Fantasy Blogs  |  The Hoops Market  |  

For most of the season I have been like the typical parent, saying "do as I say, not as I do".  In this space I break down all of the matchups and give NBASE insights to you guys, but I didn't actually start following my own advice regularly until about a month ago.  At that time my team had fallen to between eighth and tenth in my league, and I was a few thousand points behind the leader.

But now?  In the immortal words of Vince Vaughn: "Now it's a party!"  As of Sunday I have moved up to third in my league and into the top-2000 overall.  And rising.  I'm within 300 points of the second-place team, and even the leader who I had somewhat given up on catching, is now coming back to the pack a bit.  He's still got a 1900 point lead on me, but considering he was up by more than 2700 points less than two weeks ago and there's still more than a month left…you never know.

So, what does this mean to you?  First of all, let me reiterate something that I introduced last week: the most important section to read in this article for the rest of the season is 'Team Building', followed by 'Value Stocks' with 'Beating the Market' now trailing the pack.  It is good to somewhat keep an eye on the schedule, but the biggest benefit of knowing who plays a lot of games in any given week is to try to take advantage to build fast money. 

Well, the time for that strategy has passed.  Hopefully you built your squad's finances early in the year, but right now your main focus should be on putting together the best possible team that you can afford (all twelve roster spots if possible, but definitely all nine starting spots) and sticking with it barring chances for obvious upgrades or injuries.  Your finance level is pretty much what it's going to be at this point, now you've got to try to make the points push to move up the rankings.

So why the 'Team Building' and 'Value Stocks'?  Because if you follow those sections weekly you should be able to get a feel for what moderate-to-cheap priced players are consistently producing at the level of the big dogs.  Anyone reading this, unless you have a $400 budget and can afford to just fill your team with high-priced studs, there is absolutely no excuse for you to not have players like Darren Collison and Stephen Curry on your team.  They are on the "Budget Team" in the Team Building section pretty much every week, which means every week they are producing like that $40 players for their $10 - $15 price tags.  Fill your team up with guys like this, ride their hot streaks into the ground, and when they cool off swap them out for the new hot players.  That's what this game is all about…find value, use that value, then swap that value for an upgrade.  This is what is helping me close the gap on the leaders, and hopefully it'll help your teams finish strong as well.

Team Building: Weekly scoring trends for bargain shoppers

Through this season I will identify the highest priced players in the league, and then give you alternative players that produced at a similar level but with a much lower price tag.  The point is to show that spending your entire budget on the high priced players isn't the best use of your money.

Dwyane Wade returned from a calf injury on Sunday, so for the first time in a while all of the High Priced Players (average cost $51.99) are playing at the same time.  I'm not convinced that they are all fully healthy, though, as Carmelo Anthony had an awful week and Wade didn't perform to his standards either in his return. 

On the other hand, the value players (average cost $15.27) are balling right now.  Andray Blatche has stepped up to become a legitimate fantasy superstar, averaging almost the same number of points as LeBron James since moving into the starting line-up.  This is likely Russell Westbrook's last week in this section, as his price tag has been right at the $17.50 cutoff for about a week now and as of Monday he had moved up over $18.

That brings up another point as well.  In this section I talk about the very high-priced (over $35) and the very low-priced (under $17.50) players but there are also many moderate-priced players who cost somewhere in between those boundaries that could help your team.  Zach Randolph, for example, was a former Budget All Star before he played his price tag up into the low $20s.  Just because you don't see his name in this space doesn't mean he isn't still a great buy for that price, as he still has a steady spot on my own team.  In fact, if you have a slightly larger budget it could behoove you to spend most of your money on these moderate-priced players since they tend to be a bit more consistent than the Budget guys without completely breaking the bank.

