RADIO
We're this close to the regular season, and while there is a ton of hype about the incoming rookies (check out all of our NBA Draft analysis here) we still need to reflect on the 2021-2022 season and what happened just a few months back in time. We're having the first proper NBA offseason in a couple of years as COVID fades away, and it's now time to do some evaluation on another unique season as we prepare for the 2023 campaign.
We have nearly a full season of data for most players to crunch now. It's time to reflect on the 2021-22 season to see who were our "risers" and "fallers" in the rankings. A lot of young players are naturally going to be on the rise, while some older hoopers will definitely be part of the season fallers.
In this article, I will feature some of the players labeled as Forwards (SF/PF) who took the biggest jumps in their output so you can properly assess their value entering the 2022 draft season as we get closer to peak draft SZN.
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Fantasy Basketball Risers - Forwards
Kevin Love, PF - Cleveland Cavaliers
2021 - 298th-best Overall
2022 - 79th
I'm not going to lie. I included Love on this list without even giving it two seconds of thought, and that is because his last season of NBA play was very impressive. But I was surprised to actually see how incredible he's been throughout his whole career--far more than I would have expected, honestly.
Haters out there will say that Love didn't really bounce back last year and that his overall fantasy improvement came down to basically playing only 25 games in 2021, but that doesn't even start to tell Love's story. Love, who has been an above-average performer since 2009 when he was just a rookie (already averaged 1.00 FP/min; league average at around 0.90), is coming off a 1.23 FP/min season which is virtually tied as his third-best in the NBA. No joke.
Love went from a perennial starter from his years one-through-13 to a super-sub last season in Cleveland. He played 74 games starting only four of those and playing 22.5 MPG off the pine (both career-low marks). The results, though, couldn't have been better in terms of efficiency and per-game numbers: 13+ PPG, 7+ RPG, 2+ APG, and only 1.3 TOPG adorned his daily stat lines.
Posting a 13-7 nightly average isn't great, nor good, even. Doing so while playing barely 23 MPG is something only Love, Valanciunas (in 2019), and Clyde Lovellette (in 1959 !!!) have ever done in the history of the Association. Talk about a monster season off the pine for a reborn Love. The Cavs have also gotten rid of PF Lauri Markkanen this offseason, so they might even hand Love a few more minutes of playing time next season. Must-draft player once more, Kevin Love.
Will Barton, SG/SF - Washington Wizards
2021 - 130th-best Overall
2022 - 76th
Barton has been around forever, and in fact, he's spent the last seven seasons playing basketball in Denver. Not only that but he's also started 219 of the 228 games he's been part of in the past four years (96%) although nobody seems to properly rate his game--not at least to great extents. Happens when you are part of a lineup that more often than not features the likes of Jamal Murray and two-time MVP Nikola Jokic, I guess.
Barton will play in the capital next season after he got traded to the Washington Wizards. Barton, also, will probably retain his starting role in D.C. after having one in Denver for a good long time – unless Kyle Kuzma starts at SF instead of PF. Barton has never been an overly efficient player but that has more to do with his bulky minutes of playing time (31+ MPG in four of the last five seasons) rather than his actual production on the court.
Barton has averaged at least 11 PPG in seven consecutive seasons (basically all of his seasons with the Nuggets) and he raised the bar from 12+ PPG in 2021 to nearly 15 PPG last year. He also improved on the rebounds and assists categories posting almost 5 RPG and 4 APG for a full 14-5-4-1 per-game line.
Last year also marked the first season since 2018 in which Barton went on to play more than 58 games as he had missed ample time in three consecutive years before 2022. Barton posted his third-best TS% at 54.9 over the year attempting 12.6 FGA (6.1 3PA) and 1.8 FTA per game. Only four other players last year reached such a high TS% while attempting those shots and fewer than two free throws per game: Bogdan Bogdanovic, Buddy Hield, Evan Fournier, and Klay Thompson.
Saddiq Bey, SF - Detroit Pistons
2021 - 105th-best Overall
2022 - 38th
The Pistons "drafted" Bey (Brooklyn actually did, only then sent the pick to Detroit in a three-team trade) outside of the draft lottery with the 19th-overall pick in November of 2020 (yes, COVID had it that way). At that "low" position, of course, Bey went a little bit under the radar and wasn't nearly as hyped as other top-bill rookies such as James Wiseman and/or LaMelo Ball. Only, you know what happened next.
