RADIO
A wise man once said: "Sell high, buy low!" Those are words to live by.
If you time your moves just right you might be able to turn your in-form Jarrett Allen into a slumping Myles Turner. Then, when Turner turns it around, swap him for an out-of-form Blake Griffin. Then magically transform Blake after a 50-point game into a Kemba Walker. And when Kemba hits 60 again, you might be able to swap him for a Nikola Jokic - if his owner didn't see that triple-double in his last game.
Now, it's not very likely you will be able to pull off this series of events, but if you can get away with at least one or two, you will be well off and a step closer to winning your fantasy league. Here are our Sell High and Buy Low candidates for Week 8 of the NBA season, right here at RotoBaller.
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Buy Low, Sell High Advice for Week 8
Are You for Real, Danilo Gallinari?
Let me start off by saying Gallo is a great basketball player and one of the biggest talents to ever come from Italy. "So why should I sell him then?", one might wonder.
There is no denying that his career and development have been crippled by injuries, and that is a huge flag for all fantasy owners. Furthermore, his stock right now is at an all-time high. He is averaging 21.0 PTS with 2.8 3PM on 50.0 FG% and 91.2 FT%, 7.0 REB, 3.3 AST, 1.0 STL, 0.5 BLK and only 0.7 TO, playing 33 minutes per game in the last 14 days, which has him ranked at #12 on Yahoo. These stats are not sustainable and here's why.
Every single stat here is better than his career average. Furthermore, his best season averages are also below his current stats in most categories. He only bettered the blocks once, with 0.7 in his sophomore season back in 2009-10 and he had better FT% (twice) and TO (once), but all those came in season's where Danilo played less than 30 games. That's too small a sample size to make it really count as a season average, isn't it? So, that's the first reason you should look to sell high - Gallo is playing better than he ever has.
The other, maybe even more important is - he has quite a poor injury history. This is his 10th season in the NBA and, so far, Gallinari has missed less than 10 games in a season only once - back when he was 21 years old. In addition to this, he only played in 21 games last season.
Although, he already bettered that with 22 games in the first month and a half, fantasy owners must tread lightly.
If you can get a decent top-50 player in return for Gallo, I would definitely recommend such a move. Guys like Otto Porter Jr, C.J. McCollum or DeMar DeRozan have all had a slower start to their seasons than expected, so if you are able to obtain one of them for Gallinari, I believe that will turn out to be a good move.
Baller Move: Sell high or hold
Time to Panic on Larry Nance Jr.?
Even though Larry Nance Jr. isn't a flashy name, he doesn't score in bunches and will mostly be noticed for his defensive plays, he is still a legitimate top-100 player in fantasy. He has been for the past two years. And all he needed to accomplish this was around 22-23 minutes per game and a bit of an opportunity. And when LeBron James left Cleveland, it was obvious that Nance should get that opportunity.
Instead, Nance is playing just 23 minutes and is getting under six field-goal attempts per game. All that for a Cavs team that is going nowhere this season, and with an injured Kevin Love.
It's a real mystery why Nance isn't getting more time at the power forward spot, instead of just splitting the center minutes with an on-fire Tristan Thompson. When Tyron Lue got the ax in Cleveland, I was sure Larry will be unleashed. Alas, just like my man Boban Marjanovic, he is being fed minutes through a straw.
And no matter how good he is in the minutes he gets, you can't justify taking a guy at #90 if he is going to play less than 25 minutes, can you?
Still, in that limited time, he manages to hover around the top-150 mark. Furthermore, he has proved that, even if he doesn't get many minutes, he can still contribute heavily to his fantasy owners, so if you can get him cheap, definitely do so. On the other hand, with Cleveland sitting at 5-18 and already shifting focus away from the playoffs, it would really baffle me if they didn't play their young talents more as the season goes on. If Larry would get 30 minutes per contest constantly he would be a nightly double-double threat with huge stocks potential, and could easily creep his way into the top-70, maybe even top-50.
If you own a guy like Eric Gordon, Dewayne Dedmon or Thaddeus Young, Nance is pretty close to their value at the moment but has an uncomparable higher potential for the rest of the season. So, if you are able to trade any of them for Larry Jr, that could be a move that pays off big time later on.
Baller Move: Hold or buy low
