Trading Quantity For Quality

Trading in fantasy sports isn’t always just about the players involved and their respective values. Sometimes there are intangibles that don’t get accounted for that can swing a seemingly unfair deal into one that get’s done. Look across the transactions count in your league, it’s likely you’ll notice a clear delineation between those of us who hammer the waiver wire daily to grab the latest hot player in hopes he stays hot, and those who stick with what they’ve got and ride out a consistent squad. Obviously I’m more the former type of player, and I’ll imagine you are too, and at this point in the season it’s important to recognize that this gives us a trading chip for bartering with the owners who are not active: depth.

Depth means I’ve got a bench full of players who are viable starters, while you’ve got starters who shouldn’t even be on a team. In my league we roll with the normal 10 guys starting, and then another 3 on the bench. My goal is to make sure that I always have at least one guy on that bench that I am perfectly comfortable dropping at a moments notice to grab someone else. If that isn’t the case, then I’ve got too much depth on my team. Even if I were playing in a H2H format, I’d still be looking to deal off depth at every turn because there are always going to be good looks on the FA wire. If I have to gut check, and say to myself ‘I really don’t want to drop so and so, then I’m going to miss out on grabbing a guy like Marcus Thornton or Carlos Delfino.

I can also understand where the inactive manager is coming from. In his view, you are wasting your time because for every three guys you pick up, you’re lucky if one of them turns out good. He in turn is afraid that the one guy he’s going to drop (especially early on) is going to turn it around the minute he drops the player. It’s a stupid strategy, but it’s at least understandable.

Going into my Lebron James deal I recognized that Carlos Delfino was proving himself to be a viable starter. He was being wasted on my bench and I was keenly aware that he had more value to me than I was going to get from him via trade. That’s an important concept to recognize, he has more value to me – because I am watching him play, seeing his lines – than he is worth via trade – because his rank hasn’t caught up, he’s an unknown, people don’t want to take that chance. Thus it made sense to move two ‘name value’ players, grab a stud in return, and shift Delfino to my starting lineup. In turn the guy I was targeting, while harboring Lebron James, had a very thin lineup the rest of the way. He was low in transactions and I knew he had to be fed up by now with a couple of his starters. No matter how good LBJ is it kills this owner to see 2 or 3 of his starters put up terrible lines night in and night out. 

My deal with him was about more than just values. My deal with him was about depth. I was in effect saying to him ‘hey, do yourself a favor, take these two guys for your one, the values are close, but the ability to kick out that one terrible starter you got swings the deal to a place you want it to be’. He was all too happy to accept. Depth can be a very powerful force in fantasy sports and the key secret that we know and they don’t realize is that there’s still value sitting out on the FA wire. I’ll continue to make depth offers (currently offering Jason Richardson and Andris Biedrins for an upgrade to a tier two player) until my bench no longer has guys that I am comfortable starting.

Oh yeah, with that open bench slot? I grabbed Tayshaun Prince, another guy I’d be comfortable putting into my lineup right now. The other two slots are Ramon Sessions (who I would drop in a heartbeat if something intriguing comes along) and my injured CP3. So take a look at your bench, value the players sitting there. Is there a 2-1 offer you could make, where you give up two current starters for one better starter, to a team lacking depth, and where that bench player you are now able to swap in will swing the deal greatly in your favor? If so, you got some offers to make!

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What's The Right Size for a Trade Offer??

Let’s talk about trade size for a bit today. Many times while going through reader comments I’ll come across people who ask my opinion of a trade offer that looks something like: Kaman, Boozer, Anthony, Duhon and Nelson for Camby, Parker, Davis and Rasheed Wallace. My first thought? Whoa! That’s a lot of players swapping teams. Fact of the matter is deals like this have a substantially smaller chance of actually succeeding. I’m not saying that people won’t make them, just that there’s more to a deal like this than swapping players and values.

