NBL Dream Team: Round 4 Preview

The highs and lows continued with an impressive return for Josh Childress that ended in disaster as he found a new way to injure himself. At least we have a few more weeks before we have to work out how to afford him.

 

Reviewing Round 3

Josh Childress wasted absolutely no time in re-asserting his position as the number one dream team player in the competition, delivering the highest single game score for the week. He was most of the way there by half time too but slowed down after he got injured. There were plenty of impressive scores across the board as Matthew Knight (88), Daniel Johnson (86), Julian Khazzouh (84), Cameron Gliddon (82) and Daniel Kickert (78) all joined Adam Gibson in posting big tallies. Mitch Norton (58) narrowly missed out on being the Best Value Pick, while Lucas Walker (44) was third for value and looks like he is settling into his starting role nicely.

Not only is Kyle Adnam‘s score a strong early leader for lowest score of the season, but it was also his first game on court for the year making it possibly the only time you will ever see someone with an average of -12. Luckily no one has him. A few of last week’s stars set out to disappoint with Charles Jackson (8) and Kirk Penny (8) limiting their potentially huge price increases with sub-par scores. Otherwise the scores were mostly acceptable, although there were a fair few people who got caught out when Melbourne demolished Townsville and decided to leave Hakim Warrick (36) on the bench, and despite having two games he didn’t reach his previous average of 40ppg.

 

Get Ready for Round 4

Now is a great time to start looking to the future and if you have a solid squad for this round with five doubles on court then you could consider saving a trade. If you have a plummeting premium like Brain Conklin (~be 105), Mark Worthington (~be 87) or Todd Blanchfield (~be 83) then offloading one of them to someone above is probably a better option though.

Those five players are all looking like they are great potential for being consistent scorers and could be the sort of downgrade target that can build cash over the next few weeks. Some prospective options in the middle range which aren’t covered in the lists above are players Greg Hire ($64,100), Torey Craig ($103,100) and Marcus Thornton ($89,800). While none of those three have had the starts to the season which they would have hoped for, all three have just had great games and could be big price increases just waiting to happen.

Beyond those excellent choices you could choose to take a gamble on  Oscar Forman to continue his streak of hot shooting, or maybe a totally crazy choice in Torey Craig after he showed some excellence in his most recent game. New Zealand and Adelaide are the only teams to play single matches this week so make sure you have their players on the bench. You could consider keeping Adam Gibson, Daniel Johnson or Tom Abercrombie on court though if you find yourself with a few extra cheap players that need to stay on the bench.

Finally, there’s another New Zealand match to open the round so it’s an early Wednesday lockout.