Jan. 18 -- Even thieves need a rest sometimes. John Cregan, your regularly scheduled zen master of subterfuge, is unavailable to enlighten you with new and interesting ways to divest your opponents of their precious stats, and so it falls to me to fill the void. I must confess, however, that I have no tale of highway robbery with which to regale you. I must be playing in the wrong leagues.

For you amateur thieves out there who may occasionally commit a misdemeanor, but never the Great Train Robbery, there is still a way you can come out ahead without having your face plastered on Wanted posters throughout the league. While the big score will undoubtedly leave you notorious and rich in the short term, there can be a dark cloud to that silver lining. After all, they caught Ronnie Biggs.

The method I employ takes much less of a toll on your Karma. It’s the two-for-one trade. I give you two. You give me one. Everybody wins. Except, I win more.

I realize that the concept of the two-for-one trade isn’t foreign to anyone, not even The 23-Year-Old Virgin Sean Allen. But do you know how to fully exploit the almost unsportsmanlike advantage that a two-for-one deal offers?

First, let’s debunk a bit. The term “two-for-one trade” is about as misleading as if you spoke of Entertainment Tonight as a nightly news magazine. The recurrence might be right, to format spot on, but yours and my definition of what is “news” makes a world of difference. By the same token, the “two-for-one trade” implies that the return is limited to one player. That’s simply not true. The ultimate result of your trade will not have your roster reduced by one head, nor will your opponent’s roster be increased by one. For every addition, there is an equal and opposite subtraction. And vice versa.

Or is it the other way around?

I’m going to make an assumption here and say that most trades are made with the front-end of the transaction in mind. I’ll give you Ben Wallace and Jermaine O’Neal if you give me Gilbert Arenas. Starving for blocks and rebounds and possessing a wealth of point guards, you accept the deal. And that’s that. Who wins?

Stat Rat Rankings For Dealt Player as of 01/16/05

Rnk	Player - Pos - Team	FG	FT	Pts	Reb	Ast	Stl	Blk	3Pt	Total
4	Gilbert Arenas - G - WAS	-0.11	0.60	1.75	0.13	1.18	1.46	0.01	1.95	0.87
20	Chris Bosh - F - TOR	1.00	0.51	1.29	1.41	0.27	0.18	0.73	-0.38	0.63
36	Ben Wallace - F/C - DET	0.32	-1.12	0.08	2.12	0.10	1.21	1.56	-0.38	0.49
Combined		1.32	-0.61	1.37	3.53	0.37	1.39	2.29	-0.76	1.12

Based strictly on Stat Rat rankings, in acquiring Gilbert Arenas, I just got GTR’d. In my rush to improve in five categories at the expense of three, I reduced my overall roster effectiveness by a quarter of a Stat Rat point. That, my friends, is the same as trading away Dwayne Wade for Chris Paul. At the end of the day, I’m worse off than when I started.

Did you catch me in my lapse of logic? No, not the trade for Arenas, but rather, the way I broke it down. What did I forget to factor in? Yes, you in the back with the “Veto This!” T-Shirt with the strategically pointed arrow pictured on it?

“You had a huge lead in rebounds and steals so you’re not really trading away as much as it looks?”

Not a bad guess. Wrong, but not a bad guess. Truth is, what I chose to spare or not spare from my roster has no bearing on the exact value I give up. I still ended up a quarter-point shy in a context in which LeBron James is worth exactly one point. You don’t win by giving up fractions of LeBron James. I could have traded just one of those two players for a lesser player than Arenas, or for two players whose combined value is even greater. But, I deliberately sold myself short. Why would I want to do that? You, in the front row, with the “M.B. + K.B.” doodle in his notebook, can I interrupt your “Mr. Matthew Bryant” calligraphy for a moment and ask why you think I made that deal?

“You deliberately concentrated the return on your trade into one roster spot so as to create the opportunity to further improve your roster at no additional cost to you, while proffering a too-good-to-be-true offer to an opponent who had no choice but to accept as you targeted his areas of want in exchange for stats he had in overage. In order to truly deconstruct the transaction, you need to factor in both the player dropped by your trade partner, and the one you’re adding.”

Wro… err. I mean, yes. Exactly. How’d you know that?

“I’m a literary caricature of your creation, whose purpose is to insinuate that Matthew Berry has a schoolgirl crush on Kobe Bryant while at the same time acting as a vehicle to convey your message to your audience and transition to your next point. I know everything you know.”

