Hello Fantasy Sports Island Goers! I am back and ready to go for the last couple of weeks here in our regular season and I am in a great mood after my 8-1 win this week in my league. Although the NBA will be going on for quite a bit longer, we will be heading into fantasy playoffs in exactly two weeks. I hope that you are all in a situation to grab yourself a seed and hopefully even a bye. If I can just give one piece of advice, it would be to not be that guy/girl who trades away their good players when they realize they will not be making the bracket. It essentially ruins the entire league when the person who drafted Kevin Durant, magically gets LeBron just before playoffs… Just don’t do it!

 

Weekly Games (Amount of times a team plays in a given week)

 

5 Games: LAL

4 Games: BKN, CHA, CHI, DEN, DET, GSW, HOU, IND, MEM, MIA, MIL, MIN, NOR, NYK,

POR, SAC, UTA

3 Games: ATL, BOS, CLE, DAL, LAC, OKC, PHO, SAS, WAS

2 Games: ORL, PHI, TOR

 

Tips for the Server… Owner

 

This year I completely focused my work on helping out with players to look at and those to rid from your mind but I haven’t talked at all about the art of Fantasy in itself. It is not just teams, stats and players that drive your team, but how you play them. Keep these tips in mind as playoffs approach.

 

-Sit’em Sundays

When it comes down to that last day of the week, that is when you can start to get a little fancy with your line-up. Let’s say you’re up against your opponent with a score of 6-3 and the categories you are losing are shooting percentage and turnovers. On that last day, is it really plausible that the other team will pass you in any of the categories you are winning? Probably not, because at that point they are usually spread out a good amount. So how do you win this week 9-0? You gotta sit that guard you have that takes a ton of shots and turns the ball over five times a game. Sure, they are going to get points and assists, but those don’t matter much when you don’t need them. What you need are players that hold the ball and take high percentage looks. Let the other team play all of their players in an attempt to catch up in the other categories, which they probably won’t. There is no need for a full lineup on Sunday.

 

 

 

-Study, Watch, Work

The bottom line is that you need long-term and short-term players. When you draft, you pick up players that you can rely on for the rest of the season. These players will play a huge roll without a doubt, but it is the players that you pick up that will win you the week. In your league you should be allowed to add/drop players at least once, if not multiple times a week throughout the season. You absolutely need to use these because it is extremely likely that there is someone out there that is performing better than the last two players that you drafted. Study how these un-owned players work. The ones that hover around 55%-70% should be watched at all times in case of injuries or blockbuster trades. A perfect example of this is Blazers forward Robin Lopez who is 77% owned at the moment. About two weeks ago, Lopez was only at 52% owned until All-Star forward LaMarcus Aldridge went down with an injury which skyrocketed Lopez’s number of touches and his overall importance to the team. Now that the All-Star is back, this would be a perfect time to trade him or drop him for the next hot player.

 

Quick Picks

The players that I would consider for this week are Kings forward Reggie Evans and forward Greg Monroe from Detroit. Both of these players play in the shadow of the dominating big man on their respective teams, but that doesn’t mean that they are obsolete. The Kings have Cousins but they traded to bring in Reggie so they must have had a reason they wanted him in purple. They have been trying him out since his arrival and he has averaged eight boards a game, a solid contribution. Greg Monroe is going to be hard to come by in your league, but if he is available, he needs to be added. All eyes are on his partner Andre Drummond who has played incredibly, but in Monroe’s last five games he has averaged 17.4 points, 10.6 boards, and an identical 1.4 in blocks and steals. These two are solid big men and will help you grab a higher seed.

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