The Basketball Diaries: Thursday, March 10th
Welcome to another edition of the Basketball Diaries.
This article is a reflection upon the previous night’s lineup in an effort to improve player selection moving forward.
Before we can learn what to do right in a process, we need to figure out what we’ve done wrong in the past. That is the focus of this piece.
Mario Chalmers
So the injury ended up being a disappointing ending to his night, but he still produced enough fantasy points at his salary that he didn’t kill your roster. Not to mention the fact that his ownership percentages were through the roof, so you weren’t going to gain much from him with a monster game anyhow.
Jrue Holiday
With the price tag having crept up to the highest it’s been all year long, his ownership took a bit of a dip. More people faded him then I thought would. I was on the fence about him all the way up until I heard the news that Norris Cole wasn’t going to play. At that point I knew he was going to play all the minutes he can handle and was going to take the second-most shots on this team. He became a must-play in all formats.
James Harden
I only really had enough salary cap to play one super expensive stud. I really wanted LeBron James and/or Chris Paul, but there were other players at those positions that I felt like I could substitute in and get some decent production. The only other guys at shooting guard that I really liked were too expensive, like Dwyane Wade.
Devin Booker
The Devin Booker pick ended up being really productive, butt I tried like hell to get Dwyane Wade on this team as my second shooting guard. Booker is a really tough player to roster on a cash team because he depends solely on his shooting. It’s been good lately and that’s what put him on my radar, but when he goes cold he does absolutely zero in the other categories and will put up a dud. But since I really didn’t want to come off of Dwight Howard, I didn’t have any room to open up salary cap to get Wade on here.
Matt Barnes
With all the injuries in Memphis, I just felt like there was going to be a solid fantasy performance from one of their wing players. I thought the recency bias might gravitate people towards Tony Allen and Lance Stephenson, so I was hoping to grab of 30 to 35-point game out of Matt Barnes in this spot. Well, for 3 ½ quarters he was terrible, but he salvaged his fantasy line late in the game.
Robert Covington
Covington was one of the first three guys I put on the roster and never budged. His game has been very solid lately and we knew that Okafor was going to miss this game. The price tag was still in the range that I thought he held a lot of value and had upside, so I was going to roll with him. The style in which he accumulates fantasy points really meshes well with the type of play the Rockets exhibit.
JaMychal Green
This was sort of a no-brainer for me. You have a guy that is coming off of a monster fantasy performance due to injuries, playing a team that has a very fast pace which suits his game, and that same defense has a weak spot against power forwards. The injuries were still going to be there for Memphis, so there was no reason not to take advantage of this salary while it was still reasonable. There are some guys in the NBA that just won’t produce no matter how good of circumstances that they are put in. There are other guys that will absolutely destroy fantasy points per minute if the situation is right. Green is one of the latter.
Kevin Love
This was just a situation of salary. I was actually surprised that he had as high of ownership as he did on FanDuel. His salary had just dipped to a point where it made sense to take him. Even against Sacramento, had his salary still been around $7600 or so I would have faded him. But when it dips below $7000 like this, it’s a good chance to take advantage.
Dwight Howard
Dwight Howard was a guy that I knew I wanted on my team yesterday. In the process of trying to find a place for Dwayne Wade or maybe LeBron James I wavered on Howard and was willing to punt the center position. However, I just kept coming back to the Howard/Booker combination because it just made more sense in my eyes. The obvious value play at center was Alex Len. I felt really comfortable in fading him yesterday on FanDuel because of high projected ownership. In addition, I didn’t think another monster game was coming out of him and I felt like there would be a chance his minutes would decline in that game and I could take advantage with a guy like Dwight Howard. Sometimes those fades work and sometimes they blow up in your face, but it’s a chance I am willing to take most of the time. The difference between fading Alex Len and not fading Mario Chalmers (for example), even though they both seem underpriced and highly owned, is that I felt like there was a lot more of an opportunity for Len to fail. Barring an injury (which actually happened), I felt like the opportunity for Mario to fall on his face was extremely low. It basically boils down to an internal balance scale where you subjectively weigh the options and see which way that scale leans.