Five things to watch: All-Star backcourts thriving
Here are a few Monday morning thoughts from the Hoops Lab, as we prepare for Week 4 of the fantasy basketball season.
Keep in mind, the Fantasy Basketball Rest of Season Rankings also update on Mondays, so check those out as your prepare for this week’s games across a packed NBA slate.
Between the rankings and this article, we’ll also help you identify some good Buy Low/Sell high candidates. So, without further ado, let’s dig into it.
Every year, in the month or so leading up to the season, I project the season stats for every rotation player in the NBA. I use these projections to help me rank players. But, when it comes to Kyrie Irving, every year I come up with his per-game estimates, then decrease his projected total fantasy points by a significant amount. Typically, I do that for injured players. Kyrie wasn’t injured, but history has told me, repeatedly, that he will end up missing a significant portion of every season for some reason.
This season, at least for now, he’s missing games due to an indefinite suspension that is at least five games, but has no set endpoint. In this week’s season rankings, I ended up dropping Kyrie about 20 slots to 50th. In actual fantasy points per game this season, he ranks 14th. I don’t have Kyrie on any of my fantasy teams, because he’s the closest thing I have to a Do Not Draft player.
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With that said, if you have him on your fantasy team…whew. If you can convince someone that his absence will only be five games, and sell them on his per-game averages, I’d go ahead and try to trade him now. Ironically, if you don’t have Kyrie on your team, but you’re in a league where the manager that has Kyrie is fed up and/or believes that Kyrie’s season could be in jeopardy, this could actually be a good time to trade for him in a buy-low scenario. But that strategy is only for the extremely bold, so act accordingly.
In the bigger picture of the Nets, I’m wondering if the team might be getting close to pulling the plug. We’re in the fourth NBA season since Irving and Kevin Durant both signed, and there’s been little but drama to show for it. Irving and Durant both, reportedly, asked to be moved this offseason. The team currently has a losing record at 4-6, Irving is suspended amidst a scandal and Ben Simmons has missed four straight games with a knee issue. Might the Nets’ brass decide that enough is enough and give Irving and even Durant what they reportedly asked for? And if Irving and Durant escape from Brooklyn…what would it mean for the fantasy basketball values of all involved? Well, it’s hard to see how it does anything but hurt the values of Durant and Irving. We don’t know where they might go in this hypothetical, but we know that right now the entire Nets offense is built around them. They get every shot they could possibly want. If they move on, particularly if they move on to a team that is trying to compete, their volume can’t do anything but go down.
On the other hand, if Durant and/or Irving were to be moved, it could be nothing but a boon for the fantasy values of the current Nets. Minus their two superstars, a.) someone would have to step into the statistical vacuum created and b.) this iteration of Nets could start to resemble the pre-KD Nets, where unheralded and young players like Caris LeVert, Spencer Dinwiddie and Jarrett Allen first burst onto the fantasy hoops landscape. Might players like Royce O’Neale, Nic Claxton and (Las Vegas Summer League legend) Cam Thomas be the modern-day analogs?
What about Simmons himself? Simmons was once a borderline first round prospect in fantasy basketball leagues, and if the Nets were to start a rebuild, it would take the spotlight off and put the ball squarely back into his hands. If such a hypothetical situation were to occur, I could see Simmons as the player that would benefit the most.
Just some things to think about, and maybe factor into your long range plans, as we wait for events to play out in Brooklyn.
All offseason, in almost every radio interview I did, the host would inevitably ask me how I would fix the Lakers. It became obligatory to speak about trading for more shooting and young talent, to build a more balanced team around LeBron James and Anthony Davis, but the conversation would always turn to what they should do with Westbrook if they couldn’t trade him. I’d always say that, if they were going to keep Russ, they had to let him cook.
It made absolutely zero sense to have Westbrook on the court if the plan was to play him off the ball as a spot-up shooter, because…yeah. I had always thought that, in the reported LeBron/Westbrook meetings before Westbrook came to LA, they must have agreed that Westbrook was going to take the ball and LeBron move off the ball. After all, LeBron did play more off the ball in Miami next to Dwyane Wade, and produced some of the most efficient scoring seasons of his career on his way to two championships. Surely, he must’ve agreed to something similar if he wanted to bring Westbreook to town… right?
Right?
Well, I guess I’ll never know what those conversations entailed, but for a year-plus I watched the Lakers continue to run the offense through LeBron and spot Westbrook up…to predictably disastrous results. Enter new coach Darvin Ham, who in his first month has gotten Anthony Davis to play center and Westbrook to come off the bench. I don’t care what the Lakers’ record is, those two miracles in itself should get Ham into the Coach of the Year conversation. Because, at least on the fantasy basketball front… Ham seems to have figured out how to let Russ cook!
