I’m torn here…do I drop Dudley for Frye? Frye took more shots last night than Dudley, but it also seems like Frye has more competition for playing time than Dudley does. (asts = 2pts, other stats = 1pt, TOs = -1pt)

God UTA needs to trade Favors, he is rotting on the bench… I wish my Wizards would grab him.. we could use more bigs.

It’s the “who do you trust less” game of chicken! I honestly think they’ll be about even with your league settings, so go with the guy you feel more confident (less afraid?) about. Both tend to put up lines that are all over the place, so you’ll be cursing out one of them no matter what. 

Hey guys, I’m in a long-term keeper league where you can keep any 3 players for the next season (and for multiple seasons after that if you want).  I just joined the league this year and other teams are pretty stacked (i.e. LBJ, CP3, DRose and the ability to keep them for multiple seasons), but was the lucky one to pluck up Jeremy Lin.  My keepers so far are looking like P Gasol / Danny Granger and then one of Ginobili, Iggy, or Lin.

My main question is I was just offered Kev Martin for Lin.  Is Kev Martin a better 3′rd keeper option that Lin/Ginobili/Iggy?

 Hello there! Long time reader here and you guys are definitely one of the reasons why I’ve been doing pretty well in fantasy basketball so far. However my team has been hit with a ton of injuries as of late and I was wondering if you could maybe do an analysis of my team? I only ask this because I have not done very well the last three weeks due to my team not being at full strength. So I’m wondering how well my team competes if they were all healthy.

Kevin Durant
Eric Gordon
John Wall
Joe Johnson
Greg Monroe
Tony Parker
Kyrie Irving
Barganani
Budinger
Ryan Anderson
Jonas jErkeofokf
NIkola pevovic
Jeremy Lin

THanks!

 oh yea i forgot its a 12 team daily yahoo default settings h2h league!
and some maybe notable? free agents are spencer hawes and maybe tahts about it lol

I’m thinking of trading my ellis for Drose. Do you think this is a good trade?

Dynasty league question: my PG’s are Rubio, Holiday, and Conley. J. Lin was just dropped because the team had too many PG’s. I feel like Conley is at or near his ceiling. I am in first and a lock for the Playoffs. Would you drop Conley for Lin in this situation?

Just in terms of keeper value, I’d keep Lin. It’s tough to impossible to predict what Lin is going to do the rest of the season, but I’d rather have Iggy as a keeper than Martin. So if Lin craps out, you can keep Iguodala. And on the off chance that Lin is actually as good as he’s played this past week, you’ll still get to keep him. 

 It really depends on your team’s specific needs, but on face value alone and with news that there’s no structural damage to his back, and with Rose being 12 spots higher than Ellis on our rater, I would pull that trigger and hope he recovers to 100% after some rest during all-star break.

Yeah, I’d absolutely make that trade. Rose’s back is obviously a concern, but from everything I’ve been reading it’s not a major injury and he should be back on the court soon. It’s not enough of a problem to pass on the chance to get one of the league’s best PGs. 

We have not done a Melo projection yet. It’d be a bit of a guessing game with Lin, mostly because we have so little data to go on with Lin at this point. We do know he’s a competent PG who is a decent passer and can run a pick an roll (unlike the Knicks other PGs this year), so the best thing to do might be to go back to last season after Melo got traded to the Knicks and he was running with Billups at the point. Not that Billups and Lin are anything alike, but at least they are both actual PGs. 

Anyway, looking at Melo’s stats on Hoopdata http://hoopdata.com/player.aspx?name=Carmelo%20Anthony you can see that this season he’s taking a lot more long 2′s than last season and he’s getting assisted much less often on them. That means a lot more isolations for Melo this season, which are resulting in a lot more bad long jumpers. The lack of a PG also means that his assists are up by over 1 a game over last season.

So I think you are correct that Lin is likely going to help Melo bump up his FG% and threes, and as a result, I think his scoring might see a slight increase. The assists will probably also drop to around what they were last season.

I see Melo as a trade target for the right price. He’s down around 35 on our rater at the moment and I’d suspect that playing along Lin bumps him back up into the teens somewhere. If you can get him on the low right now, go for it.

I’ll hit you up with an analysis of your team in a few. 

