It’s that time of year, when the playoffs commence and the fantasy season winds down. That means it’s time to try to remember what we do to make life bearable for five empty months every year. It’s time to try to save our marriages and get reacquainted with the kids. And it’s also time to start the annual awards.

Each year I’ll tip my hat to some of the season’s most remarkable performers. Next time I’ll bestow to the coveted Ira Newble Award and the Donyell Marshall Trophy. This time I’ll hand out two pieces of precious hardware: The Brad Miller Cup and the Troy Hudson Medal.

The Hudson medal goes to the greatest overachiever of the season, the magical dude who rewarded his owners by exceeding expectations the most this fantasy campaign. The Miller Cup is the yin to its yang; it goes to the treacherous slug who most ruined the lives of fantasy owners by underperforming expectations.

I don’t simply hand out this precious hardware based on unscientific subjective judgments; I did things mathematically. Judging the players’ performance for the year was the easy part, but to get a handle on preseason expectations I used the auction values assigned by ESPN/NBA at the start of the season. I then computed players’ true values for the year, in dollar terms, to see which players most deviated from their projected scores.

The Hudson medal is named for the great point guard who was once such a valuable cog for the DireWolves, my fantasy squad. In 2002, anticipating a surge in minutes due to a change of scenery, I nabbed Hudson in the 11^th round. The results:

Ahh Troy, where are you now when I need you in the playoffs?

I know Hudson leaves big shoes to fill, but this year there are some worthy candidates who deserve the mantle of his greatness. Without further ado, the top candidates in this year’s Hudson competition are:

The Curry has definitely been hot this season; congratulations to those owners who feasted on him. Stephen, you look like a keeper for many years to come—or at least until Don Nelson is finally fired and a legitimate coach slows the pace down and takes some of the air out of your game.

Curry is a rookie so there’s no baseline to compare him against, but let’s look at the last two seasons of the most improved veterans, Al Horford and Andrew Bogut:

BTW, yes that is Greg Oden on the list. He’s an interesting case in that he could just as easily be given the Miller Cup for disappointment. But for the purposes of this award I don’t think it’s fair to rule guys out on the basis of injuries. What counts in my eyes is what they did on the court, and Oden was producing when he went down. Also note that preseason expectations for Oden were quite low, at least in ESPN/NBA’s eyes.

Now it’s time to avert our gaze from the luminaries on the red carpet in front of the Kodak theater and move down Hollywood Boulevard. Here, in a filthy alleyway full of stray cats and garbage dumpsters, the recipient of the Miller Cup will slouch in with a paper bag over his head and collect his hardware.

The Miller Cup is named for the shameful player who lured me into drafting him in the fourth round in 2006. I thought I was getting a steal; instead I got no steals. To go along with no points, no boards, no assists…

Doing the Miller Cup finalists is a bit tricky, since the most worthless players are guys who would never be on a team. (Ironically, the most feeble joke of a “player” was another Curry, this time by the name of Eddie, who was worth negative 70 dollars.) So I’ll consider only guys who were worth something, even one dollar, at the start of the season.

Again there’s the question of whether injuries should count. In this case, Chris Paul (whom I spent $94 on) may be the biggest disaster of the 2009-2010 season. But fair is fair; let’s consider guys who stunk it up on the court, not off it.

The nominees are:

Dwight Howard is perhaps a special case; he was vastly overrated undoubtedly due to faulty calculation of his dreadful free throw, not due to the fact that his stats were about to stink. (I am on a one-man campaign to save you from drafting Howard next year.)

Ben and Michael certainly left their owners Redd-faced with embarrassment, but the top two players you might actually have on your team at this point are Jefferson and Calderon. Their stats in the last two years:

I think I’ll skip Howard and leave out a couple of the more obscure dudes, awarding the prize to Jefferson. Al “George” Jefferson, you’re moving on down, to the least side, where you finally got a piece of the pie (in your face)…

So there you have it, the Miller Cup and the Hudson award. Of course, while knowing who won the awards this year is interesting, the trick is to know who next year’s winners are—prior to draft day. For that, you’ll just have to start reading this column next fall...