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What's up, RotoBallers! We're now halfway through the NBA season and creeping up on All-Star Weekend festivities. Hopefully, all of your teams are still firmly in contention for the fantasy league championship.
The Drop List returns for another week, and it might not be kind to some of your rosters. Each week, I'll take a look at a handful of NBA players that can be dropped from your fantasy team.
Without further ado, let's get to the fantasy basketball drop list. Every Saturday, we'll have a list of NBA players and a small dive into why they can be cut from some or all fantasy formats. Please take into account: each fantasy league is different. Make sure you check out the waiver wire and have a player in mind to replace one of the following players that you may drop.
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Players to Consider Dropping or Replacing
Ayo Dosunmu (PG/SG, CHI) - 22% rostered
The Chicago Bulls aren't the best team to find fantasy value so far this season. Unless you have DeMar DeRozan, he's been fantastic!
Ayo Dosunmu has hovered around the same value and ranking that he ended with last season. In only his second season, there was a lot of promise surrounding his value, especially at his 136 ADP this season. The bad part is that over the last week, he was producing at a rate that left him outside of the top 300 fantasy players. He already was outside of the top 200, but dropping another 100 spots starts to get quite worrisome.
Even for those in deeper leagues, you can leave him on the waiver wire as he's even outside of the top 250 in terms of total stats instead of just per-game values. Dosunmu might see some more usage if the Bulls finally decided to blow it all up, but until then he's not going to win any fantasy matchups.
Quentin Grimes (SG/SF, NYK) - 37% rostered
Stop me if you've heard that the New York Knicks are constantly a weird team. Well, they remain one of the weirdest teams in the league to absolutely no one's surprise.
Quentin Grimes is finally getting some playing time, so that's a major first step for the second-year wing. Knicks fans have been begging for this since he was drafted last year. He actually started off pretty well this season for the fantasy managers that decided to draft him around his 141 ADP.
In a "What have you done for me lately" type of league, Grimes hasn't done much lately though. Over the last week, his fantasy value ranking has dropped out of the top 100, down to 133 and his overall ranking has followed the same trend down to 155th. He's shooting a horrid 32.1% from the floor and only putting up 10.0 points and 5.7 rebounds per game over the last four games.
So, in leagues with less than 14 teams, Grimes can be picked back up when he hits his upswing again.
Alec Burks (PG/SG/SF, DET) - 38% rostered
Alec Burks has been one of the most interesting fantasy players over the last few years. Every year he doesn't seem to be in a position to provide much fantasy value and then he finds his way into starting lineups or a sixth-man role.
Starting out on the Detroit Pistons this year, it didn't seem like he was going to have much of a role since they wanted to play a lot of the younger guys. Burks never got that memo though as he had a great stretch while a lot of the Pistons were sidelined.
Now, guys are getting healthier, other than Cade Cunningham, and Burks is starting to fade in production. Add in the fact that the Pistons only play one game this coming week, and there are some better options currently on the waiver wire to help your fantasy team win this week.
Mike Conley (PG, UTA) - 68% rostered
Mike Conley had a real shot at being an underrated fantasy contributor as the veteran leader on a team that was thrust into a rebuild after shipping off Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert.
For a while, he was doing just that, but ever since he had a nine-game injury stint, his fantasy value has gone downhill very quickly. Since he returned from that injury on December 9th, he's averaged 9.9 points, 1.8 rebounds, and 7.1 assists per game while shooting just 37.1% from the floor and 31.6% from beyond the arc. That's a sample size of 16 games and he started in 15 of those.
There's not much else that needs to be said when it comes to wanting to win a fantasy matchup.
Duane Washington Jr. (PG, PHX) - 17% rostered
We're going to keep this one short and simple because the reasoning is short and simple. I will say though, Washington is worth hanging on to in dynasty formats because he's only in his second season and has shown some flashes when he got enough playing time.
Right now, however, whether you're in a deeper league or not, Washington can head back to the waiver wire. Chris Paul, Cameron Payne, Mikal Bridges, and any other guard being healthy leads to Washington becoming irrelevant. Payne is in and out of games lately, but Washington will see his minutes dwindle soon.
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