Post All-Star break, it’s time to kick into high gear your attention for fantasy hoops. Football season is over and it’s not yet time for the baseball drafts, so there’s no better time to put all of your efforts into basketball. And, in most league formats, you can still make a push to the playoffs with a little extra roster management. So here are a few ideas to chew on if you’re serious about winning this season:

1. Stop waiting on guys to contribute! Now is the time to ditch that guys who has been battling injury all year, or the player who has just been far too inconsistent, or the guy who still doesn’t seem to have  a defined role, or rookies who may be slowing down. You need players who are predictable at this point in the year.

2. You can’t fix everything, so play to your strengths. No chance you will find the magic trade to cure all that ails your team. But by now you should know what categories are your strongest. Look to fortify them in your deals. If this means trading a good player who mainly contributes in a category you always lose anyway, then so be it. The playoffs are all about knowing which categories you can absolutely win.

3. Raid the bad teams before everyone else does. It’s probably open season on all the teams in your league that are out-of-contention, so get on it too. Send trade requests to all of them. Trades are tough to make if you’re just proposing one-at-a-time. Owners get busy and don’t respond in time. So be sure to make a bunch of proposals at once. Hopefully you’ll find a taker on one of them.

4. Count the weeks left in your league’s regular season schedule. Know when the playoffs start. There’s nothing like forgetting to check and then finding out you came up one week short of passing a team in the standings to make the playoffs. The season’s end is fast approaching, so know the end line and start  working backwards on grabbing the stats and wins you’ll need to make the post season party.

5. Start filling your roster with guys who will contribute for the full playoff run. Happens every year where the guy who owns Kobe or LeBron or Pierce gets killed in the finals because their star player  doesn’t play much the last week of the season. Top players on team with little at stake in the season’s  final days are guys you might think about getting off your roster now. You need a roster of guys with the maximum number of games played the last three weeks of the season.

See about making that happen.  This is prime season for fantasy basketball. So be sure to stay on top of things, don’t get caught having forgotten to set your roster, keep an eye on injuries and the waiver wire. Good luck!