In the five games since Westbrook started coming off the bench, he’s averaged 18.8 PPG, 7.2 APG and 5.8 RPG in just over 30 minutes per game. He’s suddenly an impact fantasy hoops producer again. But if you have him on your team, you might consider trading high, because I’m frankly unconvinced that the current Lakers team is the one that they’ll finish the season with.
We can all be forgiven for believing that the Jazz were going into full rebuild-Victor-Wembanyama-please-help-us mode when traded away Donovan Mitchell, Rudy Gobert and Bojan Bogdanovic this offseason. That the only reason they hadn’t traded Mike Conley Jr. or Jordan Clarkson yet was because they just hadn’t found the right deal, but that their days in Utah were numbered as well.
Instead, through the first three-plus weeks of the season, the Jazz sit with the best record in the Western Conference. And, in an ironic twist, since they’ve already traded for 10 additional first round picks over the next seven seasons (including four over the next three drafts), they don’t particularly need to trade more vets for picks. Instead, much like the Thunder in their Chris Paul season, the Jazz can try to win and maintain their playoffs culture while still rebuilding.
On the fantasy front, this could be a signal that their current rotation of players might just stick through the season. Lauri Markkanen should continue to be a borderline FBA star, Conley and Clarkson fully rostered sometimes starters, and Collin Sexton a borderline FBA flex player with good upside. Kelly Olynyk, Jarred Vanderbilt and Malik Beasley are worthy of either rostering or consistent streaming consideration, and Walker Kessler could remain more of a dynasty play than the will-get-major-minutes-on-a-rebuilding-team prospect he was previously thought to be.
For this week’s season-long rankings, I factored more of this season’s averages into the mix with my projections. The result of this made some players move quite a bit in the rankings. Interestingly, the biggest positive mover that was previously in the top-60 was Darius Garland, who jumped up to 27th, four spots behind Donovan Mitchell…who was the biggest positive mover among those that had been in the top-40 (up to 23rd).
The biggest mover among those already in the top-20 was Dejounte Murray, up to 11th… four spots behind teammate Trae Young. All four were All Star lead guards on their teams last season, and two blockbuster trades teamed them up in twos. When projecting this season, in both cases, I had to consider that there could be some diminishing returns in matching up multiple ball-dominant talents. But, that hasn’t been an issue so far. In fact, all are absolutely thriving right now.
Young and Murray have combined to average 50.2 PPG, 17.5 APG and 9.6 RPG. Neither have taken much step back at all…because they’ve monopolized the production for the main unit. John Collins is in the midst of his lowest scoring season since his rookie campaign, and combines with Clint Capela and De’Andre Hunter to average a combined 3.0 APG. They, along with the rest of the Hawks, are almost purely finishers…no one else on the team averages more than 1.7 APG. But, this works. The Hawks have two offensive engines, and everyone else is either a 3-and-D or paint-finishing role player.
The same isn’t completely true in Cleveland, where Caris LeVert is a third lead guard type and each of Evan Mobley, Jarrett Allen and Kevin Love are solid scorers. The numbers in Cleveland are so strong, in part, because Garland has only played 2.5 games due to an eye injury. The longer Garland plays, the further away Mitchell will move from his 31.1 PPG and 7.1 APG; Caris Levert’s days of averaging 14.8 PPG with 6.3 APG are numbered.
Mobley, Allen and Love should actually have upside from the combined 41 PPG they average, but there are only so many shots to go around. With that said, Sunday’s game may be a blueprint of what to expect in more games than not. Mitchell and Garland returned to the lineup after having missed Friday night’s game, and combined for 57 points and 9 assists. LeVert only managed three assists in 30 minutes, and Allen/Mobley/Love combined for 31 total points. The other players will have their days when they get theirs, but Mitchell and Garland seem likely to eat first… which is why they are shooting up the rankings, when maybe their teammates might be sliding a bit. Plan your trades and trade values accordingly.
James Harden is out for the next month, depriving the 76ers of their floor general. But, on the FBA front, it could actually be a boon for the other three impact players on the squad. Harden has a 26.6 usage percentage, meaning he was ending a lot of possessions. Harden also did a lot of dribbling, among the leaders in the NBA in time of possession with the ball in his hands. Everything in Philly flows around Joel Embiid when the big man is healthy, but Harden’s absence let’s Tyrese Maxey (30.0 PPG, 4.5 APG, 4.3 RPG, 4.3 3PG in his last six outings) continue his superstar glow-up, and returns Tobias Harris (18.3 PPG, 7.7 RPG, 3.0 APG, 2.7 3PG, 1.7 SPG, 1.0 BPG in 35.0 MP over last three games) to definite FBA starter status.
But, remember, Harden is due back next month. So, if you have a 76ers star on your team you might enjoy the next little while, but you should also keep in mind that trade values may not go much higher than they’ll be in the next few weeks. When the value peaks, you might consider trading high before the bearded one returns.