Al Horford, done for the season!
Injuries are coming in left and right this season at a record pace. The condensed schedule is not allowing players to rest their bumps, bruises and sore knees. Giving them the higher possibility to get injured and fatigued this year. Paying attention to your roster daily will benefit you in the long run more than usual this weekly fantasy basketball season. Below I have given a couple key injury updates followed by a couple hot waiver wire pickups.
Al Horford tore his left pectoral muscle last night against the Pacers and is expected to miss the rest of the 2012 fantasy basketball season. This is a huge blow to fantasy owners and the Atlanta Hawks. Horford was a top ten center and key leader of his team. The Hawks announced that Zaza Pachulia will now be the starting center and should be a decent replacement for all the unlucky Al Horford owners.
Derrick Rose sat out Wednesday night’s game with a turf toe injury. This is one of the most frustrating injuries a player can have. This is because owners are never going to know when Derrick’s turf toe injury will flare up and cause him to miss a game. It will also not go away quickly and will most likely bother him all season long. The fantasy season will be looking tough when your first round draft pick is a game time decision every other game for the rest of the season. If you’re not familiar with the injury look at Shaq or Tim Duncan’s seasons where they dealt with the particular issue, it’s not pretty. John Lucas will be starting whenever Rose decides to take a night off. In my opinion you should wait till Rose gets on a role and trade him for another top point guard that is healthy. My choice would be Rajon Rondo of the Boston Celtics.
Stephen Curry has had multiple ankle injuries over the course of his career. He underwent surgery to strengthen the ligaments in his ankle hopefully to help prevent so many sprained ankles. The length of his absences is not fully known and could be two to three more weeks. Although this is not good for his owners, a great replacement would be his backup Nate Robinson. Nate is averaging 15 points and 5 assists a game in Curry’s absence and is currently a free agent in over 85 percent of leagues out there!
Waiver wire
The top waiver wire pick-up of the next couple days is going to be the previously mentioned Nate Robinson. He is playing better than majority of the point guards in the league since taking over the role for Golden State. Not many free agents average his stats in their best game of the week.
The next three guys are all rookies who are starting to get more playing time due to their good performances and slacking veterans ahead of them. They are Iman Shumpert, MarShon Brooks and Brandon Knight. Iman Shumpert is over shadowed by the star power in New York, while MarShon Brooks is becoming a hot shooter off the bench. The most intriguing of the guys is Brandon Knight due to him playing his way into the lineup. He is playing alongside Greg Monroe and they are only going to get better as the season goes on.
My last hot waiver wire player of the next couple days is Amir Johnson of the Toronto Raptors. Pay the cheap ticket price for this guy in weekly fantasy basketball salary cap games. His stock is flying under the radar due to the fact that he plays for the terrible Raptors team and is not known for his scoring ability. His 8 boards a night are going to come in abundance off your bench if you make the move now, also if you league gives extra points for double doubles, he is even stronger.
Tags: 2012 fantasy basketball, Al Horford, Atlanta Hawks, Derrick Rose, fantasy basketball injuries, fantasy basketball waiver wire, fantasy sports games, free fantasy basketball, free fantasy basketball games, nate robinson, weekly fantasy basketball, weekly fantasy basketball contests, weekly fantasy basketball games, weekly fantasy basktball contests, weekly fantasy sports games, weekly salary cap fantasy basketball
