December 19, 2016

RobWild looks at two hyped fantasy NBA busts for the 2016-17 season. Follow RotoBaller for more fantasy basketball strategy, rankings, and waiver wire adds.

Pre-season hype is real. Every year there are must draft, sky is the limit players who are supposed to take that next leap into fantasy stardom. To get your hands on one of these guys, you have to spend an early pick relative to their statistical value from last year. In the best of cases you get what you paid for them, but more often than not they fail to exceed their inflated draft prices.

Today we look at a few of those players who have produced numbers at least sixty spots in value behind where they were drafted, and what we can expect from them the rest of this season and beyond.

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Victor Oladipo and Aaron Gordon are Killing their Fantasy Owners

Victor Oladipo, Oklahoma City Thunder

Going to a new team, away from the train wreck of Orlando basketball, and right into a situation as the number two guy in Oklahoma, things looked bright. But instead of being dubbed Victory Oladipo, most owners would rather call him Olidiaper for how he crapped on their season. His combined average draft position from Yahoo, ESPN, and CBS this last season was thirty! Yet his current player rater production has him at ninety-nine, a full sixty-nine spots later. That’s like paying a third round pick for a tenth round player. Ouch.

So what happened? First off, Oklahoma is Westbrook’s team and he’s ball-hogging his way to triple-double land. Maybe there was a reason Durant left after all? But more importantly, some of Oladipo's stats have unexpectedly dropped. This season he is shooting a garbage level sixty two percent on free throws, down from nearly eighty percent or higher the past few years, while also getting less assists and steals.  For a guy known as a defensive specialist, getting only .9 steals per game is especially concerning. He’s also only getting 16.1 points per game, which alone wouldn’t mean too much, but from someone who should be Robin to Westbrook's Batman, this just isn’t cutting it.

Moving forward, Oladipo is a good buy low candidate, but I think we clearly have to see him as more of a top sixty value and not top thirty. He should be able to fix his free throw percentage, and he really needs to if he’s going to be any sort of fantasy asset at all. He is young and adjusting to a new team while also playing with a ball hogging superstar, so I would give him a little bit of a break getting adjusted. That being said, I’m not buying any more hype with him and wouldn’t touch him if he keeps getting overvalued on potential.

Aaron Gordon, Orlando Magic

This guy is an absolutely amazing dunker who should have won last year’s contest, but has been pretty bad at actual basketball this year. He’s young and hardworking, but hey, so are a lot of fast food employees. His combined average draft position from Yahoo, ESPN and CBS this past season was eighty. While that isn’t too terrible a cost for a high upside player, his current player rater production has him at one hundred sixty! In many leagues that means this guy is not even on a roster now, or shouldn’t be.

So what happened? I’d call it a sophomore slump, except this is his third year. I’d say he got Skiled (poorly used by previous coach Skiles), except he has a new coach in Vogel. The only thing that makes much sense is he has been used in different positions and the coaching changes are going to take some adjusting to. That, or he’s just not that good. This year he is averaging 1 3PM, 4.4 REB, 1.8 AST, .8 STL, .6 BLK, and 10.4 PTS per game, shooting .431 from the field and .558 from the free throw line. The counting stats are low, but the percentages are just terrible. For him to turn this around at all he really needs steals and blocks above one per game and to improve those percentages.

Moving forward Gordon is a wait and see. He had one really good game recently against the Clippers, but the player that would have been normally defending him was out with an injury, so I’m not too sold something is happening with him yet. He does have tons of potential because he is a freakish athlete and still only twenty one years old. I have my eyes on him and would buy if I can get him cheaply. The problem for his owners is that his value is so low right they are forced to hold or sell for pennies.