Buy Low on this Fantasy Basketball Rebounding Machine

So you’re looking at your team, checking out your Secret Sauce numbers (for reference, see post titled Secret Sauce, a list of posts can be found in the right hand side of the site) and you notice your down in Boards and Blocks a bit. Maybe even your FG% isn’t as good as it could be. Sure it’d be nice to go get Duncan or Garnett or Howard or whatever, but you don’t want to move anyone of high value. You’ve got a solid lineup and you just need a cheap UTIL player that will solidify you in those categories, someone with some upside that won’t cost you more than a current bench player, say like Courtney Lee or Jarret Jack or even like Chris Duhon. Well, you’re in luck, cause The Thief has just the right BUY LOW player for you. He’s a Boards/Blocks extraordinaire and the upside is better than you think!





BUY LOW – Emeka Okafor – F – New Orleans Hornets

Way back when, say in 2004, Emeka was actually a top prospect coming out of college. Fresh off winning the National Championship leading the UConn Huskies, Emeka was the 2nd overall pick taken by the Charlotte Bobcats. The guy is a talented Big Man. He’s pretty decent at scoring and he blocks very well. However for the first five years of his career, he was in Charlotte , land of the no PG. That makes a big difference, especially for a big man. Most Centers need a solid distributor to either work the ball inside to them on the post or to toss the ole Alley Oop for an easy score. It helps to have players that drive the lane too, since that creates offensive rebounds to put back in. Charlotte didn’t have any of this really, and Emeka put up OK career numbers.



Fast forward to today, and he’s been dealt to the New Orleans Hornets, and paired up with the best distributor in fantasy basketball since Bob Cousy was in the NBA. However an early season injury to Okafor, followed by a subsequent injury to Paul, sidelined this match made in heaven temporarily. Well, they are both back, both healthy, and have had a couple games under the belt to get used to each other this season. The time to strike is now, the cost is CHEAP (just how we like it) and the reward is BIG. Let’s take a look at the numbers:



Emeka Okafor

CAT      2009       Career

PTS      10.9          13.8

AST       0.6            0.9

REB      9.6            10.6

BLK      1.9             1.9

STL       0.7             0.8

3’s        0.0             0.0

TO’s     1.5             1.8

FG%    54.1           50.7

FT%     58.0           59.5

MIN     29:41          33:42



As you can see he isn’t far off his career numbers, but there’s room for improvement. By seasons end Okafor will definitely be a consistent double double player, averaging over 1.5 blocks a game. However there is the potential to see his points per game go for career highs, into the 14 -15 per game average. I added the minute’s category in there to show that while he is slightly down, this is MAINLY a result of playing 4 less minutes per game on average. In my opinion, in 4 minutes, Okafor call pull down a board and knock down a shot or two putting him right into the career stat line. And who knows, a little added chemistry with CP3 and this could be a bonanza. Again, he costs you next to nothing right now, so the risk of this is low and the payoff is high.



After all, if CP3 could turn Tyson Chandler into a solid basketball player, just imagine what he can do after time with Emeka Okafor!