Among the weekend's developing stories are the 47 SWP put up by Robert Pack on Saturday night, and the sprained ankle suffered by Alonzo Mourning.

After an initial disappointment last Thursday, Pack looks destined to produce some nice gains in the next few days, with 3 games in four days. We'll see how many he plays in before his next injury.

Mourning's injury wasn't evident in the Saturday boxscore, as he played 37 minutes and garnered 43.5 SWP. But Zo reportedly said "That's the worst I rolled my ankle in a long time," and he is listed as a game time decision for tonight. If you were planning to move from Zo to Mutombo later this week, this presents a dilemma. Mourning has games scheduled today and tomorrow, while Mutombo plays only tonight. If Mourning can play both games, it makes sense to hold him through tomorrow. But if he is sidelined, trading for Mutombo today is probably the prudent move. Tough call.

The vast majority of message forum users successfully migrated to the old forum yesterday. I posted a notice here around 8:30am EST Sunday morning. Remember, if any aspect of the RotoGuru site appears to be malfunctioning, always check this page first for any announcements. Some Gurupies failed to do that, and were left out.

The forum outage was due to an administrative screwup by the forum hosting service that I was unable to resolve yesterday. I'm hoping to have the forum reactivated today, hopefully later this morning.

I put out a bad version of the Assimilator yesterday afternoon. I fixed it around 6pm EST. Sorry about that.

SW team rankings will not be updated today. My hotel phone connection has been tortuously slow, and there's no way I'd get it run in any reasonable length of time. I'll do it Saturday night, when I'm back home.

Donyell topped the list, but Zo did well enough to lead most nights, with 70 & 251. Maybe he should break his nose more often. He certainly had a nose for the basket, going 13-13 from the field before missing his last attempt in the last minute of the game.

I'll be out of town for the next few days. The only noticeable evidence may be that price updates will probably be delayed. Normally, I post updated prices for all games around 12:15-12:30 EST. From today through Saturday, prices may not be updated (in the sortable stats or Assimilator until late afternoon or early evening. Before relying on my price data to work on your trading plans, double check the "as of date".

Golden State played more like "Lead State" against the T-wolves last night. With the recent widespread infatuation with so many Warrior players - Hughes, Marshall, Owens, Caffey, yada-yada-yada - there were probably few teams totally unscathed by the off night. At least most of them should be reasonably fresh for tonight's game against the struggling Bucks, who were similarly torched by the Wizards.

I noticed that Smallworld has put up a promotional page on their upcoming baseball game. While details are sketchy, I note that they will be going to daily pricing, and "you're allowed up to three pitcher and three player trades per week", whatever that means. Obviously, both changes will have strategic implications, but I'm not going to speculate on them until the details are posted.

Back to sports. Four players had SWP games in the 60's yesterday, headed by The Admiral's Duncan-strain-assisted 68. Duncan left the game early in the second quarter. His status is listed as day-to-day, and he has two off days before his next scheduled game. If he has to miss that game, it will be the first game he's missed since turning pro 2-1/2 years (& 184 games) ago.

The NBA trade deadline is only a few days away. If you're looking to add players in the next few days, make sure you've thought about the possible trade implications. In particular, Mutombo has a strong upcoming schedule, but that only applies if he remains with Atlanta. If you're planning to add him soon, it probably makes sense to wait until after the deadline, at least.

The chemistry on Golden State sure seems to have improved after last week's trade (or is it because Jamison got injured? Doubtful...) Suddenly, there are big numbers all around. Hughes, Marshall, Caffey, Owens, .... With 4 games in 5 days starting Tuesday, expect some nice Warrior price action this week.

The message forum suffered about 7 hours of down time on Sunday morning (between approx. 6am and 1pm EST). When I became aware of the problem, I posted a notice on this page. Please check here first before reporting problems. I'm grateful when you alert me to undiscovered problems, but once I've posted a notice, I really don't need to have my email flooded with redundant notices.

Speaking of the forum, it may be down during the wee hours tomorrow morning (probably between 3-5am EST). According to the hosting service, "Our routers will experience an intermittent loss of connectivity on their ethernet interfaces while they are moved to a higher capacity switch core. This move will improve routing, and overall packet throughput." While I don't understand the technical issues, I hope this clears up the access glitches that have intermittently bogged down many of us - particularly during peak periods - over the past couple of weeks.