In a standard size league, where each owner has roughly 13 guys on their team, attempting to send a deal that involves you giving 4-5 guys and you receiving 4-5 guys is effectively like saying to your counterpart “Hey, let’s swap teams”. Because that’s really what you’d be doing. You’ve got to look at it this way, the more players you add into a deal on his end, the more opportunities you give him to say no. All he has to do is find one guy in that deal, regardless of the player’s current value, that he is in love with and he walks away.

Now let’s talk about valuing such a deal. How would you actually value this deal? There are so many moving parts involved that it’s difficult to see what a person is actually gaining and what they are losing. Remember, we have the added advantage of both the team and trade analyzers, which means we are fully well aware of what the deal outcome will be. But your counterpart? He’s basically flying blind and again you’re giving him plenty of various opportunities to say no to the deal. He will have a hard time seeing that while he loses Davis and Parker’s assists, he’s going to make up a lot of those through Duhon and Melo. Instead he will just see ‘I lose two of my big assist guys here, so no’. Remember, whenever you send out an offer to another owner, their first reaction to it is ‘OK how are you trying to screw me here’. The goal is to make the deal as transparent as possible and use our buy low strategy or sell high strategy as the advantage. (Speaking of late bloomer Buy Lows, how bout Vince Carter and Devin Harris?!).

For me, the sweet spot is either 1-1, 2-2, 2-1, 3-1 or 3-2. Once you introduce players 4 and 5 into the deal, you are going well past the comprehension of most fantasy players.

You also place yourself in a position of risk. All it takes in any deal is one of the players you receive to not perform the way you planned for the deal to be a loser. Adding in too many players greatly enhances this risk. Now I’m well aware that people will shoot me messages here with examples of huge deals they’ve pulled off. But chances are if you look back over that 5-4 deal you made, two players could have easily dropped from both sides and the deal would not change much and still would have gone through.

Simple and targeted. Your offers need to stay simple because we’re dealing with simple minded people who are just not going to put in a lot of effort to sort through that many players in the exchange. Targeted because we want the other owner to know exactly what we’re trying to get and exactly what we’re willing to offer. This way, they can understand better where we are coming from and they will be more likely to send a counter than just walk away.

Give yourself the best chance to get a deal done every time an offer is sent. There’s just not much time left to waste.

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Timing is Everything...

Timing is everything. Sending out trades at just the right time can be the difference between acceptance and rejection. On a daily basis we are given a barrage of information whose sole intent is to scream at us ‘Act on me Now!’. Fortunately, much of the information we see is transparent in that we can decipher the validity of it. Other times, it’s too difficult to parse through and people tend to make the error of acting before digesting. Here’s what I can tell you in general, if you have to rush into something, you weren’t properly prepared for it and the result will likely bite you in the arse.

This morning I issued out a report on the trade rumors swirling around the Kings and the Mavs. I tried to be as clear as I could in saying that we need to wait for more clarification before acting. Still, the important thing here is that we be ready to act when the time is right. By analyzing and diagnosing the situation, knowing which players to grab and which to avoid, we ensured ourselves in a position to make the right move when others are still digesting the news. Trust me, when the time comes to act, you’re going to know it. It’ll be loud and clear. Statements will be issued to the tune of ‘well maybe the Kings could move Martin’ or ‘the Kings are open to all trade discussions’. Pieces of information that will be irrelevant to THEM will be key to US. Knowing that Josh Howard will be the big winner in the deal, and acting when our confidence in the deal rises to say 80%, means we’ll likely get Howard at his current low value just before others realize his future value. We are prepared.

