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Week 21 Fantasy Basketball Hot Picks and Sleepers

Pounding the Rock Fantasy Basketball fanatic Phil Naessens gives Fantasy Basketball owners loads of options this week.

Brian Spurlock-USA TODAY Sports

It's week number 21 of the Fantasy Basketball season. Some of you will begin your playoffs this coming Monday while others begin their playoffs next Monday March 24. It's been a long grind and now its do or die time. A listener of my daily show asked me the following;

Dear Phil,

Enjoy your weekly column and your segment with Kyle from Rotowire. One of my teams is in the Championship round beginning Monday March 17, 2014. Can you please give us some tips as we enter the playoffs? I play in a standard ESPN league.

Congratulations! This is where the fun begins!

I suppose the best advice I could give you would be to check out how many acquisitions you are allowed. Normally you are only allowed seven but playoff rounds in ESPN leagues are usually two weeks so you want to check that out to see if you are allowed seven or fourteen acquisitions.

During the season both Kyle and I preached patience but now is the time for action. You can't have injured players on your roster. You need to really hit that waiver wire hard and replace injured or underperforming players on your roster with players averaging at least 20 minutes per game and playing four games this week (13 teams have four this week). You should also look back over your season schedule and see which scoring categories you were weaker in and tighten it up.

If your team is weak in three pointers you could look this week to possibly Mike Dunleavy (Stats) or maybe Martell Webster (Stats) as both have four games and both shoot threes. They are also both widely available. D.J Augustine (Stats) is another three point option but he's 90% owned in ESPN leagues but it's worth a look and if he's available in your league grab him.

If your team is short on rebounds than maybe you could acquire Amir Johnson (Stats), Samuel Delembert (Stats) or maybe even Andray Blatche (Stats). All three are widely available. J.J. Hickson (Stats) is another good one if he's available in your league (90% owned) and if you don't like what I've offered keep digging and you should be able to find someone.

One of the most overlooked categories is blocks and there are some really good shot throwers out there like Chris Anderson (Stats) and maybe Timofey Mosgov (Stats) plus you could add Johnson and Delembert to the mix as well. All four of these guys are widely available and might wind up contributing in other categories as well.

If assists are a weak category on your team maybe you could consider Mario Chalmers (Stats) Greivis Vasquez (Stats) or possibly you could add Kirk Hinrich (Stats) to your roster. All three of them are widely available and can also help you in other categories as well.

Sorry to say this but I don't have any Spurs players to highlight or even recommend this week. They only have three games and even if they had four Coach Gregg Popovich and his crazy rotations are a real fantasy basketball killer. My best advice is to steer clear of the Spurs this week.

On today's show we talked Fantasy Basketball with Joe Mullinax, Andrew Bynum and the rest of the Indiana Pacers with Tom Lewis and Amar and I take a closer look at the Eastern Conference of the National Basketball Association. It was a fantastic show and you can listen to it below or download it here.

As an added bonus for readers of this column DraftStreet and I would like to invite you to play in a FREE daily basketball game on Saturday March 22, 2014. The grand prize is a $109 dollar voucher and all you need to do is click this link here and go win some FREE cash!

Pounding the Rock Fantasy League

This coming week is the last week of the regular season and it looks like there might be a tie for the top spot between Panduro Team and Tarheel Triple. At press time these two teams were neck and neck but it looks like Tarheel Triple just might pull off an upset. You can check out who won that and all the rest of this past weeks matchups at the link below.

http://basketball.fantasysports.yahoo.com/nba/35869

Good luck this week.