The Fantasy Basketball Drop List: Week 4

January 17, 2021

Justin Carter looks at fantasy basketball players who can be dropped in Week 4. These are players who are struggling in the 2020-21 NBA season.

Every fantasy sports site is filled with articles about which players you need to pick up, but what about the guys you need to be dropping in order to fit those new players into your lineup?

Have no fear -- RotoBaller is here is tell you who you need to be dropping when you make your waiver claims this week.

Below is our weekly fantasy basketball drop list, a look at players who are can be dropped in some or all formats. Every Thursday, we'll look at why it's fine to move on from certain players based on their recent play. Remember: every league is different and we're working on a pretty small sample size this early in the year, so make sure you evaluate what options you have to replace these players before you actually drop them.

Players to Consider Dropping or Replacing

Royce O'Neale (F, Utah Jazz)

24% rostered

While O'Neale continues to get a healthy dose of minutes, he also continues to not do a ton of scoring with those minutes.

In the past two games, for instance, O'Neale is shooting 28.6 percent and averaging 2.5 points per game.

And yeah, yeah, yeah -- you can use the "well, that's a two-game sample" thing here, but the issue is that O'Neale's upside isn't high enough to make up for the real lows you can get from him. Like...sure, he might give you a steal every game, but does that make up for the categories that he gives you nothing in?

His assist numbers are nice, so in a deep league where you can withstand the scoring hit, O'Neale is a fine player to hang onto still, but overall I'm pretty meh on him.

Bogdan Bogdanovic (G/F, Atlanta Hawks)

53% rostered

Bogdanovic will miss a few weeks at least with a knee injury. If you have room in an IR spot, put him there, but if you don't...I don't know, Bogdanovic wasn't setting the world on fire before the injury. Per Basketball Reference:

The Hawks have a problem called "too many cooks in the kitchen." Especially out on the wing, there are just too many guys competing for minutes. Bogdanovic was getting plenty of shots and minutes early on, but he'd fallen below 20 minutes per game and was taking fewer and fewer shot attempts.

Without an IR spot available, I wouldn't want to waste a bench spot on someone who was already playing poorly and was losing his fantasy relevance. He just doesn't offer enough upside outside of his heavy reliance on the three-ball.

Josh Jackson (G/F, Detroit Pistons)

20% rostered

So, Josh Jackson this year is going to be the ultimate streamer: he'll have good games where you want to pick him up, then he'll have bad games where you'll want to drop him.

The problem is that he's going through one of those downturns right now.

Over the past three games, Jackson is shooting just 25 percent from the floor and 27.3 percent from three. Six points per game won't cut it in fantasy. Neither will 1.7 rebounds and 1.3 assists. He's still contributing in steals, but that's one category where I trust Jackson.

His minutes are down too, and playing time was always going to be the main path to Jackson achieving lasting fantasy relevance this year. Keep an eye on him to see if his minutes get back into the high 20s, but if they don't, there's not enough upside here for me to keep rostering the former No. 4 overall pick.

Justin Holiday (G/F, Indiana Pacers)

38% rostered

Holiday's value is tied to threes and scoring, as he doesn't give you enough contribution in other categories to really withstand some poor games from him.

And well...that's an issue right now. He's made just five total shots in the past two games, and that's happened despite a starting spot and 29-plus minutes in both games. He's basically just a shooter right now, but he'll lose some playing time now that the Pacers have traded for Caris Levert. Holiday feels like a guy whose ceiling is just a tad too low for me to feel good about rostering him.

Cole Anthony (G, Orlando Magic)

34% rostered

Anthony took over as the starting point guard once Markelle Fultz went down for the year. Here are his numbers since moving into the starting five:

What do we do with this?

Anthony's 11.7 points per game from a rookie guard would be fine if he could give you other things, but a 34.3/16.7/81.8 shooting split is weird and not good enough. Neither are 2.3 rebounds and 2.3 assists per game -- especially the assists, since we're talking about a starting point guard here.

There are probably plenty of guys on the wire who average 10-12 points per game who also do other things, like hit threes or score efficiently or grab some rebounds. Because of that, I'm fine moving on from Anthony, even if his starting role likely means that things will eventually get better in terms of stats for him.

Bismack Biyombo (C, Charlotte Hornets)

19% rostered

Picked up by a lot of fantasy managers due to the Cody Zeller injury, Biyombo simply hasn't done enough to justify a fantasy roster spot. And while we're still probably a couple of weeks away from Zeller returning and totally destroying Biyombo's value, it's hard to see a reason to hold onto him right now when we know his value will only get worse.

The problem is that there are just no shot attempts available for him. In the past two games, he's taken four total shots! He doesn't get to the free-throw line enough. His rebounding is inconsistent. After some intriguing assist totals early on in his starting role, that's vanished in the last five games, with just three total assists in that span.

He'll block shots, though. He's blocked seven in the past two games. Still, is a block specialist something you really need in most formats? Probably not, especially with his playing time set to diminish soon.

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