People continue to doubt me on this column. I received an unprintable message essentially telling me that anyone following my advice on who not to draft too high would ruin their draft.

I have been playing Fantasy Basketball since the days when you had to figure everything out by hand. In the past 8 years, I’ve never finished lower than the top 3 in a season, and I’ve won the past three seasons in my league. (Last year I played in 4 leagues, which is way too many to actually keep track of all of your players, and I won in my primary league and placed in the top 3 in the rest of them.)

With that digression, I better explain my logic on the one player which continues to stir up the most controversy. I could provide similar logic for Yao Ming (though I think he could potentially creep into being worthy of a first round pick if he can ever manage to stay healthy) or many of the other listed players.

I don’t want this column to run too long, so I will pick the one player who everybody tries to call me on every year.

Dwyane Wade

Dwyane Wade is a great young player. He is a great team player. He has already won one championship and he was voted the MVP of the NBA Finals, and deservedly so. He makes a good percentage of his field goals and free throws. He scores a lot of points. His rebounds are decent for a guard. He has a good amount of steals. That is all fantastic in the real NBA.

Fantasy NBA is NOT the real NBA.

The big problems stats-wise are that he doesn’t take any three pointers, his blocks are not very high (as they never are for guards), and he gets a whole lot of turnovers. His assists are often good when he is playing point guard, but he is only sometimes playing point guard. His rebounds are good for a guard, but not necessarily compared with the starting forwards.

All of these aren’t huge problems, though.

The BIGGEST problem is that he falls down six times and gets up seven.

I’ll put it in plain English for those of you who still don’t get it.

HE GETS INJURED TOO MUCH TO BE WORTH A FIRST ROUND DRAFT PICK. Your first round pick CANNOT be injury prone. You need him playing at least 70 games a year — 80+ would be preferable. You CANNOT win if your top player does not play.

Of course, even if he did play 82 games (and he won’t), he would only be worth a second round pick because he doesn’t take threes and turns the balls over too much.

So unless you play in a league with rules that do not include three points shots made or turnovers, you should not pick Dwyane Wade in the first round of your fantasy draft.