When it becomes known that a top-25 player is going to miss the next month, the first thing a fantasy manager should do is see who stands to replace that player's production on his team. Well, good luck finding an available Houston Rockets player worth anything in a standard league. You surely will not want Nene Hilario. Awesome James Harden did it all on Monday night to beat the now-lowly Memphis Grizzlies as the Rockets went small sans injured center Clint Capela, who is No. 21 on the Player Rater. Five Rockets played 30 minutes, and not one of those players is listed at 6-foot-8 or taller. The Rockets won anyway because of Harden scoring 57 points. He was the only Rocket with more than six rebounds. Heck, nobody else took more than 13 shots!
Losing Capela is a very big deal for fantasy managers who already missed adding Golden State Warriors center DeMarcus Cousins, who has yet to play in a game but is already up to 82.4 percent rostered as of Tuesday morning. Losing Capela is a problem regardless of format; I have an ESPN league in which the most appealing free agents are centers, but everyone has hit their limit of centers, so nobody can add them. The Capela manager is not cutting him! For those in roto formats, it is not easy to replace 12.6 rebounds, 1.8 blocks and a cool .631 field goal percentage. Noah Vonleh and JaMychal Green are not doing that.