Another piece of news came out; Brandon Roy is going to miss the next 2-4 games with a hammy pull. Now I don’t know about you, but I’ve never heard of a player missing a season because he pulled his hamstring. Even if the re-evaluation next week goes bad, he’ll likely only miss another week, two at the max after that. I can tell you though, without having Joe Schmoe to lean on, many of his owners are scared out of their gourd right now and itching to deal him on the cheap. By timing a trade offer just right, you increase your chances of snagging Roy for pennies on the dollar. Me? I’m going to let the games play tonight, then send over an offer of whoever looks to be the right sell high player. Maybe Corey Maggette puts in another decent performance tonight and I send over that offer on Saturday morning. I’d be willing to bet Roy’s owner would jump on that deal, and you’d have the added benefit of the trade taking a few days to clear so you wouldn’t go through as many games without him.

What I’m trying to get at here is that you almost never have to rush into something. News is going to be released every day involving every player and every team and there always a play that’s developing. The important thing to do is focus on one or two key developments, plan your strategy regarding those developments, then time your actions accordingly. You say ‘I want LBJ, and I’ll give up GWall and AI to get him’. That can happen for sure. But the best time to send that trade isn’t right this minute, it’s going to be after tonight’s game if AI goes 20 points and 7 dimes and GWall does his thing. It’s going to be right after LBJ has a bad outing, or the owner of LBJ’s entire team has a bad night and he gets the urge to make a move. The best Thievin trades you’re ever going to make are going to be those ones where you included the right players, targeted the right manager, all at the right time.

So in the future, when your getting ready to make an offer, ask yourself ‘am I better off waiting another day to time this. Could tonight’s game have an outcome that will shift things further in my direction?’ If tonight’s game passes and your setup doesn’t come, so what. Take a step back and wait for the next set up. Every single player in fantasy that’s going to make a trade with you is at least going to look at the last couple of games for each player involved. Use that information to your advantage and strike when the time is right. Conversely, trying to strike when the time is wrong will not only increase the chance of rejection, but it also decreases the amount of attention your target manager will give to your next offer.

I hope you all find this useful. Now let’s get some Brandon Roy offers ready to go!

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The Two Types of Fantasy Sports Trades

There are two types of trades to make in fantasy sports. One type is done when your team is in a position of power, sitting somewhere in the top half of the league standings. You feel pretty comfortable about the production you’re getting from each player toward each stat category. You’re looking to make a deal solely to improve on an already good squad, and most importantly, time is on your side. The other type is done when your team is not in a position of power. You’re bleeding in one or more of the categories and you must make a trade in order to have any chance at really competing. The longer you wait, the more others build a lead on you in that category. Time is not on your side. In either case, time is the important factor to recognize.

The easiest way to tell if you are trading from a position of power is to simply answer the question ‘Do I need to make a trade now or can I sit back and wait for the right deal?’ Try to be objective in answering this; we all want to ink deals because it’s fun to ink deals, but we have to make sure we’re inking the right deals, the one’s that help us. Once you determine that you are in a position of power, resolve within yourself that you’re going to take your time in making a deal. In every offer that comes across your desk or alternatively every trade or counter trade you send, I want you to identify the slight edge, and be sure that slight edge is tilted in your favor.

More or less we all value players pretty closely. Some of us have foresight into the future value of players (buy low, sell high) but as of today’s value, we’re all in the same general vicinity. Each manager is going to have one or two guys (or unfortunately sometimes even their whole team) that they have fallen in love with, and thus their ‘value’ of those players is higher than the current reality. But by and large, for all the rest of his players, you both will have approximately the same current value. This is mainly because there are 18 million different easily accessible ranking systems that you both can check. When you are in a position of power, the goal is to send out offers where you will be receiving a slight edge on the trade based on the player’s current values.