The top totals overall belonged to Karl Malone and Elton Brand, a pair of forwards with an average age of 28. They were the only two to top 50 SWP, and Malone was the only player with more than 200 EBP.

Perhaps the most difficult aspect of the Echelon Hoops game is the (lack of) ability to accurately gauge your relative performance. Since every team spends at a different pace, daily point totals are comparatively irrelevant. Early in the season, I figured that the top teams would probably produce full-season point totals of 120,000 or better. That may turn out to be a bit of a stretch, but if so, not by much. There are a number of teams in the RotoGuru rankings that look like they'll easily clear 110,000, and 120,000 isn't out of the realm of possibility for a few. Teams that are in the overall lead currently have point totals in the mid-80,000 range, and most of them are out of funds, so all of the contending golfers are still just making the turn, and the clubhouse leaders won't be anywhere near the top when the final groups are coming down the 18th fairway. Using 120,000 as a target, you can figure out what your EBP/$ will need to be for the rest of the year, and plan your second half strategy accordingly.

Darrell Armstrong was the only player to top 50 SWP last night, and nobody exceeded 200 EBP. Armstrong's performance was largely inconsequential, though, as Orlando has a very light post-ASB schedule. Figures.

The big news yesterday was the three-way trade, with Kukoc going to Philly, Hughes and Owens to GS, and Starks to Chicago. If you're interested in the potential fantasy implications of the trade, there are several related threads at the message forum.

Five new SW trades this afternoon, and at this juncture, I think I'm going to hang onto all 4! That's a switch. We'll see how long it lasts. I'm a little concerned about holding Odom, but with a 5 game week, I'm hoping he can accumulate a respectable point total, and perhaps recover some lost value. If you are adding any Clippers for their 5-game week, make sure you think ahead, as they play only twice the following week. Early gains will be fleeting. With only 7 Clipper games in the next 14 days, there are eight teams with better two week schedules, headed by Miami with 9 games. If you're accustomed to shooting from the hip when trading, be careful that your foot isn't in the flight path.

I spent a little time yesterday reading through the bios on the message forum registry. As of this morning, there are already 90 Gurupies listed, and it's a pretty diverse group, with some interesting backgrounds.

Anxiety attacks abound this morning, as Antawn Jamison and Lamar Odom both sat out last night. Jamison was less surprising, as he also skipped the All Star weekend, but his longer term prognosis now sounds pretty severe, with surgery being considered. Odom's DNP was more unexpected, since he was well enough to play in the rookie game. Reports on his status for tonight's game in Orlando are mixed, but it sounds like there is a possibility he'll play. I hope so, because on the team I have him on, I used my last trade to dispatch Jamison. If I'm ever going to regain a reasonable trade arsenal again, I need to find some "iron men". (I know a lot of you empathize with that sentiment as well.)

Perhaps the most shocking stat item last night was 11-12. Those are Shaq's FT shooting stats! Actually, he was 11-11, and then missed his last attempt. Go figure!

I spent a good part of yesterday finishing up the programming for a new biographical registry for the message forum. This is a purely voluntary listing that has been requested by many forum users for quite awhile. The purpose is to allow regular users (and irregular users) to get to know each other better. If you see something posted by a familiar (or unfamiliar) name, it's nice to be able to look that person up. If you want more details, check the "Forum Biographical Registry" thread on any of the basketball, hockey, or baseball boards.

Next on my programming agenda is to gear up for this year's March Madness Contest. The format will be very similar to last year's, but with a few additional bells & whistles, and more prizes. By the way, if anyone knows of a good source of potential prizes (perhaps contributed in return for advertising?), please let me know. Meanwhile, if you want to brush up on the Contest format, all of the links on the left still point to last year's pages, so you can still get a recent history lesson.

I wasn't quite sure what to expect from the current poll. I left the question intentionally vague. Looks like most Gurupies feel reasonably good about their first-half performance, but believe they could have done (or should be able to do) better.

There are a few diversions I can recommend during the lull, especially since it appears that there were no serious injuries over the weekend, and no roster fixin' is going to be required today. (I have heard that Tracy McGrady hurt either his finger or right forearm during the slam dunk contest, but reports are spotty and don't seem to indicate that it appears serious.)

