Forget the Ely comment. It seems like Okafor is on his way back from his ankle injury sooner than I expected.

Btw, Stromile Swift blew up yesterday. OMG, he finally had a good game. I had itchy fingers but remembered my promise to hold off on picking up Swift until he had 3 straight good games.

Melvin Ely. It is time to pick him up in any leagues that play 2 centers. That is exactly what I did in one of my leagues yesterday. With Okafor out for an extended period of time, Ely is going to get a lot of playing time with Brezec as the 4 or 5. You should pick up Brezec too but Ely is more likely to be available because he has not had an outstanding game since the Okafor injury. I am here to tell you that it would be too late if you wait for that to happen. The reason that Ely has not gone crazy is because he is still overcoming the lingering effects of his injury. In his words, he was 85% for last night's game. In leagues where centers are rare, he will be gold for the next few weeks, at least until Okafor (who was on crutches) returns from his ankle injury.

As a side note, I just picked up Jalen Rose and dropped Ely this morning. This is not to say that I do not believe in Ely. Rose is rumoured to be heading for the Lakers and if he does, he should be good. I already have a very solid team and good centers and I just need Rose's stats more in case he does go to the Lakers.

Trading season has begun. The quarter season mark is usually the point when fantasy trading season officially starts. Earlier in the season, GMs are either still in love with their players and or are hesitant about trades because they do not want to be in a position where they will regret trading a player away. This is pure behavorial phsycology and rationally, it makes no sense. The quarter season mark is when this starts to fade for most GMs. GMs now have enough performance data to evaluate their own team needs as well as their players' performance this season as opposed to their draft position. So, make some inquiries. The obstinate GMs will give you a "Hell No" and will go down with the boat but you will likely find some GMs who would be willing to make some mutually beneficial trades.

Hell, I just dropped Stromile Swift again. Van Gundy just doesn't like the guy and refuses to play him. Although he deserves some of that for not making the most of his minutes, it is painfully clear that Swift will not be successful in Van Gundy's system, period. I will not pick him up again this season unless he gets traded or has 3 straight 30+ minute games in a row. Oh, as an afterthought, I picked up Al Jefferson to replace Swift. He's not doing great right now, mainly because he is stuck at 20 minutes a game but I still have hope that he will see his minutes creep up this season.

In my leagues, I had dropped Mourning for Al Jefferson a week ago. Well, dropping Mourning was right but Al Jefferson hasn't done squat. Luckily, I did not start him. I also managed to pick up Kaman (who is getting a ton of minutes and performing fairly well) as a backup center in the league where we only play one center. I would be surprised if he was available in a 2 center league though. Just tonight, I dropped Jefferson in one of my leagues for Stromile Swift after hearing that Yao was out with a toe injury.

Lo and behold, Van Gundy plays Mutombo 30 minutes. What the? He's like 50 years old. Van Gundy must have Mutombo mixed up with Mourning, Mount Mutombo's teammate in Georgetown. Hopefully, Van Gundy will stop smoking whatever he is smoking and play Swift instead and play a uptempo offense. Without Yao, his halfcourt style is not only boring but also useless because it is so predictable with only 1 scorer.

A. Kirilenko. What the heck is going on with him this season? His hustle stats over the last few games have been fine but what is killing his value this year is his %s. Even though his FG% is coming back recently, he still has the Shaq syndrome on the FT line. He is single handedly killing my team in the FT% cat. That being said, theoretically, he should improve as the year goes on since he is a 78% career shooter from the line. Teams, especially if you are going to tank the FT% cat, that are willing to take a risk should look to trading for him. Owners of AK will probably be willing to let him go for a second rounder. Me, I am holding on for a little while longer.

In my last post, I talked about people that play too many games early in the season and why that is a mistake. Here, I will talk about the correct implementation of starting more games. Lets put out some ground assumptions. Say, you have to start 10 (C,C, PF, SF, F, SG, PG, G, Util, Util) and you have 3 people on your bench. The below scenarios are the only times you should play more games early in the season.

1) Cardinal rule. Only start that 11th guy if he is as good as the 100th rated player on the player rater. Otherwise, you are making a big mistake. Usually I am even tighter on that and would not start the 11th guy unless he is just as good as my 10th starter and in addition, I need hist stats. If I am killing everyone on blocks, a 11th starter with a lot of value in blocks is not very useful. Player raters rule.

2) Center or any other weak spot that you have. Since center is usually a weak area for most teams, if you have a servicable 3rd center, you should fill the center spot (on daily leagues) whenever possible even if you are playing less games on the Util or PF slots. Make sure that your 3rd center is as good as the 100th ranked player though. This helps to reduce chaos if one of your centers go down with DNPs or injuries.

3) Injury prone player slots. If you have Baron Davis as your PG and 1 backup, it will probably make sense to be 10+ games on the PG slot by the middle of the season by rotating BD and the backup into the PG slot.

4) Breakout players that are only good for a few games. That usually occurs because of injuries to other players in their teams. They get a temporary boost in minutes and production for those games where they play like 60th ranked players. Examples are Luther Head, Mourning, S. Claxton, Jasikevicius, etc... Ride them.

Those are the main ones.

To start or not to start. In some of my roto leagues, there are some people that play a lot more games early in the season than the regular pace. They are a pain in the ass because they skew the rankings to their favor early in the season because of the extra games. I am in 11th place in one of my leagues because I have played a lot less games than most of the other GMs. I have heard the rationale for playing more games early in the season. They include making sure that they don't miss any games at the end of the season to being able to trade 2 for 1 later in the season since they do not have to start as many people later on. To me, that is hogwash. I have not seen anyone win a league by using this strategy. First, most people will play out all their games by the end of the season if they pay a little attention to their games played. As for the trading 2 for 1, they usually run into 2 problems. One is that it is self defeating (unless you have very very good players throughout your team) because even if you are able to trade up later on, the extra games that you start early on will be marginal players. Two, as for trading 2 for 1s, that is by itself hard to pull off unless you have very good players too. There, however, is one reason why you should play more games early in the season. I will go into that on my next post.