I joined earlier... although the whole 'teams' thing seems rather pointless, imo. The only thing mildly interesting about it is the fact that it essentially allows you to compete with other people in your team for positions on the board.

You're doing it wrong. It should really be along with any other options you like, which should be placed before the http.
Although, if you want to make it even easier on yourself, use the GUIminer. That miner works faster than regular command line miners for me and is much, much easier to get working. You just press 'start' and it goes, basically.