NBL Dream Team: Round 10 Preview

Plenty of big scores left most people smiling, unless you traded in Josh Childress, like I did. The number of trades left is also becoming a consideration for many as the extra forced trades are starting to take their toll.

 

Reviewing Round 9

Torey Craig (106) was a close runner up for most points this round, but there were plenty of players delivering the points as all of Thomas Abercrombie (92), Chris Goulding (88), Jermaine Beal (78), Nick Kay (78), Jordair Jett (76) and Anothy Petire (74) pumped out big scores. Torey Craig was also the third best value pick due to his huge score, just behind Leon Henry (42).

While Rhys Carter was mathematically the worst value pick, the bad luck of Josh Childress felt like a punch in the guts to everyone who traded him in. There weren’t too many bad scores overall though which meant results from players who were well down on their average hurt all the more. Cameron Gliddon (20), Todd Blanchfield (22) and Ebi Ere (14) all failed to reach their average with the sum of two matches, while Tim Coenraad (8), Oscar Forman (10), and Jason Cadee (14) had sub-par single games.

 

Get Ready for Round 10

I keep getting put into situations where I have to make trades and my attempt to avoid this by trading in Josh Childress the week early has completely backfired as he’s now out injured again. Hopefully you don’t have too many forced trades coming up, but remember that this week has Adelaide’s last games before their byes, so if you have more than two 36er’s then you need to consider starting to offload them now. Daniel Johnson is prime for trading out as he looks set for another big drop in value this week.

Many of the premiums now have found their price range and it’s as much about trading for structure as about getting the guys above who should be going up in price. In particular, look towards Round 12 where Cairns, Illawarra, and Townsville all have a bye and plan to ensure that you have 5 decent players that can start on court.

With any of these bargain players you’re looking at someone who can give you some short term cash gain and hopefully points along the way. If you need a minimum price player for an upgrade, who you’re going to have to keep for a while, then look at Greg Hire or Igor Hadziomerovic, both average about 10 ppg and are getting sufficient court time that they should maintain that average.

Kirk Penny was unlucky to miss out on the above list given his current hot streak, however with two games against Cairns it seems likely he might score slightly less. Jerome Randle and Casey Prather could also have made the list but there an unknown factor about their opponents this round. Julian Khazzouh and Daniel Johnson are the second and third highest averaging players but neither have scored above 30 in their last three matches and I’m not confident that they’re about to bounce back.

With Melbourne and New Zealand the only teams to be playing single games this week then get their players onto your bench. As much as there are a number of player in those teams who could pump out huge scores, they’re all prone to the risk of a low score too, so I’d be playing a double over them unless that means putting someone on court who is averaging less than 10.