RADIO
The deeper a fantasy basketball league, the harder it is to hit a winner with your last few picks. It is also harder to find decent help from the waiver wire if your late-round picks don't do you justice. If you picked up a few stinkers, don't lose hope just yet. I will try to help you pick up a winner.
Here are my deeper league fantasy basketball waiver wire pickups for the upcoming week and your fantasy basketball teams. These NBA players should be available in most leagues and they might just help you out, whether it's a few weeks rental or a long-term fix to a problem your team is having.
If a guy on your team is frustrating you with his weak performances, give some of them a go. They might just be worth it.
Fantasy Basketball Waiver Wire Targets for Week 17
Immanuel Quickley (PG, NYK) - 19% rostered
With Tom Thibodeau at the Knicks' helm, it will never happen, but there are growing voices calling for RJ Barrett's benching in favor of Immanuel Quickley. Of course, and again, that will never happen in New York as that'd mean sending the face of the franchise to the pine while starting a man that was put on the market just a few weeks ago. Folks might be right in calling for that change, though.
IQ had a brief stint of games in which he was named among the Knicks' starting lineup with Barrett out injured sandwiching the start of the calendar year. That's already a month ago, of course, but it's worth remembering that Quickley averaged a silly 38+ FPPG in that span, putting up a nightly 20-5-5-1 stat line.
Even though he's now just back to the pine, Quickley is the clear sixth man of the Knicks and in a team coached by Thibs is pretty much the same as being a starter anywhere else. IQ is playing 31 MPG off the bench since Barrett returned and averaging 25 FPPG.
Quickley has cut down his turnovers to below one per game in his last 10 games played while still dishing out a reasonable amount of dimes (2.9 APG compared to 3.3 before that span, including the stint as a starter).
IQ is one of only seven players with 1,450+ MP played through Friday (76 players have played that many minutes so far) while starting fewer than 50% of his team's games, and one of just three with less than 20% of those games in the starting five.
Even then, he's already racked up more FP than 16 of those 76 players through the season and is keeping up a league-average 0.90 FP/min, something only 53-of-76 of those men have been able to do throughout the year to date.
Onyeka Okongwu (C, ATL) - 14% rostered
The first piece of the trade deadline domino fell on Sunday when Kyrie Irving was sent to Dallas in the first winter blockbuster. That has nothing to do with Atlanta, of course, but it might be a sign of things to come--mostly regarding John Collins leaving the Hawks once and for all.
Onyeka Okongwu has not started a game since he did for the last time on January 18. That matchup wrapped up a 12-game span of consecutive starts for the young man made possible by Clint Capela getting injured. Now that both Capela and Collins are back, OO is an off-the-pine daily performer logging some 20 MPG.
In the 17 games he's started this season (he's appeared in 51 total matches), Okongwu has averaged nearly 30 FPPG and stat lines in the 10-9-1-1-2 vicinity, getting around 33 MPG in those games. For context, only two players in the NBA are doing that over the full season this year: Anthony Davis and Nic Claxton. Even lowering the 2.0 BPG down to 1.0 BPG, you still only get seven players on a season-wide 10-9-1-1-1 average line.
It's impossible to know whether or not Atlanta will finally pull the trigger on a Collins deal, and what would happen with Okongwu if that happens. Even if he keeps playing off the pine with a similar set of teammates, though, OO is still a viable fantasy asset for those managing in deeper leagues.
In his last eight games (all of them in the second unit), he's averaging nearly a 10-7-1 line with 0.5 SPG and 1.5 BPG. The shooting percentages are always sublimely high because he just never stretches the floor, and the blocks are nonsensical with 66 total swats over 52 games--only 10 players in the NBA have blocked more shots than Okongwu this season and only four of those have logged fewer total minutes.
Kenyon Martin Jr. (SF, HOU) - 14% rostered
What a wild season it's been for the Houston Rockets and Kenyon Martin Jr. He was on the fringe of making the team at the start of the season but ultimately stayed put and played a reasonably important part in it. Then he saw his minutes go down a lot. And most recently he's been absolutely on fire as the starter on the wing for nearly a month (12 consecutive games).