Bey went on to have a borderline top-100 fantasy season as a rookie appearing in 70 games with Detroit and starting 53 of them playing 27+ MPG a pop. The Pistons, basically, handed him the team as soon as they could because what else could they do? And the gamble surely paid off with Bey delivering a per-game 12-4-1 line mostly manning the SF slot for the Motown Club. That might look bland, but only three other rookies posted that line over the full 2021 season (min. 500 minutes): LaMelo, Cole Anthony, and Anthony Edwards.
With such a debut campaign, the 2022 season came with great expectations. And of course, Bey delivered once more doubling down on his fantastic freshman year. Bey went from playing 27 minutes to featuring for 33 MPG nightly. That helped, of course, but that also meant more production was expected in order to keep his FP/min up, and he surely did that: Bey averaged 0.91 compared to his rookie season's 0.83, breaking the league-average barrier.
Bey's 16-5-3-1 line while only adding a measly 0.3 TOPG to his line posed a great improvement. His shooting regressed a bit last year (from 56.4 to 52.7 TS%) but it's not that you should worry that much about it if it stays where he finished last year. Bey hoisted nearly 14 FGA per game and 7.4 3PA, so it's not that he was attempting baby-layups. Potential top-50 fantasy player for years to come.
Aaron Gordon, SF/PF - Denver Nuggets
2021 - 145th-best Overall
2022 - 70th
See, last year might be an outlier in Gordon's career but until and unless that doesn't get proved true I'll be here defending Gordon and dying on his hill. The numbers don't lie: Gordon topped a 60% true shooting for the first time in his career after never ever before reaching even a 55 TS%. He dumped 15 PPG on a subpar USG% of just 19.7 percent. He shot 52% (!) from the floor and a career-high 74.3% from the line.
There are two angles from which you can look at Gordon's upcoming year: he will regress naturally to the mean because that's how this thing works and he'll have to share the court with a returning Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr., or he might only regress a tiny bit because playing next to those two players and Jokic will have him free on offense to take all of the easy shots he wants and bulk up his numbers in unreasonable ways.
Whatever the case, the improvement cannot be negated. The per-minute efficiency was mediocre (0.89 FP/min) but that had to do with the large playing time (nearly 32 MPG) more than anything. Gordon's 2021 looks more like a fluke (top-145 finish) more than the 2022 season looks like an outlier (Gordon has finished as a top-80 player in five of the last six seasons, so it's more the norm than anything else).
We have yet to see Gordon playing a full season with a fully healthy Nuggets team, but nothing should prevent Gordon from cracking the top-85 fantasy list next season and finishing as a top-35 player with F eligibility.
Jarred Vanderbilt, PF - Utah Jazz
2021 - 193rd-best Overall
2022 - 118th
While it can be said that Vanderbilt is still trying to find himself in the NBA, last season was definitely a step in the right direction and a consolidating one when it comes to his future in the association. After three years of going through the growing pains of a newcomer, Vanderbilt finally played an important role in Minny, starting 67 of 74 games for the Wolves playing a bit over 25 MPG.
The results weren't great, mind you, but the league-average 0.90 FP/min he posted on a ridiculously low 10.9% usage rate was good enough to make him a viable role player/bench option for fantasy GMs out there.
Vanderbilt got involved in the monster Gobert trade a few weeks days ago. He's joining a Jazz squad that is now fully into a rebuilding process and that is totally depleted of top-tier players – more than anywhere in the paint. Hassan Whiteside and Eric Paschall – along with Rudy Gobert, of course – are off the Jazz's roster right now due to trades or entering free agency.
If JV is not the starting C, he'll definitely be the starting PF as things stand right now. Mike Conley, Collin Sexton, and Lauri Markkanen form the starting trio poised to get the highest usage rates, but someone has to play inside and Vanderbilt should at least get the easy dump-in balls from the guards to drop down the rim with ease. As the main big in Utah next season, Vanderbilt is a very appealing, under-the-radar proposition.
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