RADIO
The deeper a fantasy 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 waiver wire pickups for your fantasy basketball teams. These 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.
Isaiah Stewart (PF/C, DET)
13% rostered
Nice jump in rostership that of Stewart from last week to this one. He's gone from around 8% to almost 15% now, which speaks of his game of late. The rookie has caught a little bit of fire in the three games from Mar. 15 to Mar. 19, and it shows. After closing February with a bunch of good performances and disappointing a bit right before the AS break, Stewart came back from it with an attitude and is putting up numbers--to the extent deep-league GMs should care, mind you.
It's been five games since the start of the second season and entering Sunday's slate for Stweart, and he's played 20+ min. in all of those matches. The rook keeps playing off the bench, but his per-minute efficiency has been positive and above-average in three of those five games while still good in the other two. Isaiah is averaging a 10-7-1 line with a block and almost one steal per game on top of that. The only blemish in his logs are the turnovers, as he's committed 7 combined in his last five games.
While Stewart had not shown very much of a long-range shooting during the first two months of the season, that seems to have changed of late. He is not going to become a three-point machine any time soon, of course, but he's hit four triples since coming back from the break and still kept up a strong 66 shooting percentage from the floor. The days of finding Stewart available for free are nearing extinction. Capitalize while you still can.
Jaylen Nowell (SG, MIN)
9% rostered
One of the very few bright lights still shading some promise over Minny has been the recent explosion of rookie Anthony Edwards, who is starting to get comfy in the Association. That has shadowed another youngin' in second-year man Jaylen Nowell, who himself has put on very serious performances for the lowly Wolves during the past few days.
Before the break, Nowell was just another player trying to making it in Minnesota. He had logged 354 minutes in 21 games since Jan. 7 for an average of 17 MPG with a 9-2-1 line in those 20+ games. After the break, though, his role has stayed the same as an off-the-pine player but his minutes have gone up to 26 MPG a night while his line is now all the way up to 15-3-2 with 1.5 stocks per game added to that. The shooting has improved a lot sitting at 57% from the floor in the past six games, and it is not that he ain't aiming from beyond the three-point line: Nowell has hit at least one trey in five of the six games after the break and averages almost 3 3PG in that span.
If you have read the blurb about Justin Patton above, you know how the Rockets are a ship lost in the sea this season is. Well, not only is Minny also lost, but also sinking. The Wolves lead (trail?) the race for the first overall pick of next year's draft with a stupid 8-30 record through Sunday morning. They are enduring a season in which both of Karl-Anthony Towns and D'Angelo Russell, the franchise cornerstones, have missed ample time. Rookie Anthony Edwards is going through growing pains, though he leads the team in games played and minutes,... I could keep on going, but you get the idea.
Barring a fluke of a game against Phoenix in the first leg of a back-to-back mini-series last Thursday, Jaylen Nowell has counted all of his post-break games as above-average fantasy performances. He's averaging 1.02 FP/min (up to 1.13 excluding that bad PHO-game) in the last six, playing 25+ minutes more often than not, getting a healthy 20% usage rate, and taking 10+ FGA a game. Minny has nothing to play for other than a draft pick, and the Wolves will be trying to get a better idea of who's worth and who's not among their youngsters, so odds are Nowell keeps racking up numbers and playing time ROS.
Reggie Bullock (SG/SF, NYK)
6% rostered
Coach Thibodeau has spent the season starting Elfrid Payton at the point over Immanuel Quickley and he's kept on doing it even though the latter has clearly been the better player of the two. The same happened with Reggie Bullock... until last Thursday. For the first time this season, Bullock was sent to the second unit last week, and surprise surprise he had his second-best game of the season to the tune of a great 20-3-3-3 stuffed line that included 6 triples and just one TO in a high 36 minutes of playing time.
It is still early to call Bench-Bullock a mighty, league-winning play in fantasy leagues. Odds are Thursday-Bullock, who dropped 37 FP on Orlando, is not ROS-Bullock, but even he comes down to earth a bit he's still as good as any other player available in almost 95 percent of Yahoo leagues. Bullock has disappointed a bit this year. He was averaging just an 8-3-1 line prior to March, although he's improved his per-game averages a bit of late: in the first seven games of March he's putting up a 12-3-1-1 line.
Bullock is shooting 50+ percent in his last four games through Thursday, has scored 12+ points in every one of those matches, hit 3+ triples in all of them (4, 5, 3, then 6 in his last one), grabbed 4 RPG, and logged a combined 2.75 dimes+steals per game in that span. Although he doesn't go to the line, the shooting is more often than not good, and if there is something bright in Bullock's game logs those are the triples. If you're hurting for points and treys (with some rebounding upside and no turnovers), Bullock is your man.
Desmond Bane (PG/SG, MEM)
3% rostered
When I wrote this column last week I included Bane in the five-player group I wrote about back then. It made sense, as he was starting daily for the Grizz while having some nice performances. Well, talk about improvement. Bane, while still barely rostered and now back to the bench and part of Memphis' second unit, has improved his per-minute numbers and efficiency a lot. That bodes quite well for him going forward, so that's why he's here on back-to-back editions of the column.
A rookie out of TCU, Bane has played 35 games this season and nine in March already. He started the first six matches of the month averaging a low 15 FP in 22 MPG, though that has changed of late. In the past three games, in which he's always come off the bench, Bane has raised his average FP tally to a better 20+ fantasy points a game while playing fewer minutes (19 MPG). That has Bane as one of the most efficient and productive players on a per-minute basis, putting up 1.07 FP/min while the league average sits at a much lower 0.90 FP/min.
With Morant entrenched in the starting PG role, Bane's has found a place around the other guard-position and even played forward at times. He will keep doing so, given his high shooting numbers (48% from the floor after the break, and 47% beyond the three-point line on 4+ 3PA per game), relatively low TOs (1 per), and all-around contributions (almost 3 RPG, 1+ APG, and 1 SPG).
Tony Bradley (C, PHI)
3% rostered
Dwight Howard minutes since the break: 143; Tony Bradley minutes: 110. Howard starts: zero; Bradley starts: five. Howard's rostership: 45%; Bradley's rostership: 3%. At the end of the day, I think it's a matter of who you like the most, the starter or the bench player, the veteran or the youngster, etc, etc. The difference isn't that large, but the rostership difference definitely is wild. For basically nothing, you can score yourself the man starting in place of Embiid and playing 20+ minutes a day, which isn't bad at all considering that JoJo will be out for at least another week and that Dwight Howard is a coin-flip to find in the WW.
Bradley, same as Howard, won't give you any single triple even in the wildest of your dreams. That being said, though, he doesn't miss a shot because he just works the rim and although his shooting attempts are as low as they get, at least he makes virtually them all. Bradley's mojo is on the boards, as he's pulling down 6+ RPG since coming back from the break while dishing out 1.5 APG to go with those rebounds.
Don't do anything stupid when it comes to rostering Bradley, though. His upside is limited, and Embiid will get back soon. If you're truly hurting for an interior player, Bradley is a starter these days putting up above-average per-minute numbers (1.02 FP/min) but he's going to be a disposable asset as soon as things get back to normalcy and should only be considered an ultra-deep-league WW target.
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