Week 17 Fantasy Basketball Waiver Wire: NBA Category Specialists

Sitting here in the fourth month of the 2014-15 season, it is time to dive back into the NBA waiver wire. Today, the focus is on fantasy basketball sleepers of the "Category Specialist" variety that can each help out in different areas during Week 17.

Position Eligibility & Ownership Rate Based on Yahoo! Fantasy Basketball Player List

Field-Goal Percentage (FG%) Specialists

Kelly Olynyk (BOS, PF/C) - 40% Owned

Tyler Zeller (BOS, PF/C) - 18% Owned

Lost in the flurry of trade deadline transactions, news broke that Celtics forward Jared Sullinger is going miss significant time going forward with a stress fracture in his foot. In the medium term, the better replacement is Olynyk. However, he is currently out with an ankle injury himself and may not play in Boston’s three game west coast road trip coming out of the break.

If you are in need of a more immediate add – or one who is more likely to be available in deeper leagues – Zeller is a prime target. He should get all the minutes he can handle starting alongside Brandon Bass in the Celtics frontcourt. Zeller has been awesomely productive in limited minutes on the season. If you extrapolate his stats to 36 minutes a game, his fantasy line would look like a poor man’s Marc Gasol – 17.2 points, 9.9 rebounds, 2.4 assists, 0 threes, 0.5 steals, 1.2 blocks, 1.7 turnovers, .557 FG%, .823 FT%.

While Zeller will not play 36 minutes and his efficiency likely would not be as good in extended action, Zeller makes an outstanding add while both Sulliger and Olynyk are out, and could remain a decent player even when Olynyk returns.

Three-Point Specialist

Jared Dudley (MIL, SG/SF) - 24% Owned

Dudley will be coming out of the All-Star Break with a new, and much worse, starting point guard for his team. As a fan of good basketball, it is sad to see a frisky Bucks team replace its best player (Brandon Knight) with an overrated efficiency disaster in Michael Carter-Williams. Perhaps there’s hope for MCW with much better teammates, though, and that starts with Jared Dudley, who has turned into the Bucks most effective player, aside from Khris Middleton.

Dudley started the last eight games before the break, and should continue getting big minutes going forward. In that span, he shot .561 on FGs, including .559 on threes. Those kinds of rates are unsustainable, but he should remain very effective from three-point land. Dudley doesn’t bring a lot else to the table – in his eight-game stretch as starter, he only averaged 2.8 rebounds, 2.1 assists, 0.9 steals, and 0.4 blocks. However, the combination of three point shooting with attacking the basket (he’s shooting .559 on two-point shots on the season) should combine for very good totals of threes that don’t hurt your FG%.

Steals and Blocks Specialist

Al-Farouq Aminu (DAL, SF) - 8% Owned

Sometimes you don’t need to be a good offensive player to be useful in fantasy basketball. It is definitely hard for a forward who has averaged only 6.3 points a game in his career to have any value. Aminu, however, sometimes manages to do so. Lately his minutes have been trending up as he has started to play well for the Mavericks. In the last 9 games before the break, Aminu averaged his usual poor 7.7 points on a .424 FG% in 24.9 minutes per game. However, he added 6.7 rebounds and an outstanding combination of the two defensive stats – 1.9 steals and 1.7 blocks.

It is harder to see it with small numbers, but when you consider how much of a percent difference from fantasy league average 1.9 steals and 1.7 blocks per game are, it’s about the same fantasy effect in those categories as tallying 20 points and 6 assists a game. A 20 point, 6 assist guy who sucks everywhere else usually still finds his way on a fantasy team. If Aminu can keep playing like his, he might find his way on fantasy teams, too, despite the lack of offense.

While Aminu might lose some minutes to Amare Stoudemire, they don’t really play the same sort of role – Aminu is all defense, no offense and Stoudemire is all offense, no defense. I think he’ll continue to play a strong role on the Mavs bench, and is using as a specialist when you need steals and blocks late in the week.