Jamison, Martin, Salmons on the move

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Wednesday night, with 11 games on the slate, might have featured some pretty important action on the court, but far more important in fantasy NBA news were some major trades that went down. Let's look at them one by one.

Cavs land Jamison

After much speculation, the Cleveland Cavaliers acquired Antawn Jamison from the Washington Wizards along with Sebastian Telfair from the Los Angeles Clippers. The Wizards got Al Thornton from the Clippers, Zydrunas Ilgauskas from the Cavs, draft rights to Emir Preldzic and a 2010 first-round pick. The Clippers got Drew Gooden's expiring contract.

Clearly, the big chip here is Jamison, and even though he is going to a much better basketball situation, his fantasy stock has taken a major hit. On a team with Shaquille O'Neal, LeBron James and, when healthy, Mo Williams, there simply won't be as many shots for Jamison as there were when he was the best player on a lousy Wizards team. He'll still be a good fantasy player, he'll still make 3-pointers and he'll probably be a bit more efficient from the floor overall, but his days of being a 20-point scorer are likely finished.

For the Wizards, Thornton, who is under contract for one more season beyond the current one, wasn't doing much with more than 27 minutes per game on a pretty bad Clippers team. He'll score for the Wizards, but he can't do much of anything else, so his fantasy value won't be changed much by this deal.

Andray Blatche and JaVale McGee had huge games Wednesday night filling Jamison's void in the Wizards' win against the Minnesota Timberwolves, and both are worth picking up immediately if they are available in your league.

Gooden might be a good guy to look at if you need some rebounding in the coming weeks. The Clippers, remember, just dealt away their best rebounder in Marcus Camby, and Gooden is averaging 6.9 rebounds per game in just 22.4 minutes of action. If he gets more than 20-25 minutes per game, he will be worth owning in fantasy (and will cut into some of the production I thought Craig Smith might get after Camby was traded away).

Finally, Ilgauskas wasn't doing enough to be fantasy-worthy in the first place and probably will get bought out, so now it's a matter of waiting to see where he'll end up (including the possibility of returning to Cleveland).

Martin to the Rockets

The Sacramento Kings have agreed to deal Kevin Martin -- along with Kenny Thomas, Hilton Armstrong and Sergio Rodriguez -- to the Houston Rockets for Tracy McGrady's expiring contract, Carl Landry, Joey Dorsey and cash.

Obviously, the Rockets have decided Martin is the sort of player they'd like to build around. It'll be interesting to see what he's capable of in a system in which he's got a point guard and lots of shooters around him. The Rockets don't have another prototypical shooting guard on the roster, so it's probably safe to expect big things from K-Mart.

As for the throw-ins on the Rockets' side, Landry's 27.3 minutes per game are going to go somewhere, and this seems like a good situation for Luis Scola, who might see even more than the 30 minutes per game he's been playing so far this season. David Andersen and Chuck Hayes, too, will see bumps in their playing time, but they are not worthy of fantasy consideration, except in the deepest of leagues.

Rodriguez long has been a promising player as a distributor, and the fact that a team as savvy as the Rockets brought him in is intriguing. But the Rockets already have Aaron Brooks and Kyle Lowry in tow, so it's hard to imagine another point guard cracking the rotation, especially right after they've added an All-Star-caliber shooting guard who'll log major minutes right away.

As for the Kings' haul in this trade, Landry has been extremely effective as a fantasy player this season, scoring points, pulling down rebounds and killing it in the percentages. It would seem that he's immediately a better power forward option than Jason Thompson or Donte Greene, but it's hard to know exactly how the Kings will fit him in. He's enough of a talent that I think you need to assume his numbers will remain the same, if not get better.

It seems, too, that the Rockets and Kings are trying to expand this deal in order to send McGrady (and Rodriguez) to the Knicks. As of this moment, it's impossible to speculate exactly what will happen, but you'll certainly want to pay attention to this Thursday to see where T-Mac -- and to a lesser degree Rodriguez -- ends up.

Either way, with Martin heading out of town, the door is open for the versatile Francisco Garcia (just returned from injury) to start getting the playing time he deserves. Garcia is the rare player with 1-plus steals, 3s and blocks potential; he needs to be owned in all formats.

Bucks to get Salmons

The Milwaukee Bucks have agreed in principle to acquire John Salmons from the Chicago Bulls and give up the expiring contracts of Kurt Thomas and Francisco Elson (although the deal could include the expiring contracts of Joe Alexander and Hakim Warrick instead).

Salmons has been a very productive fantasy player in the past and is a major upgrade over Charlie Bell. Most likely, he's going to start right away, so if you've held on to Salmons in fantasy, you are about to be rewarded in a big way.

As for the players the Bulls are acquiring, we probably should reserve judgment until we know exactly which ones they are. That said, it's important to remember that this is a straight salary dump for a Bulls team trying desperately to free up enough money to make a big splash in the free-agent market this summer. And besides, Thomas, Elson and Alexander weren't fantasy-relevant in Milwaukee, so a move to Chicago certainly wouldn't change that.

Seth Landman is a fantasy basketball analyst for ESPN.com.

Source: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/blog/index?entryID=4924059&name=boxscore_basketball