Heard of Ian Mahinmi? I hadn’t until the Clippers played the Mavs a few nights back. The Mavs solution to losing Tyson Chandler was by moving Haywood into the starting line-up and giving Mahinmi more minutes. While watching Mahinmi, I decided to look up his stats to see if he could be a valuable fantasy player. In 20 minutes a game he has averaged 8 points and 5 rebounds, while shooting 65% from the field. Now he doesn’t take enough shots to make a huge difference in your fg%, but 65% shooting can’t hurt right? His only downsides are, firstly his ft%, which is around 63%, and secondly for a 7 footer (or close to), he doesn’t get very many blocks. Watching his ft stroke I believe the 63% ft shooting is due to a small sample size and or rust due to the lockout. He’s a career percentage is at 71.4% and last year he was at around 77%. If given more minutes I believe he could be a definite pickup, but as it is in deep leagues, if you’re in need of a center, I would consider him a definite option.
Tracy Mcgrady in his prime was a sure fire top round pick. He could shoot, rebound, assist, steal and block. Is he still valuable now? I believe he is, if he is given the time to play. He is currently getting about 20 minutes a game in Atlanta. If we remove the 3 games where he only played 8 minutes (I believe due to his back spasms), He has averages of 10 points, 2 assists and 5 rebounds, while shooting 50% from the field. Watching the Hawks last game against Portland, I was happy to see that he got 27 minutes of playing time. With Horford out, the Hawks need someone to step up. I feel Mcgrady can be that guy. He may not be the number 1 option anymore, but as a waiver wire pickup in a deep league I feel he can help your team. He is not the scorer he once was, but is now a rebounding guard.
Tayshaun Prince has been on my fantasy team multiple years in a row. He is always a very late round pick, but has always helped me. He is currently averaging 11.7 points, 2 assists, 3 rebounds, and 0.7 3’s a game. His fg% is also down 5% from last year. While this may go up, I feel his rebounds and assists will not. The Pistons have too many players that like to ‘take the game in their own hands’. They are not a very assist heavy team, with Stuckey leading the team with 4.4 assists per game. In terms of rebounds Monroe in a beast in the paint and this will heavily dent the number of rebounds Prince can get. I have considered dropping him, but he’s had a scoring outburst in his last three games. I know this will not last due to the volume of shots he was taking in these games. These last 3 games he has taken 23, 22 and 15 shots and scored 29, 20 and 20 respectively. In his career he has averaged 11.1 shots a game and has never averaged more than 12.8 shots a game, which he averaged last year. With Monroe becoming the focal part of the team and players like Knight, Gordon, and Stuckey on the team, Prince was never going to get a high number of shots anyway. I still have hope that he can pull his averages up to his career numbers of 13 points, 5 rebounds, and 3 assists, but somehow I doubt it. Unless you are in a deep league, I would not consider picking him up since his current asset is only points.
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