Yahoo Sports Videos
In this week's Get to the Points, Yahoo Fantasy analyst Dan Titus and contributor Justin Henry explore essential factors to keep in mind when engaging in fantasy basketball trades.
Video Transcript
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DAN TITUS: Now that we're six weeks into the season, going into week seven, there's definitely an opportunity to start getting some trades off, whether you're wanting to buy low on somebody or sell high. I want to talk about that a little bit more. So what's your philosophy in trading in general? What are you really looking for? What are those factors that go into when you're trying to execute a trade?
JUSTIN HENRY: When I'm looking at trades, personally, I'm looking at-- I'm assessing my team. Is this a good team right now? Or do I have a team that needs some work, right? So if I start the season off high, I'm not really in a hurry to make a lot of moves. And what I'm looking to do is buy low on players who, maybe, are struggling to start off the year.
You know, I'm not looking for anybody that's completely turned around the way that they've played, but I am looking for buying opportunities. And when it comes to teams that, maybe, I have that are below .500, I'm looking at, do I need depth? How can I stabilize the floor of my team a little bit better? So I think in category leagues, you can be a lot more specific than you can in points leagues.
In points leagues, you're just-- you're buying the dip on players, like, maybe, a Julius Randle. And you're hoping that they turn it around. And Cade Cunningham, you're hoping things get going there, potentially even a Jordan Poole. These are names that would be aggressively targeting. But that's the type of dip in production that I look for early on.
And then in my category leagues, I'm starting to snipe now. What is my team good at? Where do I have a distinct advantage? And how can I continue to build these columns, right? I'm trying to-- I'm trying to stack these categories. So I'm trying to find players that fit the mold.
DAN TITUS: Yeah. Yeah, I'd say I totally agree with the-- especially, the buying low on certain people that are struggling right now in category leagues. Whereas I look for-- instead of looking at the production side, I look at those guys that got hurt, the Tyler Herros the Jamal Murrays, the guys that may not have a long-term injury that could be coming off of IO pretty soon. Now, there's a nice window of time where you've got to actually do that before the news comes out. Like, hey, they're going to be back next game.
Look at the injury reports. Once they get upgraded from out, to doubtful, to questionable, once they go through those progressions, that's your window to kind of figure out, hey, I got to go for this guy. So Tyler Herro, to me, is like the perfect buy low guy right now that you want to get him.
And then you also look at his production before he got hurt. He was cooking. Like, he was a top 60 guy. And I think you could get him from a frustrated manager that might be like, ah, I need this production, but I need somebody else to kind of fill that void while he's out.
I would also look for two for ones. In category leagues, it's probably not as helpful as in points leagues because you're really just looking at pure numbers. Like, if I get two people over one, I'll take those points all day.
JUSTIN HENRY: It's important to also see, where is the team weak? Do they need an extra power forward? Could they use a center or some big production in category leagues? So I like assessing what another team needs and then sending out a trade-- a trade offer instead of it just being a blind offer. Nobody likes blind offers that don't make sense for the team. That is literally the worst thing you could do.
DAN TITUS: Yeah, an easy way to do that is, if you want to go into your standings, and then you click on stats, in the home page, you can see where everybody stacks up against each other in the league. So you can see who's the worst at blocks. If you've got some blocks to spare, go target that guy, and give him some blocks to make him-- to make him more interested in trying to fill out the gaps where he could have in his team.
So yeah, that's one of the things I always do. I'm always peeking around to see who needs what, just to make sure that I know that I'm giving at least the stats that the person could need to actually maybe get their-- get to improve their team.
