Yep: No. 1 in career rankings and No. 1 over the last decade.
Of course, given how the decade began, it certainly didn’t feel like it was headed in that direction. In fact, the first few years felt like a pretty accurate representation of the previous decade: extreme highs, maddening lows, and just enough chaos to make me question why I don’t just autodraft.
I opened the decade at 6-7, earning the No. 6 seed. I surprised No. 3 seed Don in the quarterfinals, but had no answer for Jeff in the semifinals, losing 1,816-1,496.
The next two seasons were just ugly. I went 5-8 and missed the playoffs in 2017, then followed that up with a 4-9 record and a dead-last finish. At that point, I wasn’t competing with Calderon for the top spot in the 10-year rankings. I was challenging Griff for last, as the journey to No. 1 needed to include a brief detour through the basement.
Then came 2019, and everything changed.
A squad that never felt particularly great at the beginning, especially after a 2-2 start, somehow transformed into the greatest team in league history. I would not lose another game all year, winning 12 straight. I topped 1,600 points in 10 of those 12 contests and never scored fewer than 1,413. In the postseason, my average margin of victory was a ridiculous 749 points per contest. For the regular season and postseason combined, I averaged 1,715 points per game. To this day, no other team has ever averaged 1,600.
Naturally, I followed that masterpiece with another very meh season, finishing 6-7 and earning the No. 6 seed. But I did upset No. 2 seed Eric in the quarterfinals and then No. 1 seed Calderon in the semifinals before falling to Jeff by 100 points in the finals. It was my first appearance in back-to-back title games since 1999-2000.
Still, even at that point, I was nowhere near the top of the rankings conversation. Despite the dominant championship in 2019, I wouldn’t have considered myself one of the top-half teams in the league. Through five years, I had one spectacular season and another solid playoff run, but that was it.
Then came the next five years.
They were truly dominant.
I would not suffer a losing season, producing double-digit wins three times. In total, I went 49-21, a .700 winning percentage. I finished first once, second twice and third once.
Unfortunately, too many of those seasons ended in brutal quarterfinal defeats. I fell to six-seed Jeff in the quarterfinals, my third playoff loss to Greenblatt in six years, followed by another quarterfinal defeat to seven-seed Matt, and then back-to-back quarterfinal losses to Michael in 2023 and 2024.
After dominating that weekend for years, the quarterfinals had apparently become my personal house of horrors.
Then came 2025.
With a squad I was convinced would finish last, I won 11 games, earned the No. 1 seed and finally got over the hump. Despite Calderon putting up 1,716 points in the quarterfinals, I somehow won by scoring 1,980. I then took down No. 4 seed Don in the semifinals, 1,602-1,176, before beating Bob in the finals, 1,925-1,444, to earn my second championship mug of the decade.
And that’s where the overall resume starts to look pretty ridiculous.
The raw numbers are outstanding: a 90-60 combined record (.600), the second-best winning percentage in the league, and an average standings finish of 5.10, third-best in the decade. But the most impressive number might be the scoring. I averaged 1,449 points per game, the most in the league. In fact, it’s the best average ever recorded by a team over a 10-year period.
The key component was postseason scoring. Despite those four miserable years of quarterfinal heartbreak, I still averaged a stunning 1,614 points per game in the playoffs.
I made the postseason in 80% of my seasons, tied for third-most in the league, and finished with a 9-6 playoff record (.600), fourth-best in the league.
I also had a record 67 games in which I scored more than 1,500 points. That’s 44.7% of all my games. I went 61-6 in those contests, a solid .911 winning percentage. Put another way, in roughly two-thirds of my victories this decade, I scored at least 1,500 points. When I crossed that threshold, the other team was basically playing for second place.
In the end, the battle for the No. 1 spot came down to me and Rich Calderon. He had more wins and was more consistent. I had more points, slightly better postseason success and one more championship. But the deciding factor was the head-to-head record. I went 10-4 against the winningest team of the decade, including a perfect 3-0 in the postseason.
And then there’s the random fun fact: If you want to be the best, you also need to absolutely demolish the worst. I did that, too. I went 23-2 against Griff and Don this decade. Both losses came against Griff, which means I went 13-0 against Don over the last 10 years. That’s the longest winning streak one team has over another.
So, how does a decade that began with three straight losing seasons end with me sitting at No. 1? Pretty simple: I survived the ugly years, produced arguably the greatest season in league history, turned into one of the most consistently dominant teams of the decade, piled up the most points anyone has ever averaged over a 10-year span, won two championships, and perhaps most importantly, owned Calderon when it mattered.
The decade wasn’t always pretty, and there were plenty of playoff exits that made me wonder if the semifinals had a restraining order against me. But when the decade is viewed as a whole, the résumé is hard to argue with: 90 wins, 1,449 points per game, two titles, a 10-4 record against Calderon, and the No. 1 ranking. After all the highs, lows, collapses, comebacks and occasional battles for last place, I somehow ended up exactly where I wanted to be: on top.