Oh. Well then, Mr. Smarty McKnowitall, since the fine art of subtlety and buildup is completely lost on you, I’ll get right to the point.

The genesis of the trade proposal above came not of an overpowering desire to acquire the scoring prowess of Gilbert Arenas, or the need to cash in Ben Wallace’s defensive acumen. It came from the desire to better my scoring, free-throw percentage, three-point shooting and assists by picking up Chris Kaman, who just happens to be the best player on the waiver wire right now. Granted, it’s not the world’s deepest league, but those count too. So, I want to shore up these categories, but it turns out Kaman is less than average in two of them, and barely adequate in the others. What he does do well, I’ve a plethora of; blocks and rebounds. My worst players all score, shoot threes, or get steals, so I can’t just drop one of them for Kaman, or I’m no further ahead. The solution, as we come full circle, is to trade for help in the categories I need by using up a renewable resource.

So, I target a team with an elite scorer, hopefully upper-tier, someone who needs rebounds and blocks but for whom Chris Kaman isn’t even a consideration due to having a fat bottom (his team, not Kaman); that is to say, too many good lower-level players who rank somewhere in between Kaman and Ben Wallace.

We talk. I offer. He finds the deal to his liking, as adding Ben Wallace often is preferable to adding Chris Kaman to those who intend to win their leagues, and Chris Bosh makes parting with Arenas tolerable. He takes the deal and, to make room for his newly acquired towers of power, drops Morris Peterson. Now let’s look at this deal again.

Me: Added/Lost

Rnk	Player - Pos - Team	FG	FT	Pts	Reb	Ast	Stl	Blk	3Pt	Total
4	Gilbert Arenas - G - WAS	-0.11	0.60	1.75	0.13	1.18	1.46	0.01	1.95	0.87
73	Chris Kaman - C - LAC	0.58	0.07	0.26	1.24	-0.17	-0.18	1.19	-0.38	0.33
20	Chris Bosh - F - TOR	1.00	0.51	1.29	1.41	0.27	0.18	0.73	-0.38	0.63
36	Ben Wallace - F/C - DET	0.32	-1.12	0.08	2.12	0.10	1.21	1.56	-0.38	0.49
Net		-0.85	1.28	0.64	-2.16	0.64	-0.11	-1.09	2.33	0.08

Him: Added/Lost

Rnk	Player - Pos - Team	FG	FT	Pts	Reb	Ast	Stl	Blk	3Pt	Total
20	Chris Bosh - F - TOR	1.00	0.51	1.29	1.41	0.27	0.18	0.73	-0.38	0.63
36	Ben Wallace - F/C - DET	0.32	-1.12	0.08	2.12	0.10	1.21	1.56	-0.38	0.49
4	Gilbert Arenas - G - WAS	-0.11	0.60	1.75	0.13	1.18	1.46	0.01	1.95	0.87
57	Morris Peterson - G/F - TOR	-0.01	0.15	0.61	0.40	0.07	0.65	-0.23	1.45	0.39
Net		1.44	-1.36	-0.99	3.00	-0.88	-0.72	2.51	-4.16	-0.14

According to my yardstick, I improved by 0.08 points overall, an option that was not available to me on the waiver wire since, remember, all my players were better than Kaman. For the record, 0.08 points is the current difference between Rashard Lewis and Kobe Bryant, or Rasheed Wallace and Tim Duncan. My opponent, who is short-sided, only looked at the front end of the deal and was happy to toss his worst player. And toss he did, squandering an asset simply because he was no longer needed. What the opponent should have done, of course, is package Mo Pete and another player to a third party. But that’s a story for another day.

Remember, although you may not see what you need on the wire, you can create the correct conditions with a little subtle trading. Just look beyond the trade, to the complete roster implications. Because the deal isn’t “Arenas for Bosh and Wallace”… it’s “Bosh and Wallace for Arenas and Kaman with Mo Pete figuring in there somehow.”

That makes all the difference.

John Cregan will be back next week.

Pete Becker is editor-in-chief for www.TalentedMrRoto.com, a site featuring free advice, news, stats and analysis for all fantasy sports. The site has been nominated for 16 Fantasy Sports Writing Awards by the FSWA, twice as many as any other site. Contact him at Becker@TalentedMrRoto.com.

The views expressed by the TalentedMrRoto.com represent only the views of the writers; they do not represent the views of the NBA or any NBA team.