Buy, Sell, or Hold: Derrick Favors and Ricky Rubio

January 7, 2020

Milos Zvekic's buy low, sell high trade advice for Week 12 of fantasy NBA. Milos delivers buy/hold/sell recommendations for Derrick Favors and Ricky Rubio in fantasy basketball leagues.

I love wheeling and dealing in my NBA leagues. It's often quite difficult to persuade a rival to do a trade that will give your team additional value. That's when you use the current form to try and get away with the better deal.

Trading away a player who strung together a couple of great games, but who you don't expect to do so well going forward, for a guy who might be in a slump but you're sure he will snap out of it quickly is a good way to end up with a better team when the fantasy playoffs come around. It is imperative however that the guy you give away doesn't outperform the guy you traded for in the long term.

To make sure this doesn't happen, I've taken a look at two players who are our prime Sell High and Buy Low candidates for Week 12 of the NBA season, right here at RotoBaller.

Buy Low, Sell High Advice for Week 12

Are You for Real, Derrick Favors?

Favors had six double-doubles out of his previous eight games. His averages of 11.1 points (no three-pointers) on 58.0% from the field and 64.3% from the line, 12.8 boards, 2.6 dimes, 0.5 steals, 1.8 blocked shots, and 1.0 turnovers in 30 minutes per outing, have him flirting with top-10 value over this period.

Now if we go back five years and take a look at his prime days in Utah, we see that Favors is capable of this kind of production - apart from the ridiculous rebounding and the 2.6 assists. But, as far as I know, the time machine hasn't been invented yet so it would be quite difficult for soon-to-be 30-year-old Favors to replicate his games from back when he was 25 and one of the leaders of that exciting Jazz team.

Furthermore, the Pelicans are expecting their up-and-coming star Zion Williamson to return from injury during the month of January. Although Zion will probably be eased into the rotation, he will take away minutes from Favors. Derrick's good performances did get him 30 minutes per game in the last two-three weeks, but he is still at just 24 minutes a night on the season, so I could see him getting back to that upon Zion's return. That will surely not be enough time nor opportunity for Favors to provide more than a top-75 value for his owners.

If you can find an owner who appreciates Favors and is willing to pay a top-50, top-60 player like Tobias Harris or Aaron Gordon to get him - I would never say no to a deal like that.

Baller Move: Sell high

Time to Panic on Ricky Rubio?

After winning the World Cup with his country Spain and taking home the MVP award from the competition, Rubio has been on a tear this season with averages of 13.6 PTS with 1.2 3PM on 41.3 FG% and 83.7 FT%, 4.6 REB, 9.3 AST, 1.3 STL, 0.2 BLK, and 2.5 TO in 32 minutes per outing. This has him well inside the top-50, after only being picked at #89 on average.

Lately, though, Rubio hit a rough patch and is averaging just 8.0 points with 1.0 three-pointer, shooting just 36.0% on his field goals and 50.0% from the charity stripe, 4.0 rebounds, 9.0 assists, 1.3 steals, no blocked shots, and 2.0 turnovers in also 32 minutes a night over his three games in the last 7 days. This sort of production isn't even enough for the top-150 and might have his owner regretting he didn't sell him high when he had the chance to. This might work well to your advantage.

Although his owner had surely hoped to sell him for a top-50 guy back when Ricky was on fire, perhaps he would now settle for someone closer to top-80. Joe Ingles, Jeremy Lamb or Lonzo Ball are all guys who are outperforming Rubio at the moment, have been ranked very similarly to Rubio at the start of the season and have a similar ADP, but haven't done quite as well, and in my opinion shouldn't outperform him ROS. For these reasons, I would give up any one of them for a chance to land Tricky Rick.

Baller Move: Hold or buy low

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