Three Players To Trade Away During the All-Star Break

February 20, 2020

Antonio Losada takes a look at three players with suspect statistical profiles that you should consider trading away in fantasy basketball leagues before they regress and it becomes too late to get rid of them.

Finally, we have reached the All-Star break and with it mid-point of the NBA season!

You're right. That's a lie. The All-Star is not held at the point when we've watched 50% of the season, but rather two-thirds of it. Every team has played more than 50 games now (between 53 and 57, precisely) and man-of-steel Langston Galloway leads the league in games played with 57, two more than the 55 played by other 17 guys around the NBA.

With around 65% of the games already in the rear-view mirror, it's time to take advantage of the break and look at some players owned in more than 40% of Yahoo leagues (that is, not widely available for free through the waiver wire) that you should consider trading away from your team if you want to remain in contention for the championship as we enter the final stretch of the season.

Three Players To Trade Away

Elfrid Payton, (PG, NYK): 62% owned

Believe it or not, Payton has been making the rounds for five years already after being drafted in 2015! Not that experience has led to much improvement over the years, though, as he's been part of four franchises' rosters and is now on the rebuilding Knicks, which is nothing to be too proud of. No matter what, though, it feels like something has finally clicked for Payton lately.

But I'm sorry. I've seen too much of Payton to believe his level of play during the last couple of weeks is true. That has to do with his past, although his very recent present has been so bright indeed. Just in a three-game span to close January and open February, Payton scored 15+ points, grabbed 4+ rebounds, and dished out 9+ assists in each of those matches. He posted an average line of  16-7-12 playing 33 minutes per game and those three performances were his best of the season by far, including a triple-double against Cleveland on Feb. 3.

The interest in Payton has increased a lot since he started playing relatively well since around Jan. 18, and you should take advantage of the market and Payton's own history. Payton is a career 11-4-6 player who is averaging a 10-4-7 line on the season but has increased those numbers to 15-6-9 (and 3 steals...) just in his five games played this month. I highly doubt him keeping this pace, and much less on a mediocre team as the Knicks, with regression predictably coming to him strongly and soon. The hype is high, so sell him at his peak.

Larry Nance Jr., (PF/C, CLE): 65% owned

Even as a first-round draftee, Larry Nance Jr. never had it easy. He entered the league as a member of a completely lost Lakers franchise, spent two full seasons in Los Angeles, was traded to Cleveland during his third year with expectations of getting a ring playing alongside LeBron James but the Warriors were too much for those Cavs. With both Tristan Thompson and Kevin Love part of the team, Nance has always been the pine-rider big man of the team, and things have not changed much in his two seasons and a half in Cleveland.

Nance has shown what he's capable of this season, though. Back in November, Nance had a span of games in which he averaged more than 26 minutes of playing time and a good 14-9-2-2 line in six games going from Nov. 14 to Nov. 29. That was early-season peak-Nance, and after that his minutes went dry from the start of December to mid-January, averaging just 20 per game and doing virtually nothing in those short runs. The past month, though, has brought a substantial change to Nance's 2020 season. In the last month of games (he's played 13) Nance is averaging 13.7 points, 8.3 boards, 2.8 assists, and 0.9 steals. The problem I have with this production, though, is that he didn't have a third big to fight against to get minutes in the rotation.

Andre Drummond, that is. In a surprising move a few days ago Cleveland traded for Drummond while retaining both Thompson, Love, and Nance in the roster. As if the competence wasn't high already, now Drummond is entrenched as the no. 1 center in Cleveland with all three of Thompson, Love, and Nance getting minutes at the SF/PF positions. Even though Nance had raised his numbers leading up to the lineup I find it hard to believe in him going forward. Drummond will erase the boards and leave so few rebounds available for others, and Nance's shooting numbers will probably fall back under the 10 fga per game. You'd be better selling him and trying to acquire someone playing a more favorable environment with more opportunities at hand nightly.

Reggie Jackson, (PG/SG, LAC): 44% owned

For those of you who have Jax in your rosters at this point, the fact that his contract has been bought out and he's now a member of a sexy team and contender in the Los Angeles Clippers could be the ultimate selling point. You can try to sell the combination of his numbers and his new surroundings in the LA rotation and bundle that sweet idea to convince some owner of giving you something interesting in return.

The Pistons are going nowhere this season or any time soon, so it made sense to move the point guard. Jackson is 29 years old, and Derrick Rose--Detroit's other viable guard--is 31 already. Detroit has nothing left to know about any of them, so it's not that they'd throw them on the court to see what was in them. With Rose out injured since Feb. 2 (he came back on Feb. 12), Reggie has started every game from Feb. 3 on and played north of 28 minutes in his last five. Jackson is averaging a 15-3-5 line on the season, has started the last six games, has a usage rate of 28% in that span and he's being run for extended periods of time in Detroit.

Now that Jackson has joined the Clippers, though, he will have to endure a massive impact in both his production and minutes. Sure, he's moved from a talent-barred team to another with much better players around, but he will automatically become a second-unit-exclusively player and his numbers will undoubtedly go down. Consider what the Clippers already have in their roster: Lou Williams, Patrick Beverly, and Landry Shamet to start with, and even other low-impact guys in Rodney McGruder and Terance Mann. The stats look good for Jackson, but the situation seems a little bit shaky and unstable to say the least going forward.

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