It's that time of the year where fantasy owners should be solely concerned with winning a title. As much as I have been talking about value all year with Waiver Wire Scoops and the dozens of lists I've put together, sometimes value is different for almost any owner. There are a lot of different variables that can make a player more desirable to your team than some other team.
The first and probably most obvious is the schedule factor. Owners should know every player on their team and their schedule for the rest of the year. It also should be a factor to picking up a player. For instance, one of the reasons why everyone should be so high on guys like Klay Thompson is because his team has a fantastic schedule. Although owners in head-to-head leagues should look at which playoff weeks that player might serve them best.
The other main factor is that sometimes value is trumped by a team need or strategy. For instance, let's say you are going to face a team that is stacked in assists for the first week of the playoffs. While it might be nice to add a player like Ramon Sessions, a guy like Klay Thompson should help you more. If you don't think Sessions will put you over the top in dimes, then he isn't as attractive as an add. If you lose assists by three or 100, it's still a loss.
I also get a lot of questions about picking up guys like Eric Gordon and Anderson Varejao on Twitter. Again, this is really dependent on how your league format works. If have EJ or AV stashed doesn't really hurt your chances of winning (like say in a weekly league), then sure, why not stash them? If, however, your league is a daily format with no max moves and the bench is extremely important, then it might not be such a good idea. An example for me is that I'm locked into the top seed in one of my leagues and I'm hopelessly stashing Brook Lopez. My playoffs start next week and that league is a daily, no max moves league (bench is a huge factor). The bottom line is that if Brook isn't scheduled back in the next couple days, I'm just going to cut him. As much as I think I can beat the team I'm playing in the semifinals (each round is two weeks), I'm not willing to risk it.
Which brings me to my next point: go for broke if you have to. Chances are if you're in the playoffs, the team that you're playing is pretty good. Let's say you're losing on the second-to-last day of the scoring period in a daily league and you're considering dropping a guy like Jerryd Bayless so you can get an extra streaming day to help you. If you think that dropping Bayless will help you win, then you should probably do it. It's not like Bayless is going to be a make-or-break guy for your team in the next round of the playoffs.
OK. Fire away.