Holiday is the drop there and its not even close IMO…

Awesome response and glad I was on the right track. I’m toying with a Felton/Noah 2 for 1 to start with. Melos owner has injuries galore so you never know. What do you think of this offer/ any better suggestions?

Glad we’ve been able to help you out this year! We’ll see what we can do to keep it going.

Ok, comparing your team to the average team in your league (assuming all your players are healthy including Bargnani and swapping in Greivis Vasquez for Gordon), this the percentage better or worse you are on a weekly basis compared to league average. Note I am using the 2011-12 YTD stats with some adjustments for recent play over the last week or two. 

pts 26%
reb 5%
ast 24%
stl 3%
blk -22%
to -24%
3pm 6%
fgp 4%
ftp 5%

So what this is saying, your team is 24% better in points than the average team in your league. So, the two big things I see are 1) you’ve got a really good team when healthy and 2) the injuries have been killing you, especially Bargnani and Gordon. Dropping Gordon was a good start (and Vasquez seems like a decent fit with your team), now you’ll only have to play a man down until Bargnani gets back. Obviously, he is a key to your strength in scoring and threes, so you’ll still have a bit of a rough time even with him out.

According to the National Post, most of Bargnani’s rehab is occurring in a pool right now, so I’d guess he’s not back until after the all-star break. http://sports.nationalpost.com/2012/02/12/forget-il-mago-andrea-bargnani-has-a-new-nickname/

But I think if you can survive until he gets back, you should have strong team if you ever get healthy. Good luck!

Dropping Lin? That’s crazy  

As Erik, mentioned I would really try to get Lin without dropping any of the guys you listed. Have anyone else you could drop? Even if you temporarily have too many PGs yourself, you could definitely flip Conley for a potential non-PG top-50 or 60 player. That’s what I’d try to do.

In terms of keep value, our projection system that we used to forecasting player performance this year really doesn’t like Jrue Holiday for some reason, but I could see wanting to keep him around since he’s a 21-year old PG still learning on the job. But Conley is ranked 40 on our player rater so far this season 
http://rater.givemetherock.com/ so he’s got a lot of value for sure. And of course, in a dynasty league setup, Rubio has the most value of all.

Comparing your team to the average team in your league (assuming all your players are healthy including Brook Lopez), this the percentage better or worse you are on a weekly basis compared to league average. Note I am using the 2011-12 YTD stats with some adjustments for recent play over the last week or two. 

Also, I am assuming you play in a standard 12 team daily changes league. Let me know if that is not correct.

pts 23%
reb 9%
ast 24%
stl 21%
blk -21%
to -12%
3pm -12%
fgp 5%
ftp 1%

So what this is saying, your team is 23% better in points than the average team in your league. So, assuming you are not full health (which has not been the case all year) you’ve got a pretty strong looking team that I like. Your bigs don’t really block shots and your guards don’t take a lot of threes, but otherwise things are looking good for you. I think the big thing for you at this point is just waiting for Lopez to get back on the court. He’ll obviously be a huge help to your team. 

Since threes aren’t your thing, I would actually considering trading someone like Ryan Anderson. He’s got more value to someone else than you since you are not likely to win threes anyway. You could target a more traditional big man (boards/blocks) like Al Jefferson or Marcin Gortat if you wanted. 

Other than that, I think it’s just waiting it out until Lopez returns. Good luck!

Yeah, tough one man. There is no one on your team that I’d really want to drop, even in an 8 team league. Honestly, I’d try to quickly flip Conley or another PG maybe in a 2-for-1 situation to try and free up a roster spot.

3% isn’t much – that’s probably 2 more steals a weak. Basically, that category could either way for you on a week to week basis depending on the strength of the other team. Once you start approaching 20%, that’s a real strength or weakness for your team. In terms of something like blocks, it means your averaging about 7-8 blocks less a week than your opponent, so it’s likely that you’d either have to get lucky or have a weak opponent in blocks to win. 

In an H2H league, there are definitely times when it’s better to forget about a category or two and just focus in on the remaining categories. As long as your team goes 5-4 every week you’ll win a championship. It ain’t pretty, but sometimes it’s necessary when you’ve got a bunch of injuries.