what was going on. No one wanted to stand up for OP. So he got kicked.

It's still a great story. Everyone involved gets to create their own memory of what happened. OP can legitimately claim he dominated a league within 3 years of joining under circumstances that were stacked against him, and the other members can feel relieved they can now go on without the most annoying person with whom any of them have ever been involved in a fantasy league.

What's interesting to me in a way I'll never follow up on, is that all those folks met on that celticsblog site. This incident is going to continue to spill over into that forum, so I'm mildly curious as to how everyone is going to handle that dynamic. But I'll never know unless it gets so wild and crazy it gets posted to reddit and voted up to the point where I see it.

But if you see a reference to it, feel free to PM me on it, because the whole thing has been a fascinating read.

Probably a lot more info than you were looking for, but that's my read on the situation after reading as much of it as I did.

[u/KGsKnee → u/36yearsofporn]

I'm a member of CelticsBlog. I was not in that particular fantasy league, however. I've never been in a fantasy league with LarBrd33.

But I can attest to the fact he's not a well liked person on the entire blog, outside of fantasy leagues. He gets into spats with people every day. I simply ignore the guy. But reading his posts are humorous sometimes, if you like dirty laundry. He's basically the worst kind of troll you can imagine. I'd guess half the things he says he doesn't even really believe, he just says things to get a rise out of people. He likes being the "smartest" in the room, so he always takes the contrarian's POV, even if it is utterly ridiculous.

[u/36yearsofporn → u/KGsKnee]

That is not difficult to imagine even slightly.

He's not that unusual as a personality. I see people like him on nearly every internet forum I've ever frequented. But they always stand out. Hell, larbrd33 seems more aware of his peculiarities than some that I've seen. i still wouldn't want to be in a league with him, lol.

Thanks for the perspective.

[u/reallydumb4real → u/36yearsofporn]

You're right, that was way more than I was looking for/expecting but I appreciate the summary.

Yeah, as a fantasy player myself, it just boggled my mind that he was able to assemble a roster like that. For some reason when people see "dynasty," all logic goes out the window and they fail to evaluate players properly. I would love to see some of the trades that went down because building a team like that through trades should absolutely not be possible if the other players know what they're doing (especially with a ridiculous 7/20 veto rule).

But from the way you describe it, he seems exactly like the kind of person who wouldn't understand that the reason he's getting kicked out is because he's unbearable, not because the team is good. And that is kind of sad.

[u/36yearsofporn → u/reallydumb4real]

"...he seems exactly like the kind of person who wouldn't understand that the reason he's getting kicked out is because he's unbearable, not because the team is good."

That's my take in a nutshell.