There’s just too much going on right now in the world of fantasy. So let’s get into it.
In the NBA, keep a close watch on New Jersey and the Jason Kidd situation. He could end up anywhere from Dallas to Denver to Cleveland. LeBron James in fact came out and threw his teammates under the bus, asking directly for management to make a trade. I believe a deal will go down before next month’s trade deadline, so the place to look might be who’s going to take over for Kidd in Jersey. The person who will get the first look is former UConn star Marcus Williams. He’s had trouble with turnovers, but his minutes have been on the uptick recently and in 22 minutes in a game a couple of weeks ago, he had 17 points and four assists. Go grab him off the waiver wire if you have a place for him.
If you haven’t noticed, Timberwolves post player Al Jefferson is going bonkers lately. He scored 40 points and dragged down 17 rebounds four nights ago against New Jersey and that was two games before torching Phoenix for 39 points. Last night, he had 26 points and 20 rebounds in Minnesota’s fourth win in six games. Don’t look now, but the T-wolves are creeping. Randy Foye is coming back as well, so watch out for Sebastian Telfair and Marko Jaric to lose minutes.
Reports out of San Antonio has Damon Stoudemire (who was bought out of his contract by the Memphis Grizzlies) landing as a Spur soon. San Antonio, who inexplicably lost to the Sonics two nights ago, need help with Tony Parker being limited by a bone spur in his left heel. If you need help desperately he could be a plug-and-play for a couple of weeks.
In baseball, the Johan Santana deal and the soon-to-go-down Erik Bedard deal (I think the deal will go down after Orioles owner Peter Angelos realizes that if he nixes this deal he’ll probably lose his new GM, Andy McPhail) will have an impact on fantasy. Both pitchers will have better numbers than in recent years this upcoming season. Santana’s obviously the top-tier guy here. He should win close to 20 games and get back to his 2004 total of 265 strikeouts in the beleagured National League. As for Bedard, he’ll be in a pitchers-friendly park in Safeco and should get some more offense here as well. He remains on the upper-tier of the second round of pitchers with Brandon Webb and Josh Beckett. He should end up with 17 wins and 230 strikeouts — if he stays healthy.
Here’s a couple of links for this week:
As a Husky fan this was great to see: The Oregonian columnist, John Canzano (one of the best columnist working in sports media right now) sticking it to Ducks fans for not only being idiots last week when UCLA came to town but for losing home-grown Kevin Love in the first place.
http://www.oregonlive.com/sports/oregonian/john_canzano/index.ssf?/base/sports/1201245902172940.xml&coll=7
Great piece on first-year New York Giants GM Jerry Reese and how he put the pieces together (including an absurdly good draft this season) for this year’s run in the playoffs.
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/football/giants/2008/01/24/2008-01-24_jerry_reeses_pieces_look_super-2.html
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