Fantasy Basketball Mid-Week Streamers: Week 17

February 9, 2023

Thunder Dan Palyo looks at some mid-week waiver wire options for fantasy basketball leagues. These players may be free agents to target on waivers in Week 17.

Today is the NBA trade deadline and there were some major deals that shook the league last night, with Kevin Durant going to Phoenix being the biggest. We can expect a few more deals today, but probably nothing of that scale but you never know, right? With only four games today and two games on Super Bowl Sunday, most of the games in the second half of the week are clustered together on Friday (11) and Saturday (9).

Most leagues limit how many players you can stream each week in daily leagues. If your league only allows three moves per week, you need to be very efficient with your moves and grab players who will help you maximize your games played and help you win an extra category or two of counting stats.

The goal of this article each Thursday morning will be to help you plan out your roster moves for the remainder of the week. By this point of the week, you should start to get an idea of what categories you may need help with and where your weekly opponent is the strongest and weakest (in H2H formats). If you're playing roto, you don't have to gameplan quite as much, but you'll still want to maximize the stats your team can accumulate during the week. All the rostered percentages used in this article are from Yahoo.

Weekly Schedule: Thursday to Sunday

Teams that play only one game (AVOID): Golden State, Houston, LA Clippers, Minnesota, New Orleans, OKC, Portland, Washington

Teams that play three games (TARGET): NONE

Teams that play Thursday and two games (TARGET): Phoenix, Orlando, Milwaukee, LA Lakers, Denver, Chicago, Atlanta, Brooklyn

Teams that play Sunday and two games (TARGET): Toronto, Memphis, Boston, Detroit

Shallow League Streaming Options

Malik Beasley - SG/SF (43%)

Beasley may not be ready to suit up for the Lakers by tonight, but he's certainly worth a speculative add for more than just the week as he could end up having some long-term value with his new team. The Lakers badly need shooters to surround LeBron with in LA and Beasley could end up carving out a solid role there or even starting.

Ayo Dosunmu - PG/SG (31%)

Ayo played 38 minutes in the Bulls' last game as Alex Caruso was out and he had one of his better offensive showings in some time. He's never going to be a scorer, but he's definitely a solid contributor in assists, steals, and even blocks (for a PG anyway) and a guard who usually won't hurt your FG%.

Dorian Finney-Smith - SF/PF (37%)

DFS will make his Nets debut tonight and I am guessing he plays a ton since the newly acquired Mikal Bridges and Cameron Johnson likely won't be ready to go yet for Brooklyn. Those two are better offensive players than DFS, but he's still likely to have a somewhat substantial role in the post-Kyrie/KD era in Brooklyn and certainly worth a grab for the rest of the week to see what happens.

Zach Collins - PF/C (24%)

Collins is probably one of the best guys out there on the wire right now and he's widely available. His value should increase with Jakob Poeltl being dealt to the Raptors. It's no guarantee that he plays 30+ minutes as the starter, but even something like 25-28 minutes a night is plenty for him to have standard league value for the rest of the way.

Josh Richardson - SG/SF (23%)

J-Rich has played 31 minutes now in two straight as the Spurs have been without Tre Jones and Devin Vassell. San Antonio is tanking hard and I won't be surprised if we don't see their regular guys much down the stretch at all. Guys like Collins and Richardson could have substantial value for the rest of the year. If you can stomach some bad shooting nights, Richardson has the ability to rack up stats across the board in just about every other category.

Deep Leagues Streaming Options

Jaylen Nowell - PG/SG (10%)

Nowell had a career-high of 30 points last night as he started for D'Angelo Russell after D-Lo was dealt. Mike Conley is coming to Minnesota to take Russell's starting PG job, but Nowell could end up seeing some more minutes with Conley in town as Conley has been more of a 28-30 minute guy the last few years of his career. His fantasy game is mainly scoring-based, but give Nowell a look for tomorrow's game against Memphis at least if Conley isn't cleared to debut yet.

Ricky Rubio - PG (9%)

I had Rubio in last week's column. As long as you have fairly low expectations, Ricky should give you what you're looking for in deeper formats. He's never going to play more than 20 minutes probably due to a crowded backcourt and his injury history, but he's been very efficient with those minutes and racks up enough steals and assists to be valuable even in a reduced role.

Isaac Okoro - SG/SF (7%)

Another Cavalier here that has been trending up in Okoro. He's finally nailed down the starting spot at the three with the Cavs opting to bring LeVert off the bench. His defense is really solid and he's showing some major improvement in his offensive game, too. He will never be a high-usage player, but he can be very useful in all the non-scoring categories and provide decent percentages on low volume.

Dario Saric - PF/C (4%) and Damion Lee - SG/SF (4%)

The Suns play tonight against Atlanta and just traded their starting SF and PF! While Booker is back, Phoenix is going to need bodies to play on the wing until KD returns, TJ Warren isn't likely to debut tonight, and Landry Shamet and Cameron Payne are both still out. I think both of these guys are in play as streamers for tonight with Saric maybe even having a little value until KD is healthy.

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