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Welcome back, RotoBallers, to the 19th edition of my weekly fantasy basketball risers and fallers for the 2023-2024 season!
The battle for the playoffs is heating up, and with so many teams still in the mix, we're in for an awesome final few weeks of regular season basketball. If things haven't gone your way yet in your fantasy leagues, don't lose hope! I'm here to help you assess the value of some players who are seeing major production swings during the year.
With that being said, let's look at the risers and fallers from Week 19 of the NBA season.
Editor's Note: Our incredible team of writers received five total writing awards and 13 award nominations by the Fantasy Sports Writers Association, tops in the industry! Congrats to all the award winners and nominees including NBA Writer of the Year, Best NFL Series, MLB Series, PGA Writer and Player Notes writer of the year. Be sure to follow their analysis, rankings and advice all year long, and win big with RotoBaller! Read More!
Fantasy Basketball Risers: Week 19
Trey Murphy III - F, New Orleans Pelicans
Trey Murphy III is back to looking like himself. Murphy bounced back from a quiet rookie year and averaged 20.4 points a night on 51/45/90 splits in the last 19 games of his sophomore season. This was supposed to be the season where he took off and established himself as the clear-cut third option behind Zion Williamson and Brandon Ingram, but his season got off to a poor start due to a meniscus injury which caused him to miss the first 19 games of the campaign.
Trey Murphy tonight:
34 Points
6 Rebounds
64% FG
10/14 3PM
44 +/-Only 29 Minutes. pic.twitter.com/rtDWiHSw1M
— Hoop Central (@TheHoopCentral) March 6, 2024
This has caused his role to remain as a three-point specialist for this season, but he seems locked in right now and his threes are falling at an absurd rate. Murphy has drained 24 threes on 53% shooting while averaging 24.8 points a night over his last four games, and he could get even hotter as the Pelicans look to earn a guaranteed playoff spot.
Duop Reath - C, Portland Trail Blazers
Duop Reath's rise from a virtual unknown to a starting caliber NBA center has been a great feel-good story, and it is the only real positive story of the 2023-24 season for the Trail Blazers. The LSU product traveled the whole world during his basketball journey, playing in his native Australia, China, Serbia, and Lebanon before arriving in Portland.
He was waived by them at the start of the year but was then re-signed to a two-way deal, which was upgraded to a regular deal three weeks ago. Now that the Blazers have pretty much no active players left due to an injury crisis, Reath is getting the opportunity to ball out and work toward getting a multi-year extension. Since the beginning of March, Reath has put up 18.7 points while shooting 59% from the field and 44.4% from three.
Jordan Poole - G, Washington Wizards
The NBA world had a lot of fun laughing at Jordan Poole's terrible start to his Wizards tenure, but the former Warriors star has finally turned things around. Coming out of the All-Star break, new Wizards HC Brian Keefe finally decided to move Poole to the bench after his historically awful start to the season, and this move to the bench was exactly what Poole needed to elevate his game.
Jordan Poole tonight:
32 Points
2 Assists
3 Stocks
11/18 FG
6/10 3PIn 7 games off the bench, Jordan has THREE 30-point games🔥 pic.twitter.com/d3tOOv8Gmr
— PooleMuse (@PooleMuse) March 5, 2024
It took two games for him to adjust, but it's now clear that he has settled into his new role, as he has averaged 25 points a night while shooting 48.5% from the floor and 42.6% from deep. With no real incentive to win, the Wizards can just let Poole shoot as many times as he wants and get his confidence back as the team's sixth man.
Fantasy Basketball Fallers: Week 19
Bogdan Bogdanovic - G, Atlanta Hawks
An injury to a team's star player is often a good thing in the eyes of a young player who's looking to prove himself during the absence of said star, but it can be a terrible thing for an established veteran. This is what's happening in Atlanta right now due to Trae Young's injury. De'Andre Hunter and Jalen Johnson are trying to make the most out of their new opportunity, but for Bogdan Bogdanovic, there are no new opportunities since he's 31 and established in this league.
So naturally, he'll play worse without a field general like Young who made his life easier. In his last three games, Bogdanovic has scored just 9.7 points per game on 9-32 shooting, and things probably won't get better for him if the Hawks decide to tank and shut Young down for the rest of the season.
Alec Burks - G/F, New York Knicks
Alec Burks was featured once in this series as a riser right before he was traded to New York, as he was playing some of the best basketball of his life. He averaged 16.7 points a night on elite shooting splits during his last 19 games with the Detroit Pistons, and even scored 22 points in his first game back as a Knick.
Alec Burks is the first player in NBA HISTORY to record:
• 75+ FG Attempts
• Under 33% FG
• Under 30% 3P
• Under 65% FT
• Under 10 Assistsin their first 10 games with a new team. pic.twitter.com/Rvii4eCLLX
— KnicksMuse (@KnicksMuse) March 6, 2024
However, things haven't gone well for him at all since his return to Madison Square Garden. Burks has put up just 7.2 points a night while shooting 29.3% from the field and 25% from three in the nine games since then, and it seems like Tom Thibodeau isn't being patient with him, as Burks hasn't logged more than 11 minutes in each of his last three outings.
Josh Green - G/F, Dallas Mavericks
Josh Green was finally showing some real promise when the Mavericks moved him to the starting lineup, as he shot 53.7% from the field and 45.1% from three in 17 games as a starter alongside Derrick Jones Jr. and Grant Williams. But everything changed once the Mavs traded for P.J. Washington and moved him to the starting five in place of Jones.
Washington is doing well for himself (18.3 PPG over his last four games), but it's clear that Green had more chemistry when Jones was alongside him in the starting lineup. The Aussie has averaged just 5.4 points a night while shooting 23.1% from three in his last five games, which gives him a true shooting percentage of 45%, which is the fifth-lowest mark in the NBA among players who took at least 30 shots during this timespan.
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