Always look to tip the scales ever so slightly in your favor. Sure, most of the time these deals are going to be rejected. But not always, sooner or later you’re going to find that trigger happy owner, or an owner that just needs to make a deal. This is where you’ll really cash in. You’ve essentially locked yourself into a deal where based on current values, you have a slight edge, and based on *your* expected future value, you have an even bigger edge. An example might be to send out Brendan Haywood for Rudy Gay. Based on current values, they are pretty equal, but Gay has the definite edge to Haywood. Looking to the future, I think we’d all agree that Gay will have a much higher value by season’s end. Still, by being disciplined and patient, harnessing your time advantage, you just might catch that desperate manager in need of the stats Haywood offers and willing to make the deal. By ensuring you have the ‘slight edge’ with current values, and by targeting players you feel with have a higher future value, you are building in a margin of safety to your trades that will guarantee success.

Alternatively, if you ask yourself the question about time and the answer is ‘No, I simply can’t let this deficit go on any longer, I need to make a move now’, well then my friend you are not dealing from a position of power. In these cases, I’d advise you to offer trades where the other owner has a slight edge on current value, but the expected future value of the players will be roughly equal. By doing so, you’re giving the other manager great incentive to make a deal with you. You’re essentially offering to take the risk on your side and you’ll likely be rewarded with a deal. Spend too much time trying to swing the edge in your favor, and not only will you lose the deal, but you’ll also continue to slide in the standings. In the most extreme cases, you might have to just forgo trying to make any gains on the deal, and just do what you can to put out the fire. Again, only in the most extreme cases.

On the surface these might seem fairly obvious, but execution is another question. Often times we send and receive so many deals that we fail to remember exactly what our original intent was. More importantly, we begin to forget the importance of patience or urgency. You can see from the two examples above who to target in deals and who to avoid. If you are type A above (have the upper hand) you’re searching for deals with Type B players above. Likewise, if you’re Type B above, well then you also want to be searching for Type B players to trade with. In almost all cases, type A players are going to be a hassle to deal with (so long as they RECOGNIZE that they are Type A).

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Timeless Trading Rules

Fantasy sports are my hobby, buying and selling stocks is my job. After finishing up my undergraduate degree at UMass I went to work for a small electronic trading firm located in Atlanta GA. It was here that I first learned the essentials when it comes to trading stocks. Trading players on your fantasy sports teams is amazingly similar. In both cases you only have information from the past that you can combine with an outlook of the future in order to determine the right times to buy and sell. It was this skill that I attained that has led to my success as a fantasy sports player. While in training to be a professional trader, certain time tested rules were constantly hammered into my brain. I was thinking about a few of those rules this morning and decided that it’d be good to share some with you, and offer their relevancy to fantasy sports. These should serve as excellent guidelines to use when pondering future trades.

The Five Rules To Being A Successful Trader…….in Fantasy Sports!

1. Plan Your Trade, and then Execute Your Plan.

Sounds simple enough right? But I’ll venture that many of you out there almost take this for granted. What often happens is that you decide on a player to trade away, earmark either a player or particular stat category to trade for, and then as you make offers and receive counteroffers, the final result is often very far from the original intent. Anybody can push a button to offer or accept a trade; the true player knows what he’s giving and getting in every deal. I made this mistake earlier this season when someone offered me Jason Kidd for David Lee. I thought it too good to pass up and just jumped on the deal. After it went through I realized I now had too many assists (Kidd and CP3) and too few Rebounds. I then had to turn around and deal Kidd away, making the first trade pointless.

2. Be Emotionless – DON’T FALL IN LOVE WITH YOUR PLAYERS

Cause they could give a rat’s a$$ about you! Don’t trade for a player because he’s an icon, or he’s on your hometown team, or he has a hot wife. Don’t hold players because they just had a ridiculous night or stretch of games. How many of you out there wish you dealt Andrew Bogut after that 18 rebound performance or Jennings after he dropped 55 points or Camby before he started complaining about injuries? When a player is hot, that is the best (and toughest) time to deal him away. Fact is, everyone saw that performance and everyone wants him on their team, and they will pay dearly to have him.

