Happy New Year to everyone, and all that. Apologies for the late posting today, it has nothing to do with late night revelry last evening, but everything to do with my slip back into addiction. Addiction to Tetris. I downloaded one of those 8-bit NES simulators and have been playing Tetris pretty non-stop over the past week or so. I just can’t stop. You’d think it would get old after a while, but it really hasn’t. At least not yet. I hope it does soon. Anyway, here’s another look at some players on my team that I’ve been watching all year.

I couldn’t have been more thrilled when Shawn Marion dropped to me at #4 on draft day, but I must admit that so far the ride hasn’t been as great as I thought it would be. Now granted, Marion still sits at #5 on the APR and has stayed perfectly healthy, which counts for even more this season, but those monster Marion game have been a rarity this year. His scoring is down 2.5 points and his rebounds are seriously down, from 11.8 last year to a very ordinary 8.9 this year. I’m willing to attribute some of that to Amare Stoudemire’s return, but it’s also partly the result of Marion guarding more small players this year. He’s often chasing smaller players around the perimeter, leaving guys like Amare to scoop up the rebounds, and leaving Marion to run the floor looking for outlets from Nash. On the offensive end, Stoudemire’s return is obviously having an impact as well, but it’s just as much the team’s depth. A couple years ago when Marion, Stoudemire and Steve Nash all turned in magnificent seasons, the Suns were a very shallow team. When Joe Johnson went down in the playoffs they were basically reduced to a six-man rotation. The Suns can go much deeper now although they normally don’t, but the presence of both Raja Bell and Leandro Barbosa, the return of Stoudemire and Steve Nash scoring at a career high have all combined to make Marion not quite an afterthought on offense, but he’s certainly down the totem pole. He’s averaging just 14.5 attempts per game, down from 16.9 last year, and way down from his career high of 18.1. The majority of his shots come on alley-oops and 3s now, there’s not much in between. Marion is keeping his value by holding steady in those specialty categories, with 1.2 3s, 1.9 steals and 1.5 blocks while maintaining his fantastic percentages. He’s still playing big minutes and you can’t worry about him too much. We should all be lucky enough to have a disappointment like this on our team.

I’m not really sure what came over me when I took Jermaine O’Neal in the second round. My other option was Vince Carter and I just couldn’t pull the trigger, so I went with the fragile big man. And man is this guy fragile. Watching Pacers games is always a nail-biting experience because there’s at least one instance each game when it looks like O’Neal might be done for the evening. He’s always – always – got some sort of affliction, whether it be the flu, pneumonia, ankle, hamstring, etc. That said, you can’t argue with the results so far. He’s at 23/18 on the rater, and while he’s missed five games so far, owners like me are plenty happy that number’s not higher. The big difference in JO’s game this season has obviously been in the blocks department, where he’s averaging a career high 3.1 per game, which is tops in the league. It’s no fluke, either. O’Neal goes for blocks constantly, even if it means getting out of position to go for the swat. He can afford to do this a bit with Jeff Foster around to clean up on the glass, and it isn’t affecting O’Neal’s own rebound numbers, as he’s up to 10.4, which would basically tie his career high. He still takes too many jump shots for my liking, especially since he’s shows very solid to-the-basket moves. This keeps his FG% modest; he’s at 46.5% right now and he’s just not a guy who will give you 50% from the field. His 73% from the line is above his career average and I’ll take it, especially since there are nights when he’s just clueless up there. (He has a 1-for-7 and a 2-for-7 to his credit so far this year.) Another big plus for O’Neal this year is his career-high 3 apg. So we’ve got an extremely fragile center averaging career highs in blocks, rebounds and assists – must be a good sell-high candidate, right? Theoretically, yes. If I could deal O’Neal and get another top center in return, I’d probably do so. But what top center will that be? I was trying to put together a package for Yao Ming, but then he went down. Trading away O’Neal would leave me with a huge hole in blocks, and check out the names behind him on the blocks list – Emeka Okafor, Alonzo Mourning, Marcus Camby, Andrei Kirilenko, Josh Smith, Yao Ming. Those aren’t exactly the most reliable options. Basically, I think O’Neal owners like myself just have to hope he keeps swatting shots, missing just a game or two per month and avoids a serious breakdown.

Deron Williams has slowed down a bit over the past couple of weeks but still clocks in at an impressive 27/41 on the rater. The assists are not a fluke and Williams will be a force in that category all year as long as Carlos Boozer stays healthy. Williams racks up many of his assists in transition or simply by feeding Boozer who makes a quick move to the basket. It’s the one part of his game that is always there. After registering 8+ assists in just one of his first five games, Williams has dished out 8 or more dimes in 18 of the past 26 contests. His ridiculous accuracy he showed from three-point range in the second half of last season has obviously tapered off, and he’s at a pretty bad 31% from long range on the season, although to be fair I’ve seen him launch quite a few 3s with just a tick or two on the shot clock, as is often the case with point guards. That he’s averaging just 1 make per game at just 31% and is still shooting 47% overall means that both of those numbers are bound to increase as the season goes on. Perhaps Williams best trait so far has been that he’s avoided the wrath of Jerry Sloan. The past few seasons Sloan has been one of those coaches who would just get fed up with players and plant them on the bench for much of the game, but Williams has played under 30 minutes in just four contests this year; three of those games were blowouts and the other he was in foul trouble before ultimately fouling out. Williams has a killer instinct reminiscent of a seasoned vet, not a second year player. On plenty of occasions this year he’s taken over the scoring load in the fourth quarter, even in games in which his shot hadn’t been falling early on. I’m not saying I’d rather have him than Chris Paul in real life or in fantasy, but if it gets down to crunch time, I think I’d feel more confident with Williams nailing that jumper as opposed to Paul. Then again, Williams has plenty more support, but I digress. Even though he’s played far above expectations so far, I don’t expect much fantasy drop off from Williams. He’s averaging just 1.0 3s and 0.9 steals, and just a slight uptick in those numbers could make up for whatever marginal losses he might experience in points and assists.