First, there are a couple of good, but lengthy, threads developing on at the message forum on strategy ideas. Check out Fantasy Strategy, and also Optimum Roster Results for two that are worth some thought.

Or, if you're really itching for spring, Echelon launched its baseball game last Friday, and RotoGuru division are already forming. The game's format is similar to their current hockey and basketball games, where you have a fixed pot of money to spend over the course of the season, salaries are paid daily, and trades are unlimited (subject to a minimum holding period of 4 days and a "drop cost" equal to one day's market salary). I don't know when I'll get my baseball sortable stats populated with new prices, but it does look like the point formula is the same as last year's, so at least that part of the stats tables can remain intact. For more early baseball chatter, the baseball section of the message forum has begun to see some activity.

This was a poor week for my SW and CNN teams, mostly due to disappointing results for Van Exel and LaFrentz. LaFrentz is particularly disappointing, as I picked him up two weeks ago, looking ahead at 9 games in 2 weeks, and figuring he'd hold his own in points while appreciating a few shekels. I'll be selling him this morning a few hundred $thou below the price I bought him. At least Van Exel held his price this week - which is a mystery to me. When I decided to hold him earlier this week, I figured I'd lose some value, but hoped I'd at least nab some points. Turned out the other way around. He's gone, too.

In a very light schedule, Michael Dickerson narrowly outpointed Chris Webber for last night's top honors. Bobby Jackson had a rare "double-negative", with -4 SWP and -5 EBP. His feat is even more remarkable because he played 26 minutes. It's hard to play that many minutes and get zero points, zero rebounds, and only one assist - while picking up 3 fouls and committing 3 turnovers. Maybe the T-wolves would like to have Terrell Brandon recover after all!

I know who I want to drop from my teams today. And I know who I want to add. A couple of them will be in the All-Star game, so I have to decide whether to buy now or wait until Monday morning. Buying now benefits from their likely price gains today, but risks a weekend injury, and we all know that a trade is a terrible thing to waste. Only a couple more hours to decide. Hmmm....

There were thirteen NBA games last night, and that leaves a lot of stats to peruse. Shaq led all producers last night with a "typical" 66.5 SWP/242 EBP effort. Tim Duncan was close behind (64/241), and Vince Carter also topped the 60 SWP mark. Four other players posted SWP totals in the fifties, the most surprising being Seattle's Rashard Lewis, who's priced at the $500K minimum.

Four new SW trades today, and four off-days to maneuver with them. SW has said (at its own message forum) that normal repricing will continue over the All-Star break, so there will be new prices on Friday and Monday, in spite of no games. It's hard to tell what weekend trading will be like. If you know who you want to sell, but are unsure about the buy side, you can always sell now and buy later, since there is no penalty for having an invalid roster when there are no points to be scored anyway.

Look at last year's history for Dennis. In 23 games, he averaged 21 SWP/G. He surpassed 30 SWP only 5 times. He was under 13 SWP in seven games. If he can repeat his 21 SWP/G average, that's about 7 SWP/G/$million, which doesn't sound bad.

Let's look at some other forwards in his "neighborhood". Averages are over the past 30 days.

Shandon Anderson: 27 SWP/G, $2.9m
Lamond Murray: 26 SWP/G, $3.2m ($2.9m CNN)
Scott Williams: 24 SWP/G, $1.9m ($1.7m CNN)
Kenny Thomas: 23.5 SWP/G, $0.8m ($1.1m CNN)
Malik Sealy: 22 SWP/G, $1.6m ($1.7m CNN)

There are some other options who have recently returned to action, and could produce comparable points at dramatically lower prices, including Shawn Marion and Derrick McKey, both who are still at the $500K minimum. So unless you think Dennis will increase last year's productivity by 50%, he doesn't stand out as a bargain on fundamental terms.

Of course, you might want to pick him up to ride his price gains. While he will certainly get some attention, I question whether it will be enough to make it worthwhile spending a trade. Dallas doesn't have a particularly good schedule in the next few weeks, and players who disappoint on a point/price basis have had trouble maintaining their ownership. If you're looking for a price gain, guys like Marion or McKey probably offer better long term potential.

Bottom line: you make the call. But you won't find Dennis on any of my rosters.

