Ask Nene

By Brett Roberts, Fantasy Basketball Cafe Regular

Nene, I am participating in a 14 team Auction($100) Cumulative Weekly Roto League.

Weekly locked rosters

Start 5(very limited) Bench 5, 9 Cats, Starting requirements:
two guards
two forwards
one center

Who should I target as my 2 core players?

Greyone,

The one thing I learned from my auction draft in Kal Elen’s league is that you definitely can overpay for superstars and end up shortchanging yourself for the rest of your roster. It is a pitfall I managed to avoid, but others were not as fortunate, so I do recommend saving some of your auction cash for later in the auction when other teams start to run out, and then swoop in on the bargains.

That said, it is usually good to make a play on at least one of the superstars. You didn’t state the categories for your league so I am going to assume it is the standard 9 cats. I would probably aim to get one of the second tier superstars, either Bosh, Amare, or Al Jefferson, and then pair that big man with a top flight PG, either Billups, Nash, or Kidd. It’s a good way of rounding a team out and covering a lot of stats without shelling out the big time money it takes to land CP3 or Bron.

What are your stat projections for Courtney Lee (SG-NJN) and Channing Frye (C- PHO) and where you rank them this season for standard 9-cat H2H and roto leagues?

DTown,

I am very high on Courtney Lee. Before suffering the elbow from Dwight Howard in practice, he was averaging 15.8 ppg in the Philadelphia first round series. In game two he had 24 pts, 3 steals, 3 rebs, 1 ast, on 10-17 FG. This is the kind of ceiling you can expect with Courtney Lee. He’s going to have every chance in the world to be a scorer in New Jersey since the only real offensive threats on the team are Devin Harris and Brook Lopez.

My projections for Lee:

14.5 ppg, 3.0 apg, 1.5 threes/game, 1.5 spg, 4.4 rpg

The steals will make him especially valuable. I’ve been drafting Lee as often as possible because with an ADP of 116 (courtesy of Busersports.com), he is certainly going to outperform that draft position.

I also have high expectations for Frye. So far, his best season in the NBA came as a rookie. That year, playing for the Knicks, Frye averaged 12.3 ppg, 5.8 rpg, 0.7 bpg in only 24 minutes a game. I expect similar but better stats this season, as I expect Frye to see closer to 30 minutes a game.

With that said, I project 14.0 ppg, 7.2 rpg, and 0.9 bpg for Frye.

Both Lee and Frye are guys to target late in drafts and I feel both will outperform their ADP.

Brett Roberts is one of a growing number of fantasy experts who write for the Cafe. You can catch up with Brett in the Cafe's forums where he posts under the name of Nene.