3. Make Sure You Get Full Value

There’s two types of trades in fantasy sports, trading for necessity and trading to sell high. Sometimes you can mix them. Trading for necessity means you have to make a deal because you’re getting killed in a stat category and your season is on the line, you are NOT in a very good position to bargain and most people know it. Trading to sell high is the BEST bargaining position to be in, and your goal is to add quality to your squad. Sure, some players are going to continue to outperform after you’ve dealt them away. Guys like Kevin Love and Carmelo Anthony haven’t shown signs of really slowing down. So what! If you got the proper value from trading with them, you’re at least no worse off than before. When I Sell High on a player, my aim is to package the deal as a 2-2, adding in a bench player, and targeting one Buy Low player that has the ability to reach the same level as my sell high, AND another player of good value. Like dealing Carmelo Anthony and John Salmons for Amar’e Stoudemire (when he was a buy low) and Jameer Nelson. By seasons end, Amare should at least = Carmelo, and Jameer should be > Salmons, whereas when you made the trade, Carmelo was so hot and Amar’e so cold that it looked (to the other guy) like you were getting robbed.

4. Do NOT Trade Based on Advice From a Friend

You’re out at a party, or chillin in school and one of your boys who doesn’t play in your league is talking about last nights games and he’s all like ‘WHOA did you see Deron Williams last night?!, He looked AWESOME, he is definitely the best PG in the league!’. Then you jump on your league page and start making offers for Deron without doing any homework. Your friend is an idiot, he doesn’t know your team, doesn’t know what you need, and is about as reliable as Joe Schmoe the Sports Writer.

5. Do NOT Overtrade

We have a goal in mind each season; try to stack our team as much as possible. This requires lots and lots of deal making. But look, after you just turned over half of your roster, maybe from making 2 or 3 deals, you gotta let the team play a bit. If you had bought low on David West last week, and then dealt him away this week, you’re going to be missing this hot streak he’s going on. You need to let these guys bounce around a bit. Give them a chance to rise in value, and other players a chance to drop in value. Yes, trade many times a season. But overdoing it can be ruinous. Just remember the two types of trades we make, and if you aren’t making one of those two types, you’re over trading.

Keep these rules in mind before sending offers, before answering offers, and before pulling the trigger. Discipline is the single most important factor in determining whether or not you are successful.

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How to Identify Active Managers for Trading

One question I seem to field a lot from readers is how to know who to target in trade offers in terms of opposing managers. It’s tough because most fantasy sports sites only allow players to send out a max number of trade offers. No sense wasting those offers on a guy who looks at his team once a week, doesn’t make any moves, and generally doesn’t contribute much to the action. There are some key ways that we can determine who are the people to target and who are the people to stay away from. My experience in this subject is somewhat limited to the Yahoo system however I’m sure the same information can be found through any other site including ESPN or CBS sports.


First and foremost, the most likely person to trade with you is going to be the guy (or guys) who do a lot of ADD/DROPS. In Yahoo, there is a column on the main page of your league that is titled ‘Moves’. Under it, you will see the amount of times a manager has added or dropped a player from his roster this season. There’s two important pieces of information conveyed in this number. First off, you know the guy is active. He’s checking his team often and has no problem making adjustments as needed. This guy is likely to see your offer pretty quickly, and is surely OK with making any moves he deems relevant. To give you a frame of reference, to this point in the season, I have made 36 ‘moves’. That’s a lot so don’t be dismayed, but you would classify me as a guy whose willing to deal. Next to me the ‘active’ managers in my league have 22, 16, 11, and 10 moves made. These are the first guys I am going after in a deal. Conversely, the guy with zero moves and the guy with one move, are the managers who fall in love with their players and their draft and I’ll not waste a minute offering them anything.

The second piece of information that ‘moves’ tells you, by the way, is that a manager is not satisfied with his team. This doesn’t mean he has a bad team, it just means he’s smart enough to ride trends or swap in looking for the right guy. Again, guys with high moves are exactly the type of guy you want to make a deal with.

