Tip-In Points Isolation: Robin Lopez
You have to figure Robin Lopez is having a nice little summer vacation. First, he’s been to, like, five water parks since early June and now that he’s skipping the U.S. Olympic training camp, you have to assume he can fit in at least two more water parks and maybe a few aquariums. Dude’s got to get in as much water fun as possible before he hits the desert for eight months. And that’s fine. Let him. You want a healthy RoLo. You want a rested, happy, funtime Lopez because you haven’t seen one in the NBA yet and this stands to be the season he makes a real fantasy impact.
Look, Lopez went down in April 2009 with a nasty back injury that more or less hampered him the remainder of that season and laid him low again in April and May 2010. Don’t scoff at back injuries either. The back is the window to the soul – assuming you’ve misplaced your soul. And even with a misplaced soul, it’s clear Lopez is developing. In just one season, Lopez jumped from a player efficiency of 12 to an 18 PER (15 is average, 20 puts you in the league’s top 30). Despite missing the last two months of his rookie season, Fro-pez’s ORtg jumped from 112 in 2009 to 123 in 2010 (107 is the league average).
So, yeah. You want him rested. Let ‘im take as many laps in the lazy river as he wants because the Suns are going to need him, his back and his silly hair to be ready come Opening Day. They’re gonna need that back issue to … well, to not be an issue. They’re gonna need him to play more than 60 games, more than 19 minutes in those games and reach the line plenty of times while ticking off those minutes. From a fantasy perspective, he’s going to need to do all the grinding, thumping big man stuff that Amar’e Stoudemire was supposed to do (but often shied away from doing). He’ll certainly get the minutes to do all that bumpin’ and grinding (eww), but if I may pull on the reigns a bit, his back hasn’t been proven to be a thing of the past yet. Don’t pass up good backs for bad backs. Or baby backs. Or greenbacks. But if Sideshow Rob is still available in the last third of your draft – pounce.
It’ll be the Lopez Show at times for the Suns, which might cause some immigration problems down in Phoenix, but none for your team. 32 mpg / .570 / .720 / 0.0 / 15.1 pts / 8.0 rbd / 0.6 ast / 0.5 stl / 1.8 blk / 2.0 tov
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Photo courtesy of Yahoo! Sports via Getty Images
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