After more than five months of grueling season, here we are now with only a week left.  At this point strategy is just about done, and every team is just trying to finish out their games with the best production they can get.  I commend anyone that is still reading these articles and working on their teams for having the staying power to make it through, and I hope you had a great season.

In my Rotowire Rules league, it certainly looks like Xbox Allstars is going to hold on for the win.  After weeks of chasing him I'm only now even within 1000 points with a few more games to make up, so barring an epic sequence of events he's going to win it.  I'm more concerned with holding off Brickhouse Grinders and williamair1 for second place, as both of them are currently within 100 points of my team.  That battle will likely continue up until the last game of the year.

I hope that you guys have gotten some use from my articles, and I look forward to doing it again next year.  The NBA Stock Exchange remains one of the more unique and entertaining games out there, and it has been fun exploring some of the different ways to try to beat the market.  So, let's finish strong and end the year on a high note.

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.

This week the majority of the highest scorers were mid-priced players like Chris Bosh, Rajson Rondo or Andre' Iguodala.  For the week LeBron James and Kevin Durant were the best NBASE scorers of the High Priced Crew (average cost $55.55), and Dwyane Wade was also strong, but Kobe Bryant and Dwight Howard were merely average while Carmelo Anthony was pretty bad.  The Low Budget guys (average cost $14.76) actually outscored their high-priced competition pretty handily, once again led by now-familiar faces like Manu Ginobili, Stephen Curry, Andray Blatch and Troy Murphy.  If you don't have these four guys on your team you just really haven't been paying attention to this space for the last several weeks.

The cream has started to rise to the top as four of the members of the High Priced Crew (average cost $54.08) were among the top six scorers for the week.  The Budget Crew (average cost $11.52) hung tough, and were able to almost keep pace in-part because Kobe Bryant and to a lesser extent Carmelo Anthony lagged back from their "teammates".  Troy Murphy, Stephen Curry and Manu Ginobili are all making back-to-back appearances on the Budget Squad, indicating they are both explosive and consistent in their production.

• Troy Murphy $13.72 (LeBron James $83.70)
• Stephen Curry $17.50 (Kobe Bryant $60.29)
• Chris Kaman $13.07 (Dwight Howard $52.45)
• Manu Ginobili $14.43 (Kevin Durant $52.06)
• Tyrke Evans $16.28 (Dwyane Wade $47.39)
• Andray Blatche $13.56 (Carmelo Anthony $37.43)

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 (4/5 - 4/14): There are only 10 days left in the season, so let's cover them all here.  Almost everyone has either six games (15 teams) or five games (14 teams) remaining, with the Hornets as the only team with only four games remaining.

Daily Prospectors: There are no games at all on Monday April 5, then there are only two other days with fewer than six games:
Thursday (4/8) three games: Cavaliers/Bulls, Clippers/Kings, Lakers/Nuggets
Tuesday (4/13) four games: Celtics/Bulls, Jazz/Warriors, Kings/Lakers, Nuggets/Suns

Back-to-back schedule:

Monday/Tuesday
Two games: None
Zero games: Mavericks, Nuggets, Pacers, Clippers, Lakers, Heat, Timberwolves, Nets, Hornets, Magic, Suns, Trail Blazers

Tuesday/Wednesday
Two games: Hawks, Celtics, Bobcats, Pistons, Warriors, Rockets, Grizzlies, Bucks, Knicks, Thunder, 76ers, Spurs, Raptors, Jazz
Zero games: Lakers

Wednesday/Thursday
Two games: Nuggets, Clippers
Zero games: None

Thursday/Friday
Two games: Bulls, Cavaliers, Lakers
Zero games: Warriors

Friday/Saturday
Two games: Hawks, Celtics, Bobcats, Mavericks, Pistons, Pacers, Grizzlies, Bucks, Nets, 76ers, Spurs, Wizards
Zero games: None

Saturday/Sunday
Two games: Warriors
Zero games: Jazz

Sunday/Monday
Two games: Rockets, Heat, Timberwolves, Knicks, Thunder, Magic, Trail Blazers, Raptors
Zero games: Celtics, Jazz

Monday/Tuesday
Two games: Nuggets, Kings
Zero games: Cavaliers, Hornets

Tuesday/Wednesday
Two games: Celtics, Bulls, Warriors, Lakers, Suns, Jazz
Zero games: None

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. 

Manu Ginobili ($14.38): I don't care that Ginobili has been in this space for three straight weeks, he is still priced in the $14 range despite averaging 31 points, seven assists and five boards for the past week.  He's still underpriced.

Joakim Noah ($13.11) and Taj Gibson ($5.55): Noah is finally getting healthy and he and Gibson showed that they can co-exist on Saturday, when they combined to grab 31 rebounds between them. 

Anthony Morrow ($5.87):  Morrow is taking his turn again on the Warriors rags-to-riches merry-go-round, averaging 27 points with seven boards over the last three games.

Mike Miller ($6.03):  Miller is playing a do-everything role for the Wizards right now, scoring about 20 points with eight boards and four assists in his last three games.

Terrence Williams ($4.69):  Williams has been playing a larger distributing role for the Nets, with games of 14 and nine assists in his last three outings.

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.