The other way to tell who is good to trade with, and who is active in a league, is by checking when they last did something in the league. In yahoo, just above the standings, is a hyperlink for ‘Managers’. Here you will see when each manager last did something in your league. If you look at mine, it’s likely that the timestamp will be relatively close to right now. I’m always on my page, reading up on players, checking stat lines, etc. Alternatively, you’ll see some guys that haven’t been active for a day, two days, five days etc. Take my advice on this one gents, the guy who looks every five days never even notices your offers. Move on.

By targeting the right managers for offers, you’ll increase your odds of actually making a move in a reasonable amount of time. For those inactive, the best way to try and trade with them is through direct email. Good luck!
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Five Steps to Trade Execution... Thief Style

It’s fairly easy to eye out the players on your own squad that are ripe to sell high, and equally easy to eye out players on other teams that you’re looking to either buy low, or just need to add to your squad. However actual execution is whole other level of play. Readers have been asking me lately, how do I convince people to make a deal with me that when that deal is lopsided in my favor? This is an important question indeed! Let’s run through the five steps of proper Thievin.

1. Effort
First things first, If you’re just shooting out an offer to an opponent with no communication, then it’s most likely you’ll receive a rejection. Particularly if you’re lookin to thieve. Why? Because the guy you just shot a trade offer to is going to think as he opens the email ‘Oh god, here comes and offer, this dood is trying to screw me’. 90% of the people who play any fantasy sport have this approach, zero trust. There are many reasons for this, but the biggest one is EGO. They don’t want to be the guy who made the stupid deal and gets heckled for the rest of the season. Put some effort into your offers. Find those categories your target is down in, whether he is losing them in H2H matches or just has a low score in roto. Use the comments section of a trade offer to TELL the target exactly what he is gaining by making this trade with you.


2. Massage the Numbers
Sure, you TELL the target that this deal is good for them, but you also need to SHOW your target this deal is good for them. How do you do that? You use whatever numbers you can possibly get to back your case. Say, for instance, the target is in need of treys and steals. Look at the players you are offering versus the one you get back, how can we force these numbers to show that he is indeed making a benefit of treys and steals? Maybe we add up the total for each guy this year, and use those figures. Maybe we add up the averages and use those numbers. Maybe we use their 2008 numbers. Whatever it takes, whichever is the most convincing, go with it. Two tips here: if you are offering a 2-1, be sure to add up the stats for both of your guys vs. their one guy. Many people won’t realize they will be benching one player, so won’t notice the difference. Also, if a player has been injured, and hasn’t played much or missed time, their average numbers can be wildly skewed in your favor. If a guy missed the whole season up to now, and has played two games, scoring 25 and 30 points in those games, well then tell your target he averages 27.5 points a game!

3. Create a Sense of Competition
People look for confirmation from other people. They are more inclined to want a player they believe other people want. So, after you make your offer, pop onto your message board and post ‘Trade Offers’ then proceed to tell people that you’ve fielded a couple of offers for such and such player and you’re deciding between a few. This will give your target a sense of urgency and fear that he is losing out on a deal someone else might get.

4. Let Them Think They Won
People prefer to be the one making the offer that finally gets accepted, versus accepting someone else’s offer. It’s a control and ego thing. While it may not always be possible, if you get into a series of counter proposals, don’t be afraid to take one they send you. First off it insures that a deal gets done before they leave in frustration, and secondly they’ll be more likely to have a good feeling about the trade.

5. Promotion Promotion Promotion
Once you ink the deal, get on that message board immediately and put up a glorious post. Title it, NICE TRADE, and say what a pleasure it was to ink a deal with so and so, and that you look forward to future deals, and that you really think the deal will be a big benefit to both teams. You know what this does? It let’s everyone know that you trade, and that it’s OK to trade with you. Moreover they’ll be a little jeaous because they weren’t involved in this fun aspect of fantasy sports, so they’ll instantly start trying to make a deal. Guess who they’re gonna go to for that deal?

