Man, I would not drop Nenad Krstic. He has been up and down, but his 2nd half was much better last season.

As for Perkins and Swift, they are both essentially rookies. Swift is a 2nd year guy who barely saw the court until January of this season. Perkins is a similar situation. While they could both outperform Krstic, I’d take experience over upside.

If you do decide to switch for Swift, the only upside is that he sat most of the first half and should avoid the rookie wall for most of rest of the season. But his numbers really don’t enamor me all that much either way, so only grab him if he specifically fills a dire need.

Also, Nenad isn’t really doing all that badly this year - very similar stats to last season. He just doesn’t have that much upside. And you’ve probably seen the worst of his downside already.

The biggest kicker - Krstic is the only one of these 3 guys without a decent option on the bench behind him. Swift has Petro, Fortson, and some other chumps to take away minutes if he disappoints. Perkins has perennial bust Kandi-Man, who shows flashes from time-to-time and could steal floor time if he has one of his positive statistical anomalies.

I wouldn’t completely punt the entire category though, at this point in the year you can also punt to “maintain” position if you know that it’s highly unlikely that the teams behind you will catch you. Teams in the cellar often times barely even put up a fight and give up…

I guess you could call that the “pooch punt”.

I really believe in roto leagues that you have to at least be in the middle of the pack at every stat category to have a chance at winning it all. I’m still gutting it out to get 6 points out of a possible 12 in a category with that in mind.

Unfortunately, someone else picked up Perkins earlier today. Lesson learned = it doesn’t pay to wait and see.

What about Robert Swift? What is his value comparable to Krstic and to Perkins. I’m definately pissed that I didn’t pick up Perkins, but I don’t really have a say in the matter now. The only thing I’m not diggin is that Swift only has C eligibility as opposed to Perkins’s PF/C status, which is much nicer for flexibility sake (why Lamar Odom doesn’t have PF status is beyond me).

Anyways, that would leave me with only Troy Murphy and Boris ‘versatile’ Diaw for PF spots.

This is really frustrating. If only I’d swapped Krstic for Perkins when I had the chance (but Krstic has played well lately and it’s tough to drop a “hot” player).

The biggest thing I’ll miss is the blocks, as only Dalembert and G.Wallace supply a steady stream of them for me.

The question is, can he keep it up. He’s been playing very well this week, #21 overall acording to yahoo.

Would it be worth it to drop someone like Drew Gooden, based on speculation, for him. Drew is getting 10/9 with decent percentages, but that is about it. I just picked him off the waivers the other day, and he is in a timeshare, so it’ll be tough for him to really contribute a lot on a consistent basis.

If Qyntel gets 35 minutes a night, he would be great. But NY has nate Robinson, Trevor Arazia and the original Q, along with Marbury and David Lee to play the 1-3, where Qyntel plays.

So….other than being a Eddie Griffin-esque tease, what is Qyntel going to be …opinions only…obviously.

As for your team, jm, I’m not sure… your team’s built around Arenas and Pierce, and you probably can’t move them. There’s definitely not a compelling case for punting. Playing PFs at the util spots definitely lowers TO, if your assists/steals can afford it.

as for the factors you recommend considering:

1. The category is close now:
I’m in 9th at 2.04, the 3 teams I’m in close reach of above me are at 2.09,2.06,2.04. The three teams below me are a bit further away: 2.17,2.24,2.25

2. The highest I could possibly reach would be 4th place (a “9″). The 4th and 5th place guys are currently .22 and .17 ahead of me

3. Other personnel on my team:

over 3.5 TO/game: Arenas
2.5-3.5 TO: Pierce,R.Jefferson
1.5-2.5: Ridnour, Dalembert,
M.James, Brand
0-1.5: Battie,Childress,Josh Howard

Thus my guys who’re best at TO are in the bottom teer of my roster (#50-#100 ranked guys). I don’ have any TO studs, like Sheed or David West who’s a top 50 guy overall, and is also great in TO. On the other hand I don’t have many TO killers. Basically, I’d be doing fine in TO if it wasn’t for Arenas and Pierce. Thus it may not make sense to try and overhaul my roster to get really bad at TO. I’m doing great in the standings with my current strategy.

So where does that leave me. To punt or not to punt?

I think all 3 of your criteria above point me toward NOT punting.

Not an easy decision. Any thoughts?

TO definitely adds a perplexing layer to fantasy basketball.

Definitely different issues in roto and h2h leagues. I’m in a roto league, and I’m also interested in the issues around punting TOs. I’m in third place in my league overall, with lots of stars with 3+ TO/game on the team. I’m on pace (after games factor in) to finish last in TO.

So the question is, should I use the blog’s tactics of how to make trades to make my TO situation even worse (targeting other categories and taking the “1″ in TO), or steadily try to improve it?

Some factors that I think play in to the decision:

1. How close the category is now. My TO race, per game played, is still pretty close. For example, my team has made 2.26 TO/game, and other teams are around 2.25, 2.13, 2.22, etc.

2. How many people you could possibly catch. In my league, there are 5 guys I could probably have a chance at catching (they’re within .2 TO/gm), which would give me a “6″ in the category — not too shabby. In leagues where the best you could get is a 3 or 4, I’d probably say punt.

3. The other personnel already on your team. On my team, I have some people who could (humorously) be described as turnover superstars, given their overall production: Rasheed (1.1/gm), David West (1.6/gm), and a couple other guys with around 1.6/gm. Given that trades that really work (in my league at least) can be hard to make, I’d say this weighs in favor of NOT punting, since it’d be hard to find the right buyers to clear out the low-TO talent. If your team doesn’t have a bunch of guys with good TO value, I’d say punt.

I guess the added wrinkle of TO-punting is that you can’t do well in a league overall without a bunch of guys who handle the ball a lot and thereby rack up the TOs. It’s not impossible, though: the guy in second place in my league is second-best in TOs.

Anyone have more experience in TO punting? The blog is definitely right that if you’re going to punt, the earlier the better.

For the first of those 2 championships, I found myself 3 weeks into the season averaging 9 blocks per week. On the other hand, there were teams averaging 25, 30, even 40 per week. So I decided to trade away the few I had and focus on dominating everywhere else, since I had a well-balance squad that passed well. I also found myself with a hole in 3-pointers, so I punted that one too and traded Mike Miller (who was then a 3-pt specialist only) for Andre Miller (who averaged over 11 assists/game that season). Won the league running away, and I hardly ever won those 2 cats again.

Last season I drafted gunners who contributed in other categories (and got lucky with Okafor). However, as a result, I had probably the worse FG% as a team that I’ve ever seen. I would be happy to get into the 40%+ range most weeks. But I dominated in everything else and again won the league running away.

The years in between I went for balance and got killed. I even punted TOs one year, but I suffered from a really bad draft that season and had no chance. Any other year, I think it would have worked.

This year I drafted defensive specialists (AK47, Artest, Josh Howard, Gerald Wallace) and filled in the rest with serviceable Centers (Zaza and P.J. Brown), Assist-happy PGs (Baron Davis and Rafer Alston), and a few 3-point gunners (Jason Terry, Sheed, Eddie Jones, Hedo Turkoglu). Now that I’m 70% of the way through the season, I realized that my only hope is to punt FT% and sell points for stats in other categories that help me dominate.

So I’m punting 2 categories, but especially FT% since I still hold enough points to beat half the league anyway (amazing how early-season injuries force you to stack talent before it is all gone). However, I spent half the season waiting for Ron Artest to return and now I’m waiting on Gerald Wallace, so I won’t know for at least 2 or 3 more weeks if my plan worked. Check back then . . .