Devin Harris is such a disaster. He is currently ranked at 183 in nine-cat leagues and is reportedly on the trade block. Deep and some competitive league owners should still hold him under most circumstances, but those in shallower formats could probably do better. Along the same lines, Earl Watson is a decent add. That's all I have to say about that (Forrest Gump voice).
Heading in an opposite direction, every once in a while I'll have this crazy idea about a stat that should be created. A Twitter bud of mine, @Sports_25toLife, mentioned C.J. Watson as a "quality start" tonight and with the baseball season just around the corner, it got me thinking of a possible stat like that for basketball. For those that don't follow baseball, a quality start is when a pitcher starts the game, pitches 6.0 innings or more and has an ERA less than or equal to 4.50. Obviously a pitcher can throw a horrible game, but as long as he doesn't allow three earned runs in six or more innings (assuming he doesn't pitch into the ninth and allows four), he would get the quality start. That means he could walk 21 batters, allow just three of them to score in six innings and would get a quality start. That would never happen, but my point is a quality start doesn't necessarily mean the outing was a quality one under general interpretation.
A quality game would have the same idea except it would be called a quality game because players coming off the bench should be eligible. Plus QG sounds pretty gangsta. Here's what I came up with for the quality game:
A player needs to have more than 32 minutes, 10 or more points, 10 or more rebounds + assists, shoot 45 percent from the field, shoot 75 percent from the line and a +/- greater than 0.
The 32 minutes comes from the logic of baseball. 6/9 is the same ratio as 32/48. A player should obviously have to play a sizeable portion of the game for him to have his stats hold some weight. 32 minutes is a pretty good chunk of time and a large portion of players never even play that amount of time in any game all year. Relief pitchers can't get quality starts, right?
Players don't need points, boards and assists to help their teams to win and people will throw the term "glue guy" around a lot. I know I'm not the only one that feels that strikeouts should be in there for quality starts for baseball and this is sort of the same thing. Although, most points wins in basketball, so when a player puts up points it's going to help his team win. As for the 10 boards + dimes, some forwards aren't responsible for assists and by the same token guards aren't asked to go after every board. It's pretty much one or the other and adding them just seems to make sense since they are important stats in who determines winning.
As for the percentages, generally speaking 45 percent is a nice round number. For those of you that are in love with percentages, you might have noticed that every year around 45 percent is where the ESPN player rater will award 0.00 points. In other words, it's not hurting your fantasy team and this is basically the average field goal percentage for NBA players. It's a kind of round number.
Free throws are really important to winning a game. If you don't believe me, just watch a post-game interview with George Karl. A player should really have to get to the line at least once to help his team. Then, of course, he would have to convert those free throws. Sorry, Dwight Howard.
Learn about "The Gallagher" and some Friday notes after the jump:
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If you have listened to Pick-N-Roll (here's yesterday's edition), you've probably heard me explain one of the shadiest moves in fantasy sports. This is a move for daily owners that do not have any sort of roster restriction. If you have a league where you can only add so many players per week/season or have a maximum amount of games played for the season/week, then this move is not for you. The best way to explain is through an example:
On Wednesday night at around 11:00 PM EST I picked up Mickael Pietrus, Nikola Pekovic and Francisco Garcia. The way that waivers work in ESPN (and Yahoo!) is that if you own a player for less than 24 hours, he doesn't go on waivers, he becomes a free agent. Therefore, if you have add a player and change your mind on him during the day for another guy, another owner can grab him without putting in a waiver claim.
It's with that idea in mind I've come up with "The Gallagher". I'm sure I'm not the only one that does this, but I pretty much do it every Thursday. OK, so since in ESPN the daily rosters turn over at the tip of the first game (Thursday was at 8:00 PM EST). So what I did yesterday was cut Garcia, Pekovic and Pietrus at 7:59, added Roddy Beaubois, Alec Burks and James Jones. Then at 8:00 PM, I cut the three I just added for the three I just dropped. Now I have three more games to accrue stats and I still get to own the guys that I owned for their upside. Yeah, it's cheap, but that's why I'm the three-time defending champ in a very competitive league.
Friday Notes
Rodney Stuckey, Will Bynum and Charlie Villanueva will not play tonight. Ben Gordon and Brandon Knight should have some nice games tonight against the Grizzlies. Austin Daye might have a decent game, however, with so many games tonight owners can probably do better.
Nene will sit out tonight, per George Karl. Al Harrington, who has been fairly inconsistent, should do well tonight. Kosta Koufas could also be an option for owners dying for big stats. Rudy Fernandez is also a game-time decision which would make Andre Miller and Arron Affalo strong starts in his absence.
Mike Dunleavy is expected to return tonight. Owners of Carlos Delfino will be watching with a close eye since Dunleavy was playing better before he went down to injury.
Spencer Hawes is out tonight. Nikola Vucevic hasn't done anything and the Sixers have been going small. Thaddeus Young owners should have some confidence tonight.
Jason Richardson and Hedo Turkoglu up in the air for tonight. It sounds like J-Rich is more likely to go. J.J. Redick owners might want to grab another option in standard formats for now.
Andrea Bargnani is slightly doubtful to play from his strained left calf. He was suppose to practice yesterday and could not. Not good. Ed Davis has been much improved in his past two games and should have another nice chance to produce tonight. Jerryd Bayless returned to practice could return from his ankle injury tonight. This will obviously hurt Leandro Barbosa.
Rajon Rondo is questionable with his wrist injury. He'll probably play though. Avery Bradley would get the start.
Friday Waiver Wire Watch List (SH=Shallow, ST=standard, D=Deep)
Marvin Williams(ST), Evan Turner (SH), Jan Vesely (D), Jordan Crawford (ST), Marcus Camby (D), Markieff Morris (SH), Shannon Brown (D), Tayshaun Prince (SH), Mickael Pietrus (D), Daniel Gibson (ST/D), Avery Bradley (D), Marreese Speights (SH), Jerryd Bayless (D), James Johnson (D), Mike Dunleavy (D), Tobias Harris (D) Landry Fields (D), Kawhi Leonard (SH), Francisco Garcia (D/ST), J.J. Barea, Luke Ridnour (SH)
Busy night
Thanks for reading!