December 2, 2017

Justin Carter looks at fantasy basketball risers and fallers for Week 8 of the NBA season. These can be lineup sleepers and busts for your fantasy NBA teams.

Hey there! I'm Justin Carter. If you play fantasy football in addition to fantasy basketball, you may have seen me around this site this season, giving you advice on such things as which NFL players are going to be bad this week and which players you should add to your teams in deep leagues, but I'm also a huge fan of the NBA and am going to be running this column for the rest of the season.

A little about my methodology before we get going, because transparency is a good thing, especially when your fantasy team is trusting someone whose advice on fantasy basketball you've never read before: This column is publishing on Saturdays, and since most weekly leagues start over on Monday there's going to, obviously, be a little bit of dissonance there, since I'll be looking at players upcoming schedule from Saturday to the next Saturday. For those of you playing in season-long formats, this shouldn't matter nearly as much.

For the purposes of identifying who is rising and who is falling, I'm mostly looking at the past two weeks of games a player has had, with the most recent week weighed the most heavily. I'm also not going to take the easy way out and say an injured player is a faller (unless its just a minor injury that won't cost a player an entire week). Okay, we've reached the point where I start giving you suggestions. Here's to a (hopefully!) successful reader/writer relationship as the NBA season picks up the steam. These are the risers and fallers heading into Week 8 of the NBA season.

Week 8 Fantasy Basketball Risers

RISER - Kris Dunn (G, CHI)

I've been fully on board the Kris Dunn fantasy train for awhile, because he's been a solid filler of the stat sheet--he grabs a good amount of rebounds for a guard and also seems to finish most games with multiple steals. The thing that's been a little disappointing, though, was his scoring ability. His past two games, though? 24 points, eight assists, five rebounds, and four steals against the Suns, followed by 19 points, five assists, and five rebounds against Denver. Yes, Dunn had a bad rookie season last year in Minnesota, when he didn't even record a single game with 19 points, but something seems to be coming together this year in Chicago.

RISER - DeAndre Jordan (C, LAC)

With Blake Griffin out for about two months and the Clippers already down a host of other productive players (Patrick Beverley (knee), Milos Teodosic (foot), and Danilo Gallinari (glute)), DeAndre Jordan almost HAS to increase in value if the Clippers want to remain competitive in games. Is he still a huge liability at the free throw line? Well, yeah! But Jordan has historically been a valuable player during Griffin's absences and should put up better numbers than his current 10.1 points and 13.7 assists per-game until Griffin returns.

RISER - Ben Simmons (G/F, PHI)

Simmons set career-highs in points and rebounds in Wednesday's victory over the Wizards. That game was...weird. Simmons set an NBA record for fourth quarter free throw attempts as the Wizards decided to hack him every time Philly had the ball. He wasn't particularly effective from the free throw line--he was just 12-of-24 during that fourth quarter--but head coach Brett Brown's decision to leave Simmons in the game and allow him to work through those shooting issues speaks volumes about how much the 76ers already trust the rookie. Even if Simmons shot is still a work-in-progress, his size and passing ability mean he can contribute in assists and rebounds. His 2.1 steals-per-game don't hurt either.

Week 8 Fantasy Basketball Fallers

FALLER - Paul George (F, OKC)

The Thunder are 8-12 and 10th in the West right now, a far cry from what the team expected coming into the season. There was a point where it could have been argued that OKC was just off to a bad start, but we're a quarter through this season now. Will they eventually get it together? Probably, but for now fantasy owners should be nervous about the situation and how it's been affecting Paul George. George is still capable of games like Wednesday night's 22 point performance, but the game before that was one of his worst shooting performances of his career, a game in which George shot 8.3% from the field. He went three consecutive games without attempting a single free throw. With the occasional exception, PG13 has been trending the wrong direction lately.

FALLER - Jaylen Brown (G/F, BOS)

Brown went on a bit of a hot streak two weeks ago, when he put up 20+ points in three consecutive games. In four games since? Brown's scoring has gone down each game, culminating in a two point, three rebound performance in Thursday's win against the 76ers. The Celtics are a deep, young team, and some of Brown's struggles can be attributed to strong recent play by Jayson Tatum and Marcus Morris taking away opportunities, but Brown has also failed to get to the free throw line consistently. It's possible he rights the ship in a match-up against the Suns on Saturday, who allow the most points-per-game in the league. If he doesn't? Fantasy owners should start to worry.

FALLER - Dion Waiters (G, MIA)

Waiters has always been a streaky shooter. It's made him a little difficult to rely on at times. Waiters had a pretty strong stretch of games to open the season, but since November 19, when he went o-for-10 from the field against the Pacers, his streakiness has been on the bad side a little bit too much. 2-for-1o (and only 1-of-6 from three) against the Bulls, 3-for-1o against the Knicks. Even when the points have been there (as they were for Waiters on November 28 against the Cavaliers, when he scored 21), the efficiency hasn't been. A bright side? 15 assists over his past two games.

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