Stephon Marbury took top honors last night with 59.5 SWP & 203 EBP in just 33 minutes of action. Three other players topped the 50 SWP mark. Steve Francis returned to action, and although his 11.5 SWP suggests that he's not yet back to normal, those who are stuck holding him at least hope this signifies the start of an uptrend - in both price and points.

Don't be surprised if Smallworld has trouble finding another pro athlete to affiliate with them. Jason Sehorn was the first, and suffered a broken leg. Marcus Camby followed, and promptly tore his ACL, possibly ending his season. If they line up a baseball player, you may want to take this under advisement in your drafting plans.

I've been asked about likely trading patterns for Friday and Monday's SW price changes, since there aren't any games scheduled for the weekend. Frankly, I don't know. With the recent injuries, some managers will probably scramble to "heal" their rosters as soon as the new trades are doled out. Others may wait until after the All Star game to reposition their rosters, just in case anyone gets injured over the weekend.

The key to the magnitude of price changes, though, is not the absolute number of trades made during a period. A player's price change depends on his proportion of buys or sells relative to the total trades made during the trading period. As a general guideline, if there are 1000 trades made on Friday, and 40 (4%) are buys for Kevin Garnett, his price will rise a certain amount. If there are 100,000 trades, and 2,000 (only 2%) are buys for Garnett, his price will rise only half as much - even though he had 50 times more buyers. Light trading doesn't directly influence the magnitude of price changes. The key to anticipating price moves is to identify trading themes on any given day, and also to figure out how dominant those themes will be. Sometimes, this is pretty easy to anticipate. Sometimes it's difficult. Scheduling often plays an important role. In this situation, the schedule situation will be effectively unchanged for three consecutive repricings. If similar trading patterns are spread over the entire All Star break, the resulting price impacts could be tripled.

So what's the best timing for your trades? If you plan to buy players for their attractive post-ASB schedule, you'll probably gain more by buying in advance of Friday. Your risk is that you lose the benefit of 4 days of information, most notably injury reports. Even if you're not sure who to pick up, if you know who you want to sell, you might as well dump them early - especially if they are likely to sustain a price drop. No sense getting hit three times. There's no penalty for having an invalid roster over the break. Sell now, buy later.

Most Francis owners hadn't heard about his late-game injury by Friday morning, evidenced by his $140K price increase on Friday. I'll bet they've noticed by now.

Many SW managers have complained this year about the difficulty of managing with only 4 trades per week, suggesting that 5 per week would be much better. Much easier, perhaps, but better? While I admit that I've occasionally gotten hurt by overtrading, I think the game is better with 4 trades vs. 5. Long term planning is more important. Contingency planning is more important. THINKING is more important. Maybe it would be even better if they moved to 3 trades per week!

Seriously, 4 trades per week is a lot, especially when you realize that this works out to approximately 100 trades over the course of the whole season. Two years ago, SW Hoops offered a fixed 50 trade capacity for the whole year. No weekly allocation. And that was with daily repricing as well, when $1.5 million daily price swings were not uncommon. While I thought that version of the game was great for long term planning and strategy, the problem was that the optimal strategy required using most of your trades during the first half of the season, in order to build up roster value. The last few months were played with a few trades in the bank to deal with injuries. As I recall, I had less than 10 trades remaining (for the rest of the season) as of this point in the schedule. Imagine that! I had only two trades to use over the final month. The problem? Not much to do but sit back and watch with fingers crossed. That was probably not a good business model for SW either, as a lot of teams quickly ran out of trades and disappeared. The current model - with a weekly trade allocation - makes for better long-term persistency and involvement, and it also changes the optimal tactics. But I think most of us still tend to overtrade. Often, exploiting a trade today only captures an extra game's worth of points. Those points are just as valuable if earned in March as they are in December or January. There will be weeks - and this one seems like a good example - when it is very valuable to have a few extra trades in the bank. If you've been able to conserve, this is one week when you should reap some reward.

The rain arrived before Friday did.

Steve Francis left Thursday night's game with a groin injury - just 0:39 before the end of the game. Thirty-nine freaking seconds. Argh! This morning, I read that he is not with the team for tonight's game in Minnesota. I thought about hanging in there to see if he returns on Sunday, figuring that a lot of managers wouldn't have reacted to the breaking news. But since I had planned to drop Francis next week anyway, I figured I might as well pull the trigger now and conserve a few shekels. Time will tell if that was the right choice. The biggest casualty so far is that it killed much of my morning, trying to figure out the best alternative.

