Fantasy Basketball Buy, Sell, or Hold: Jerami Grant and Devin Booker

January 22, 2021

Milos Zvekic's buy low, sell high trade advice for Week 5 of fantasy basket. Milos delivers buy/hold/sell recommendations for Jerami Grant and Devin Booker in NBA leagues.

Many experienced fantasy GMs try to use current good forms of their players to try and make a trade happen that will benefit them in the long run. The hotness of your player can appear too appealing to your rivals, and if you don't think he will be able to keep it up, you would be wise to get someone in exchange who you believe in going forward.

The best targets are usually guys that are proven fantasy assets but are currently on a poor streak. A top 75 fantasy player can have his value boosted to, let's say around #40, and a top 30 guy can fall to #70 if things aren't going his way. If you think that both guys will go back to their original ranks, this is the perfect time to try and swap the former for the latter.

Here are our Sell High and Buy Low candidates for Week 5 of the NBA season, right here at RotoBaller.

Are You for Real, Jerami Grant?

Although we always liked Jerami, and he has been showing glimpses of his talent even back in OKC, it took a pretty generous offer from Detroit in free agency for him to fully break out of his shell. And boy, did he break out of it!

Grant is currently averaging 25.4 points with 2.6 three-pointers on 47.3% from the field and 86.3% from the line, 6.1 boards, 2.6 dimes, 0.9 steals, 1.3 blocks and 1.4 turnovers in almost 37 minutes per game. This insane production has him inside the top 25 in Yahoo rankings!

Detroit seems to be all in on Grant. He is playing by far the most minutes (36), taking the most shots from the field (18.9) and from the line (5.7) and scoring the most points (25.4). All this while being pretty darn efficient with those decent percentages and just 1.4 TO per game.

Therefore, there is no shame in keeping him whatsoever. I don't think veterans like Blake Griffin and Derrick Rose feel the need to be the #1 option and with their rookie protege Killian Hayes being sidelined for another two months, there isn't really anyone else who should be taking shots over Grant.

That being said, Grant is really surprising me with his efficiency and his ability to use his playing time and increased role this well! This much usage and playing time are quite new to him. He only averaged over 27 minutes per game over the course of a season once (back in 2018-19 with the Thunder) and only had over 10 shots per game in that same season. Furthermore, he is a 68.0% career free-throw shooter. Granted (see what I did there?), he has improved significantly in almost every season, but still, him shooting over 85% on such a high volume is either an aftereffect of him busting his ass working over the offseason (which isn't very likely given how short this offseason was) or a bit of a fluke which should drop off at least a little sooner rather than later.

So, if you agree with me that Grant is for real, but should drop down to like top 50 by the end of the season, this is the perfect time for you to try and trade him away for a player who either fits your team better or has more value overall. I've made a deal in our RotoBaller Writers' league with my dear colleague Pierre and we basically swapped his Jimmy Butler and my Grant. Even though Butler is sometimes difficult to have on your team as he is known to miss games when he does play he is a beast and often a top 20 guy on a per-game basis. Furthermore, he fit my team better as I was after steals and assists. Of course, if Grant keeps playing like this, and Butler keeps missing time Pierre will have won the trade in a landslide. But I was willing to take the risk as I feel Butler helps my team out right where I need him to.

This is the kind of deal I suggest you look for if you think it will improve your team.

Baller Move: Sell high

Time to Panic on Devin Booker?

I was reluctant to write about Booker as our Buy low option here as he is a very obvious choice for it, and I don't like stating the obvious. On the other hand, he fits perfectly into what fantasy managers should be looking to target in these types of deals, so I've decided to give my thoughts on why Booker is a good target, but also point out the risks of being too high on him - perhaps you can use these real arguments to lower his price a bit.

So, let's state the obvious first. Booker is ranked at #121 on Yahoo at the moment with averages of 22.2 PTS, 2.0 3PM, 46.8 FG%, 80.9 FT%, 3.4 REB, 4.1 AST, 1.1 STL, 0.4 BLK and 4.1 TO in over 35 minutes a game. He is basically doing worse than last year in all categories apart from steals and blocks (with three-pointers being on par with last year's averages).

Now this notion by itself isn't too frightening, as many players have hot and cold streaks, so why not just chalk this slow start off to one of those?

Well, it just happens that Phoenix added Chris Paul in the offseason. And suddenly we are seeing Devin fall off from "Bubble Booker" who lit up Disney World, to this pale version of himself that isn't even in the top 100 fantasy-wise. One has to wonder whether this is truly a coincidence or have Paul's arrival and other changes that happened to the team (Kelly Oubre Jr. being replaced by Jae Crowder, Cameron Payne showing up...) perhaps created a situation in which Booker just doesn't thrive as much as he did in previous seasons.

These are all legitimate questions, and if your rival is willing to lower his asking price to like someone who is around the top 35-50 I would probably roll the dice on Booker! Fred Vanvleet, Brandon Ingram and Khris Middleton are all guys who should be tempting to Booker's manager, while Devin still having the bigger chance to outperform them for the rest of the season. Of course, all under the assumption that Booker will fit your team better than the player you're offering in return.

Baller Move: Hold or buy low.

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