• Stephen Curry $15.28  (LeBron James $73.06)
• Russell Westbrook $17.49(Kobe Bryant $59.04)
• Andrew Bogut $16.74 (Dwight Howard $55.32)
• Brendan Haywood $12.78  (Kevin Durant $46.47)
• Andray Blatche $12.31 (Carmelo Anthony $39.46)
• Chauncey Billups $17.00 (Dwyane Wade $38.57)

Beating the Market: the week ahead

Two short-term strategies have emerged to try to beat the market.  One is to pick up players that are going to play a lot of games in a given week, to maximize short-term profit vs. production without having to worry much about player locks and rising commissions.  The other is to schedule on a daily basis, paying attention to players that play back-to-back games and/or play on days with not very many games scheduled that might see daily spikes in price.  Each strategy can be good for making money in a hurry, but you need to really stay on top of things for it to work.  So in this space, I will give you the information that you need to adopt either strategy for the upcoming week. 

Weekly prospectors (3/1 - 3/7):  Most of the league (18 teams) plays four games this week, with ten teams playing three times (Bulls, Heat, Bucks, Nets, Hornets, Trail Blazers, Spurs, Raptors, Jazz, Wizards).  The Timberwolves only play twice this week, but they don't have many viable options anyway with Al Jefferson suspended the next two games (DUI discipline).

Daily Prospectors: There are two days this week with fewer than six games:
Tuesday (3/2) four games: Celtics/Pistons, Warriors/Heat, Kings/Thunder, Pacers/Lakers
Thursday (3/4) three games: Grizzlies/Bulls, Lakers/Heat, Jazz/Suns

Back-to-back schedule:

Monday/Tuesday
Two games: None
Zero games: Bucks, Timberwolves, Nets, Wizards

Tuesday/Wednesday
Two games: Celtics, Pistons, Warriors, Pacers, Thunder, Kings
Zero games: Bulls, Spurs, Raptors, Jazz

Wednesday/Thursday
Two games: Grizzlies, Suns
Zero games: Spurs, Raptors

Thursday/Friday
Two games: Lakers
Zero games: Rockets, Timberwolves, Trail Blazers

Friday/Saturday
Two games: Hawks, Bobcats, Cavaliers, Mavericks, Warriors, Pacers, Clippers, Bucks, Nets, Knicks, Spurs
Zero games: Trail Blazers

Saturday/Sunday
Two games: Rockets
Zero games: Hornets

Sunday/Monday
Two games: None
Zero games: Bobcats, Bulls, Pacers, Clippers, Heat, Bucks, Suns, Jazz

Value stocks

The market moves so fast that by the time this article comes out many of the player values will have already changed.  Nevertheless, these are some players worth keeping your eyes on. 

Brendan Haywood ($12.31): Haywood has been a consistent double-double since joining the Mavs, especially after Erick Dampier went down again with injury.  Haywood doesn't miss many shots, hardly ever turns the ball over, and has been good for three to four combined blocks and steals per game. 

Andray Blatche ($12.31): As alluded to above, Blatche has been putting up fantasy MVP numbers since moving into the starting line-up.  Over the last week he has scored about 28 points with 13 boards, four assists, two blocks and two steals per game.  At this price tag he is a must-buy.

Al Harrington ($9.13): Harrington went on a scoring binge this weekend, scoring 68 points in two games spread over about a 24 hour period.  With the dust settling after the busy trade deadline, it appears that the Knicks intend for Tracy McGrady to be the lead scorer.  But since McGrady's knee is still tricky, Harrington seems to be the guy that gets tabbed to pick up the scoring slack when T-Mac is slowed.

Tayshaun Prince ($5.55): Prince started off the season slowed by injuries, but in recent weeks he seems to have recovered his form.  He is playing big minutes and contributing across the board these days, averaging 16.2 points, 7.0 boards, 4.4 assists, and 2.0 combined blocks and steals in 40 minutes per game over his last five outings.

CJ Watson ($3.83): Watson got sick last week and missed a game, but he returned on Saturday with another strong game in 45 minutes of play.  Monta Ellis continues to be in-and-out of the line-up with various ailments, and Watson is still in the right place on the right team to put up great numbers for his ultra cheap price tag.

The views expressed by RotoWire.com represent only the views of  the writers; they do not represent the views of the NBA or any NBA  team.