Take the time to do it right, be patient for the right deal to show itself, and execute!
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The 2-1 Trade, A Fantasy Manager's Best Tactic to Win.

The 2-1 trading style, or alternatively the 3-2, can substantially increase the quality of your fantasy rotation. When performed correctly, it’s an almost foolproof way to add players to your team that you should never have a chance at getting given the price you are paying. The basics of the strategy involve offering an opponent two players from your squad for one player on his squad (or 3 for 2), where the player on his squad is the best player involved in the deal. The players you offer should generally be one starter and one bench player, where the bench player is considered ‘rosterable’ (i.e. he’s not someone you’d be dropping anytime soon). Generally the starter on your squad and the star player you are trading for, play the same position. From your standpoint you are dealing in order to ‘upgrade’ a specific position. From the counterparty’s standpoint, they are downgrading but are getting something worthwhile to do so:

Here’s an example:


You give to your opponent in a trade: David Lee (ranked about 30th) and Courtney Lee (ranked about 100 but top 5 overall in steals per game)
You get from your opponent: Chris Bosh (ranked about 10th)

This type of trade is ideal for your opponent should they be in the position where they are in need of steals (and particularly if you are not). In this case, what they give up doesn’t hurt so much because of the benefit they get back. Since Courtney Lee was sitting on your bench (in roto) or adding to a category you aren’t in need of (in all formats), you’ve essentially traded David Lee for Chris Bosh, a huge upgrade indeed.

There is one huge side effect to making a deal like this that actually further increases the benefit to you, the freed up roster spot. Let’s say you’ve made the trade above and currently John Salmons is sitting on your FA wire. By picking him up once the trade goes through, you’ve effectively changed this from a 2-1 trade to a 2-2 trade, with Salmons being the second player you received. I don’t know many ballas that wouldn’t be geeked at landing Salmons and Bosh for Lee and Lee. Particularly if the swap of steals for treys (between Salmons and C. Lee) boosts your squad.

At the outset of every season I scout the FA wire and make a list of guys sitting out there that should be on somebody’s roster. I then scout my opponents to see who is holding a player that doesn’t deserve to be on a roster whatsoever. This is important because the person you trade with will have to drop a player to make the trade with you. If they don’t have a droppable guy, they won’t do the deal. In some cases, you might have to literally hold the opponents hand through the deal by offering a 2-2 trade where the second player he deals is one that should be on the FA wire. For instance:

You give: David Lee and Courtney Lee
You get: Chris Bosh and Andres Nocioni (ranked YUCK!)

Once the trade goes through, you’re simply dumping Noc for Salmons, doing the dirty work for your trade partner. This is a very effective way to upgrade players in your lineup. This is how I stack my team with Tier Three’s and Tier Two’s at the season’s outset. No matter how competitive the league, and believe me mine is competitive, there are ALWAYS guys on the FA wire that shouldn’t be there, and guys on teams that shouldn’t be there, for at least the first two months.

That owner was holding Nocioni for a reason, usually because he read some –run of the mill beat writer- from yahoo or espn or wherever write up a glorious praise for one night’s performance. Now he’s got to fight with having Nocioni on his bench, or dropping him, which is harder than you think because he is fighting his own ego. You are merely offering to give him an ‘out’ on Mr. Nocioni.

I know what your next question will be: how do I know if that guy on the FA wire is rosterable? Simple, look at the worst player on your team and compare his averages with the best available FA wire players averages. Are they close? Does the FA player start for their team? Do they get 30+ minutes a night? Did they just replace an injured guy for the season? All questions to be asked, and if you’re really in doubt, The Thief is always here to help.

Now we’re already over a month into the season, and those FA wires are getting bare. So get out there and propose some deals before the last rosterable option gets scooped up. Remember, targeting what other teams need will make the trade go smoother and will generate positive buzz about you in your league!
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