NBL Dream Team: Round 8 Preview

A roller-coaster round saw players putting up rubbish and brilliance all over the place. I expect this week will be known as AJ week where it is a case of those with and those without.

 

Reviewing Round 7

Daniel Johnson‘s huge second game where he scored 73 meant that he just beat out Casey Prather (90) for top honours. Alex Pledger was actually the 3rd highest scorer for the round making him easily the best value. Lucas Walker (52) continued his yo-yo scoring to be the second best value, while Casey Prather gets a second mention as third for best value.

Hakim Warrick actually took out all three disaster positions this round, but sticking with my principle of only listing a player once, I decided he would be the Worst Value Pick because “Why do you still have him?!?”

It was a poor round for Adelaide imports as Jermoe Randle (36) was well short of his scores so far and particularly hurt those who thought he’d be a good captain gamble, while Ebi Ere (12) just didn’t deliver at all. Steven Markovic (2) is yet to find any rhythm while Larry Davidson (-2) proved me wrong and failed to continue his improvement.

 

Get Ready for Round 8

While Perth only plays the single game this week, they have three straight doubles again following. Casey Prather gets to the top of the list with a negative break-even plus Perth are now looking to him as their “go-to guy”. Nick Kay is still great value and is now Townsville’s top scorer but isn’t listed above because everyone has him, right? At $98,700 Clint Steindl isn’t really a premium or a bargain, but he looks like a good choice too with Townsville’s doubles. Jason Cadee makes the bottom of the list of the back of 5 straight scores of 20+, but how he will go with the return of Josh Childress is the big question. Tai Wesley is also of note as he has the lowest break-even of any player, but it’s really contingent on him returning and returning fit.

Alex Pledger misses out on this list only because he’s already gained over $30k in the last three weeks and once Tai Wesley returns he might slow down his scoring. Mitch Creek could also join Brendan Teys and Lucas Walker, however with all the Adelaide players remember that you should be aiming to have traded them back out of your team by round 11 to avoid the byes.

You could also go for one of the Townsville players in Brian Conklin, Clint Steindl, or Jordair Jett, but really if you don’t have AJ Ogilvy then it’s likely to be a pretty disappointing round for you.

With Illawarra and Townsville the only teams playing the double match then it could be a light scoring round for a lot of people. If you’ve got any players from those teams who are averaging 20+ then get them on court. Otherwise it becomes the gamble game of trying to pick scores, however unless you’re looking at something like a Mitch Young vs Julian Khazzouh then I usually favour the player with the double.