When Life Gives You Lemons

Throw 'em right back.

Well, I should say right from the start that given the high degree of inaccuracy of my last FAP review, managers would be well served to completely disregard or even contradict the advice which follows. I’m also a little drunk and have to get up way too soon. . . That said, here’s another delightful installment of the FAP 411.

The overall FAP outlook is pretty bleak, having been fairly exhausted at this point. Notably, Mike Conley and Carl Landry have been logging some serious frequent flyer miles of late. Nobody wants them, and yet there’s nobody better, it would seem.

I think there’s several guys worth a look and a few that really should be owned instead of, say, Ronnie Turiaf:

James Posey: Somebody better claim him off waivers. His line of 9/4/1 isn’t thrilling, but he helps in all categories: Decent percentages, good in negatives, 2 threes and a steal per game. Plus he’s getting starters minutes so you know his numbers are reliable.

Bobby Simmons: Seems to be starting to ball. Last week in three games he went 9/7/3 with a three and a steal/game. If he keeps it up he definitely should be owned.

Deshwan Stevenson: Is suddenly an assist machine, dealing out 27 in the last four games and only turning over the ball twice in that span. 8/3/7 with two 3’s and a steal, 0.5 TO’s and 0.3 PFs. Duh.

Antoine Wright: Blew up tonight (24/4/1 with a block and a DISQ) after hardly playing at all this season. He got the start over Gerald Green who sucks yet has been starting over Jerry Stackhouse and Jason Terry who are good. So who knows if this is the start of something good or just a one night hoot.

Acie Law 4: Creamed his wheat with a 20/6/7 performance on Saturday. It was garbage time and the Atlanta starters are locked in, but golly it makes me drool.

Craig Smith: has been stringing together some nice games for hapless Minnesota, and it looks like coach is rewarding him. His numbers are certainly erratic, but he’s gotten at least 20 minutes a night for the last six games. And as delicious as Kevin Love’s manboobs are, Smith is clearly the better player.

Antonio Mcdyess: Will resign with the Pistons within the week and be his usual ownable if not awesome self for the now completely retarded Pistons. The worse trade ever will lead to more O-Rebs for Mcdyess when he returns. But wait, he’ s been owned all this time. Ben’s patience will be rewarded.

Tony Allen: is more awesome than you think. But more on that later.

The Rest: Ronald Murray, Jarvis Hayes, Eddie House, Maurice Evans, VladRad, and Leon Powe are all better than someone on your team. (Maybe. I took a look, and there wasn’t as much dead weight on the teams in our league as I thought, and most of it is on Ben’s team.)

New Coaches
News that OKC and Washington have fired their coaches, PJ "I deserve to be choked" Carlisemo and Eddie Jordan, should have all of us looking closely at those teams’ next few games. In Washington the Etan Thomas, Andray Blatche, JaVale McGee merry-go-round may stop spinning and one ownable, highly sought after big man may emerge. Ditto for the guards. In OKC the changes are already starting to happen. Durant has been moved his natural position of SF, bringing Damien Wilkins at least temporarily into the spotlight while Desmond Mason heals up. The abominations playing center seem to have been relegated to poo-gatory, giving Nick Collison his due. However, it turns out that it was at the insistence of OKC management, not PJ, that Swift and Petro have been given so many minutes so far. Their lumbering ineptness will be back soon, I’m sure. Note: Since writing this, the author has picked up several of the afore-mentioned Washington big men for which he apologizes. But after tonight’s OKC game, it would seem that Swift and Petro are no longer in the rotation and that the Wilkins/Mason combo deserves a look.

Addressing Needs
In the absence of super exciting, breakout players there is one great strategy for working the FAP, and that is to address your team’s specific needs. Is there a category or categories that you could dramatically bolster with a mediocre player? Percentages and negatives are cats that are easy to overlook, but are worth just as much at the end of the day as points and rebounds. Keyon Dooling, Wally Szerbiak, and Mikki Moore don’t take a ton of shots, but are solid in percentages, and can help counterbalance players who hoist up tons of shots or miss lots of free throws. Jarvis Hayes, Eddie House, and Tony Allen (all of whom should be owned) commit very few fouls and TO’s. This is obviously related to limited playing time, but it means that they will help out in other categories and hurt you very little. On the flip side, my man Paul Millsap started and logged serious minutes last night, helping in several categories, but also got 6 fouls. That one disastrous DISQ may well cost me a category whereas his points and rebounds probably won’t make a difference.


The most obvious categories for impactful improvement are 3’s, steals, and blocks, where one awesome guy can make the difference between winning and losing. Right now there’s not a ton of steals and blocks out there. Joel Anthony and Anthony Randolf are b-ball-blocking-beasts, both averaging 2.7 per game last week, but erratic playing time makes them risky pick-ups. Eric Gordon and Sergio Rodriguez have been getting steals aplenty, but ditto on their playing time. So, blocks and steals are tough. However, Three’s are there for the taking, and could almost certainly win you a category. Last week, the three-point totals for our teams were: 67 vs. 30, 49 vs. 50, 36 vs. 31, 38 vs. 27, and 59 vs. 41. Some of these battles could have swung the other way with the addition of one three-point shooter. For the season James Posey, Vlad Rad, and Maurice Evans are averaging 1.9, 1.8, and 1.7 threes/game respectively. Last week DeShawn Stevenson, Damien Wilkins, Yakhouba “I can’t believe I’m not Japanese” Diawara, and Eddie House were all above 1.5 threes/game. One of these unsexy guys could have won the category for you. And what if you jettisoned all of the crappy guys from the bottom of your roster and added Posey, Radman, and Evans? That’s 5.4 threes/game or 15-20 more threes a week. Something about lemons and lemonade, I think.

I’m going out of town for the long weekend, but I expect to find that lots of waiver action has transpired when I get back.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody.