The Week In Trends: All You Need Is Love Edition

Categorized as: Author: Patrick, Ballin Outta Control, Fantasy Basketball, Injuries
Posted on: February 11th, 2007

I’ll keep this intro short, as I’m sure your busy planning an elaborate Valentine’s Day tea party for your cats…

Most Improved on the Week

• Love is in the air. Not because of Valentine’s Day, but because Doug Christie is back the league. You can break your Christie jersey out of the closet again. Ok, he wasn’t worth owning in fantasy leagues in 2004, never mind 2007, but I thought it important to make you aware of this exciting development.




• Dwight Howard (seen last week on the downtrend) is still a little light on the rebounds, but he shot an incredible 85% this past week. And he made this sweet game-winning dunk:




• Shaun Livingston got the start for the Clippers on the 9th as Sam Cassell had the flu. He responded with an 11 point, 8 rebound, 4 assist, 4 steal game. Cassell still managed to outplay Livingston in that game though, so expect Livingston to go back on the bench once Cassell is healthy again.
• Shaq’s still working himself back into game shape after missing most of the season after knee surgery. He’s 204 on the rater as of today, thanks to a horrible FT% and some low rebounding numbers. One of those will likely improve, the other, not so much.
• I imagine that Jamal Crawford would be a frustrating player to have on your fantasy team. You might end up with 52 points or 6. If you own him, don’t pop him in and out of your lineup because you’ll never guess correctly, stick him in there and ride the good games with the bad.

Least Improved on the Week

• Unless you’re really desperate, it’s usually a good idea to sit out guys coming off an injury for a game or two until they shake off the rust. Example 1 is Brevin Knight, who in two games back from an abdominal injury, has played a total of 42 minutes and gone 0 for 9 from the field, scoring 1 point. Example 2 is Paul Pierce, who in his first game back for the Celtics, played 20 minutes and shot 4 of 16 for 9 points. On an unrelated note, the following is what Google suggested for me when I searched for Paul Pierce. I like how stab appears twice.




• They all can’t be winners – sometimes guys end up on this list due to a bad shooting week. Lamar Odom shot 35% on the week, Hedo Turkoglu shot an ugly 29%, Shane Battier had a 1 and 2-fer back to back, and Joe Johnson had a few bad percentage games on the week.
• If you visit the GMTR fora, you’ll see that Josh Childress is my “pet peeve player” – he’s ended up on my team every year he’s been in the league, and while player raters say he’s a decent fantasy play, I can’t stand looking at his daily line. Those 9 pts, 2 rebs, and 3 asts games make me hulk mad. I have no idea how he’s number 58 on the GMTR player rater right now – but he is – and he’s in my starting lineup.

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