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The Marcus Camby Quandary

In all of fantasy sports, there might not be a player who comes with bigger risk and reward than Marcus Camby. According to NBA.com, Camby has an average draft position of 33. There's a pretty good argument stating that number is way too high, and a different one claiming it's too low. First, the negatives:

Camby is 33 years old, and it's no secret, a huge injury risk. The 70 games played last year were actually the second highest amount of his career. He's never not missed at least 10 games in a season. He's been sidelined an average of 26 games per year throughout his career. Also, he's not that great of a scorer, averaging just 10.9 ppg during his career.

Still, there are plenty of positives to go around as well: Camby was the Defensive Player of the Year in 2006-07 and has been the NBA's leading shot blocker the last two seasons. Denver's uptempo style fits his game well, and he fills the stat sheet in ways very few others can match. He's eligible at the toughest position to fill, center, and contributes more assists from the position (3.2 apg last season) than nearly any other big man. He's a monster on the glass (11.7 rpg in 2006) and limits his turnovers (just 1.5 tpg for his career). But Camby's real value comes in the hustle categories, as he averaged 1.2 steals and 3.3 blocks per game last season. The 4.5 combined spg and bpg was the best mark in the entire NBA last season, and you rarely see those kind of theft numbers from a center.

In summation, if Camby were guaranteed to play 80 games this season, he'd be worth a top-5 pick in fantasy leagues. However, that kind of durability just can't be counted on, so one must assume he's going to miss around 20 games. That still leaves him with plenty of value, but I'd rather own him in a H2H league and just hope he's healthy come playoff time than I would a rotisserie league, where his impressive averages won't help as much in a cumulative scoring system.