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 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.
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 Waiver Wire Targets for Week 7
Brandon Clarke (PF, MEM) - 12% rostered
In one way or another, changes are coming to Memphis. If you paid attention to the news last week, you already know about it. If you didn't, here is the thing: Ja Morant got injured and will miss a bunch of weeks. Now, obviously, that doesn't directly impact Brandon Clarke but the two next-men-up in Tyus Jones and De'Anthony Melton are so super-rostered already that it didn't make much sense to talk about them as WW targets in mega-deep formats (chase both of them, though, and consider yourself lucky if you land any of the two!). So what about other ancillary pieces such as Clarke?
Morant is not what you'd define as an injury-prone player, but alas. Jaren Jackson Jr., on the other hand, surely is. But JJJ has not missed a beat this season--yet. Clarke could take huge advantage and be the main beneficiary of a potential injury down the road, but even if that never happens he's doing more than enough to get more playing time as the season grows older. In the six games he's played through the last two weeks of play, Clarke has averaged just 19 MPG but he's put up a daily 9-3-2 line with 0.8+ BPG on top of that. Pro-rated to a per-36 average, that'd yield a sound 17-5-4 with 1.5 blocks. In the past week, Clarke has had two games of 26 MP each, and his FP/min is at a high of 1.12 since Nov. 15 (league-average at 0.90). Clarke deserves more chances and he might get some sooner rather than later.
Malik Monk (PG/SG, LAL) - 11% rostered
The Lakers are underperforming as hell. It is just as simple as that, and things better change soon for them if the Lake Show wants to rest easy come play-in time. Malik Monk, who signed with LA this past offseason, never truly projected to be a fundamental piece for the Lakers, but rather a secondary/tertiary player stuck on the bench with opportunities here and there to show his microwave prowess. That's precisely what happened from the season tip-off to Nov. 8 (barring a couple of starts due to a lack of players), as Monk only topped 20+ minutes twice in nine games off the pine.
From Nov. 10 through Saturday, though, Monk has played fewer than 24 minutes just once in 10 games played and is averaging a bulky 29 MPG from the bench. His usage has gone up and is sitting nearly at an average of 18.5% while Monk is commanding around 10 FGA a game. Best of all: Monk is hitting shots at a great 49.7% clip since Nov. 10, and he's been scorching hot since Nov. 17 with a 52.1 shooting percentage scoring 1+ triple in all but one of his last six games, 2+ in three, and a season-high 4 triples in the Kings overtime loss to Sacramento last Friday. A fantastic source of points (12.7 since he's starting playing a little bit more), threes, rebounds, and very solid steals (1.3 SPG in the last three games/last week of November).
Anfernee Simons (PG/SG, POR) - 10% rostered
Simons is part of a squad with a loaded backcourt (Dame + McCollum) whose members, even though underperforming in the early season, are just not going to hit the pine any time soon. So that's the first thing you should know about Simons--he's just not going to start any game barring injury. Simons, though, is playing a healthy 22 MPG in the past two weeks while putting up an average 11-3-2-1 line. Not the greatest efficiency in the first three games of that Nov. 15-onward span, though, as Simons couldn't reach 10 points nor 3 rebounds in it, but he finally got things right in his last two outings through Saturday.
Against Denver on Nov. 23 he finished with a fantastic 14-5-2 line shooting 50% on 12 FGA while facing Golden State two days later he reached a season-high 19 pops in also a season-high 5 treys to go with 6 rebounds, 2 assists, and another high with 3 steals. Simons started the year hitting shots at an unreasonable 54.4% from the field, then went through a little bit of a slump, but he seems to be getting back on track. If he can stay there you'll be getting a nice three-point shooter with very good rebounding prowess given his PG/SG eligibility and upside for good steal averages.
Rudy Gay (SF/PF, UTA) - 7% rostered
If the Utah Jazz proved to be good at anything last year, that must be turning second-unit players into 6MOY candidates. The Salt Lake City Boys had the two top-vote-getters in 6MOY Jordan Clarkson and runner-up Joe Ingles. This season they're aiming at a trifecta after adding Rudy Gay via free agency this past summer. Gay just recently debuted for his new franchise (Nov. 18) and this might be a little bit of a risky addition given the small sample of games played, but it can also turn into the league-winning steal of the year.
Gay has played 20+ minutes in only one of his six games through Saturday. More often than not, though, he's been terrific putting up an average 1.07 FP/min average even counting the two stinkers in which he could only average 0.71 and 0.54 FP/min. In other words, Gay is playing superstar-level basketball on a per-minute basis and only the short runs are limiting his incredible upside. That might (most probably, actually) not change, of course, but even if it doesn't Gay is still hitting 54.8% of his FGA on the season and has connected on 66.5% of them in the last three games he's played (20 total FGA). The rebounding is fantastic at nearly 5 RPG, the points are mostly going to be in the 8-to-15 clip nightly, and you can count on 1+ trey per night with upside for much more given Gay's spot-up shooting prowess (63.6 3P% on 3.7 3PA per game in his early-season stretch).
Grant Williams (SF/PF, BOS) - 6% rostered
Tale of two halves that of G-Will so far this season. From the first game to Nov. 13 he could only amass a low 210 minutes starting two games for the Beantowners. From Nov. 12 on, though, he's played 219 minutes combined in four fewer games played, which has translated into an average of 18 MPG in that first stretch to 27 MPG (!) in the past eight games. That's what we call feeding the beast.
Williams has started five of the last eight Boston outings and although the usage rate is (and will stay) low as hell (in the 11-to-13 percent clip) Grant Williams will probably keep putting up numbers if just on brute force and sheer large playing time. Williams is averaging a good 9-5-1 per-game line while blocking almost one shot per game. He can downsize and upsize the lineup as Coach Ime pleases given his versatility. And the shooting has been incredible considering GW is hitting 2.1 3PM per game (he's shooting 56.9% from the field since Nov. 13 on 6.4 FGA; he's attempting 5.0 FGA on the season and 3.4 of those come from three-point range). Great source of threes and the always-scarce blocks with appeal in 9-cat leagues as he barely turns the ball over at all.
Download Our Free News & Alerts Mobile App
Like what you see? Download our updated fantasy basketball mobile app for iPhone and Android with 24x7 player news, injury alerts, lineup notifications & DFS articles. All free!
More Fantasy Basketball Analysis
By popular demand, RotoBaller has aggregated all of our fantasy basketball NBA waiver wire pickups into a running list of NBA waiver options, so bookmark the page and check back often for updates.
