As the NBA season hits its most exciting point, we put another fantasy season in the books and hand out a little more hardware. It wasn’t an easy year for owners to navigate their way to a championship. Injuries, trades and ineffectiveness were rampant among the game’s best players, which put an added premium on an owner’s ability to find sleepers and pick through free agents.

Where it was inconvenient for Kevin Garnett’s production to be scaled back in Boston or for Yao Ming to suffer a season-ending foot injury, there were convenient arrivals of players like Rudy Gay, Danny Granger and Hedo Turkoglu. In 2008-09 more than ever, the middle of the player pool spurred owners’ championship runs, not necessarily their primetime draft picks. Read more »