One Game, One Sell High, and One Nice Add

Good morning Thief Nation! I hope last night's games treated your teams well. Chances are, if you had the opportunity to Buy Low on John Salmons, his six steals put a smile on your face. Derrick Rose also continued his campaign for best early Buy Low, posting 24 points and 7 assists. Man I wish I was able to convince his stubborn owner to deal in November! Finally we saw a nice effort from Eric Gordon, who was 3-6 from 3 point territory. All in all not a bad night.

OK on to the post. The first guy up today is our Sell High candidate Andrew Bogut. For those of you missed it, Bogut posted an astounding 31 points and 18 rebounds last night. Lost in the shuffle of that game was a little noticed fact that Michael Redd played 41 minutes, looks like he's feeling better! But as for Bogut, the time to sell is NOW. It's always toughest to shop a guy right after a big game, but the fact is his value will never be as high as it is right now. Remember, don't fall in love with your players, this is our best opportunity to cash in. On to the numbers:

Andrew Bogut - C - Milwaukee Bucks
CAT 2009 Career
PTS 16 12.2
REB 10 8.8
AST 2.2 2.5
STL 0.7 0.7
3's 0.0 0.0
BLK 2.0 1.1
TO 2.0 2.0
FG% 51.3 53.3
FT% 53.7 58.9

For starters, if you're gonna have a guy that shoots this poorly from the charity stripe on your team, make it Dwight Howard. But look at those points and rebounding numbers, way above average. Bogut is a former #1 overall draft pick, so we can't necessarily assume this isn't just a breakout season. However there's two things we do know, first is that his numbers aren't going to get much better than this (I mean, they're pretty awesome right now) and secondly that those numbers are definitely inflated from his last game.

But most importantly, Bogut is very injury prone. In the four seasons prior to this one, Bogut has missed an average of 16.5 games, and only played 36 last year, AND has already missed time this year. My advice? Find some unsuspecting manager to offload this gem to, hopefully in exchange for a Tier Two stud. Try to knock down Gerald Wallace or Joe Johnson or even Paul Pierce (whose value has come back to earth since our initial sell high recommendation). Don't get caught holding the bag when Bogut has to miss more time ahead. Don't fall in love!

In the same game, I noticed something else important, and for those of you following me on Twitter, you likely caught my recommendation to watch Roy Hibbert last night. I was a big fan of Hibbert in Georgetown, I liked his game and he appeared to me to be NBA ready. After a season of little minute and great progress last year, Roy was poised to break out. The only knock on him was - can he stay out of foul trouble? Well, to date this year he's only averaging 3.8 fouls per game, for a guy his size that is success!

But the issue has been Indiana's inconsistent playing time for ole Roy. Some games he's in there for 30 minutes, some for just 10! I felt last night was a key glimpse into how they planned on playing him for the rest of the year. Roy logged 28 minutes, lead the team in scoring, and had only one foul. During his stretch of averaging 30 minutes from Nov. 3rd to the 18th, 7 games, Roy proved he can be the cornerstone of the Indiana Pacers, and a cornerstone of fantasy teams.

It's likely that Roy is on your WW right now. If not, you could try to make a trade for him, but I'll bet most managers are going to hold a tight grip. However if he is available and you have the slot, I'd add here (and indeed I just dropped Jarret Jack for Roy). Two key stats to leave you with, first is that Roy is averaging 2 blocks per game. That's a huge number that is even higher if you just look at the nights he logs over 25 minutes a game. Also, and more importantly, Roy averages almost half a point a minute on the court and .3 boards per minute. So for every 30 minute outing, we can expect a solid line of 15 points, 9 boards and 2 blocks. That's worth a roster spot in my league!

P.S. one little add on tidbit, it appears that Jeff Foster is nursing a back strain. Foster has a history of injury issues himself, and he was the main guy coming in for Hibbert. So we got that going for us too.