Looking back at the last week, if you went with Sam Cassell, you had the top guard for both points and gains (at SW, that is - Francis outgained him at CNN). Ray Allen used a 55 SWP effort last night to finsh a scant 3 SWP behind Sam. And while Ray didn't gain nearly as much, he also won't have Cassell's downside risk today.

I was surprised to see who was the overall point leader (at any position) for the week. Got any guesses?

Here are some hints. He eclisped Cassell by 3 SWP, although he played only 4 times, averaging 43.25 per game. In spite of that, he has just barely escaped the force of price gravity, and with a continually light schedule in the next 3 weeks, he likely to get sucked under again very soon. Can you figure it out now?

Nope, you're wrong. Check it out.

Lamar Odom was the latest victim, and as Lamar goes, so go the Clippers, who lost to Phoenix by a scant 46 points.

Nick Van Exel topped the SWP leaders last night, providing an early bonus to those who already added him in anticipation of next week's 5-game schedule. (Of course, if you've had him all week, this only compensates for last Saturday's 12.5 SWP stinker.) Chris Webber and Antonio McDyess (ditto the Van Exel comment) were close behind, and both of them also exceeded 200 EBP.

Hopefully, you aren't one of the managers who recently swapped Bull forwards, going from Tony Kukoc to Elton Brand. They broke even on Tuesday, but Kukoc had a 24 SWP advantage last night, as Brand only produced 16 SWP, which was his worst night since Dec. 30th. If you did make that trade, at least the prices have been trending favorably.

Since I don't always read the entry page at Echelon Basketball site (which almost never changes), I thought I'd call your attention to a notice I saw this morning:

All-Star Break
Players are NOT charged for keeping players over the All-Star Break period.

This obviously has implications for your trading plans over the next week. For example, Minnesota and the Clippers now have the equivalent of 4 consecutive game days starting next Wednesday!

We'll celebrate Groundhog Day by enshrining two new members of the RotoGuru Hall of Fame for their recent football conquests. Michael Mankus finished in the top spot in the 1999 RotoGuru Team Rankings for Smallworld Football, and James Surles claimed the honors in the inaugural season of Football Pickoff. Congratulations, gentlemen!

Tim Duncan took last night's top honors in a nationally televised game. Six other players had more than 50 SWP. At the other extreme, some widely owned players had some pathetic outputs. Ron Artest had 11.5 SWP. Lamar Odom had 10 SWP. Adrian Griffin had 5.5 SWP. Patrick Ewing topped them all with 12 SWP.

I updated the entry page to the new message forum. It now lists all of the forums, and sorts them by the time of the most recent post. I also added some extra navigation links to external hockey and hoops sites. Today I'll be working on adding some extra navigation links inside the individual thread pages.

I also lopped off the first half of the full season NBA schedule grid. This will allow it to load twice as fast.

If last night was any indication, Minnesota may ask Terrell Brandon to take his time coming back. Bobby Jackson subbed and produced a triple-double, barely edging out Jason Kidd for stud of the day honors. Darrell Armstrong and Kevin Garnett also topped the 50 SWP mark.

Off the court, the big news was the trade which sent Ron Mercer and two injured player (Chauncey Billups and Johnny Taylor) to Orlando for Chris Gatling and Tariq Abdul-Wahad. The most immediate implications are schedule related, as a number of teams had recently picked up Mercer in anticipation of Denver's heavy schedule, including 5 games in the next trading week. After tonight, Orlando plays only 3 times before the All Star break. Longer term, we'll have to see how this affects the playing time of not only these players, but also others on Denver and Orlando who might see adjustments in their minutes or roles.

This trade provides a good opportunity to point out a limitation in my individual player history pages. The schedule that is shown is the schedule of the player's current team. For example, once I get the team affiliations changed for the traded players, Mercer's page will list the Orlando schedule throughout, and will not correspond to his games played through the end of January. His daily point and price history will still be correct. Only the pre-February schedule will be misleading. I realize this is not a big deal, and that's why I haven't bothered to build in a workaround, but I figured it's worth mentioning before someone emails me and tells me that the schedules are off.