The Week in Trends (11/18)

Categorized as: Ballin Outta Control, Fantasy Basketball, Injuries, Player News
Posted on: November 18th, 2006

It’s the week in trends – a look at the biggest movers up and down the GMTR player rankings over the past week.

Likely spurred on by my statement that the only worthy fantasy players on the Celtics are Paul Pierce and Wally Szczerbiak, both Kendrick Perkins and Delonte West found themselves part of the top 20 movers over the past week. Although I stand by my assertion as both are still bench fodder at most, it was a good week for both of them, especially Perkins, who notched a double-double on the 11th. Also on the list are a lot of veterans who got off to slow starts, like Peja Stojakovic, Jason Kidd, and Carmelo Anthony. I hope you weren’t worried about them after just 2 weeks and I really hope you didn’t trade them away on the cheap.

Deron Williams is absolutely going crazy right now – he averaged 24 points and 11 assists a game over the past week. I thought he consistently went too high in my league drafts, but it turns out he might be a draft day steal no matter where he was drafted. Miller is another point guard who had a great week, it was a little more inconsistent than Williams, but he averaged 10 assists and 2.5 steals a game. I took part in a league auction last month and we all laughed our asses off at the guy who paid way too much for Baron Davis. Not so fast. 18 assists! And he’s shooting 44% on the year! Still, how many games will he play? And to end this point guard paragraph is Tyronn Lue, who is getting 30+ minutes a game with Speedy Claxton out and has likely already been scooped up off wavers in your league.

As a Deng owner, I can personally vouch for his week, especially the double-doubles on 11/11 and 11/14. And hey, it’s a Mike Dunleavy sighting! With Murphy out, he played some minutes and threw in a few decent games. I still wouldn’t want him on my team. Reports of Antoine Walker’s death were apparently over-exaggerated. Occasionally, Erick Dampier actually puts forth effort on the court. No one understands why. Lawrence Roberts put together a consistent week of about 8/7 with a block for Memphis, but it’s tough to get excited about his 20 minutes a game. And finally, things appear to be looking up for Stoudemire owners – he played a season high 37 minutes on Friday.

On the other end of the spectrum is Earl Watson, who was really only buoyed up by two good games right at the start of the season. He is what he is, which is a backup point guard (see Darrell Armstrong, Shaun Livingston, Derek Fisher, etc). The only worse fantasy filler than the backup point guard is the team killing backup center. And speaking of centers, they’re a whole slew on them on this list, including pretenders like Etan Thomas and Ronny Turiaf, the supposedly solid vets Ilgauskas and Mohammed, and whatever Eddy Curry is (a center who doesn’t like to rebound or block shots?). Ilgauskas has got to be hurting, right? He’s practically fallen off the face of the earth.

To say that Rudy Gay had a bad week is like saying OJ Simpson’s new book may slightly be in bad taste. It was a disaster. With Eddie Jones out, he started Memphis’ last game, but only played 11 minutes. And how about the vets? A change of scenery for Battier didn’t appear to do much to his game, he’s still as inconsistent as he was with the Grizzles. Drew Gooden made 7 of his 28 shots on the week. Turkoglu’s shooting was only a little better (14 of 41). Larry Hughes is hurt and out and Vladimir Radmanovic might as well be hurt based on the way he’s been playing.

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