Martin has started all games from January 13 through Sunday. He's averaged a respectable 28 FPPG in 32 MPG in that span for a league-average 0.90 FP/min. If you remove the first and last games he has started in this run and look at the remaining 10 matchups, though, he's at a much better 0.98 FP/min and 31 FPPG.
Outside of those two aforementioned letdowns (mostly because of subpar shooting limiting him to six and four points scored on those games), Martin has been fantastic on all statistical fronts and he has contributed in the classic cats without much trouble.
Martin's averaging 13-8-2 in his last 12 games since he became a nightly starter while he's shot at a 40% clip or higher in all but two of those matches. Martin is a season-long 56% shooter from the floor, hoisting nearly 3.0 3PA per game and hitting almost 1.0 3PM a pop. In the past six games, he's shot about 65% from the field.
KJM doesn't have the appeal of other players as he is the most classic of classic fantasy players: it's down to scoring, rebounding, and keeping up good FG% nightly. He doesn't turn the ball over that much either, but that's not what we'd call his calling card.
Malik Monk (SG, SAC) - 12% rostered
After going through a rough spell just a few weeks ago to start the 2023 calendar year, Malik Monk is now back as a prominent part of the Kings' rotation. Monk played fewer than 20 minutes in 10 of the 14 games he appeared in from December 30 through January 28 but he's averaged 29 MPG in the last four through Sunday, playing 28+ minutes in three of those outings.
Monk had a reasonably strong first two months, averaging 25 FPPG, but that production went down a notch to just 21 FPPG from mid-December to the final days of January. The guard has now bounced back a bit and seems to have regained his shooting touch after a horrid stretch through the last month of play.
From December 16 to January 25, Monk shot 19-of-66 from the floor for a putrid 28.8 FG%. Ugh. He's gone 24-of-56 in his last four matchups, though, hoisting a season-high 11.2 FGA per game and hitting an average of 7.0 FGM nightly. The three-pointers come and go and are a little bit bouncy, mind you, but he normally gets them and he's scored at least one long-range shot in six of his last eight games (10 total 3PM in that span).
Monk has stolen a lot of possessions of late to good with steady assists numbers, and he's super efficient on a per-minute basis. Monk's currently averaging 1.04 FP/min over the full season (league average at 0.90) and a much stronger 1.10 FP/min in his last 15 games.
It's hard to envision any major changes happening in Sacramento before the trade deadline, though, so if you grab some shares of Monk, at least you know what you're getting without many question marks floating about his head. If he fits your needs, go ahead and safely add him to your roster. He's nothing incredibly special but he's definitely wildly unrostered for what he provides daily.
Max Strus (SF, MIA) - 8% rostered
Just taking the quickest of glimpses at Max Strus' stat line will tell you all you need to know about him. Still in doubt? Well, it's very simple: spot-up shooter with little upside outside of that but murderous long-range shooting tendencies.
Strus is hitting 2.6 3PM per game this season. That's something only 41 guys in the NBA are doing through Sunday. On top of that, he's attempting 7.5 3PA nightly this campaign. That's something only 24 dudes are doing through Sunday. Of course, Strus is probably the worst player overall among all those in that group, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have fantasy value.
While the Heat reserve won't give you many more things outside of his points and three-point shooting, he's adding 3.5+ RPG and 2+ APG per game to his stat lines. Strus comes with a depressed usage rate of around 17% as part of Miami's second unit, but that's always going to be the case because he just touches the ball to shoot it (10+ FGA) without really turning it over that much and staying on his spot to launch them damn treys.
Even with the trade deadline a few days away, a change of scenery (whether that means Miami moving another player or Strus getting traded away) won't probably foster any change in Strus' numbers. He is what he is and that won't change overnight. What you get in Strus is limited production concentrated in a few categories, but at least you know for sure what you're getting, and if it fits your needs, then he should be a go-to WW target clearly under-rostered.
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