February 27, 2018

Week 20 fantasy basketball waiver wire adds for deeper leagues. Take a look at Three NBA players who are owned in less than 15% of fantasy basketball leagues.

We're hitting the part of the season where tanking teams are starting to show their hand, and that usually leads to a fantasy goldmine with young players on those tanking teams getting a chance at starters minutes.

Let's take a look at some pickups as we gear up for the playoffs.

Here are today's Week 20 deeper league waiver wire pickups for your fantasy basketball teams.

Deep League Adds for Week 20

Skal Labissiere, PF/C, Sacramento Kings (13% Owned in Yahoo! Leagues)

The Kings are going nowhere this season, and while it's been hard to trust anything coach Dave Joerger says (he's said multiple times that he was going to play the young guys more and we were still seeing 35 minute Zach Randolph games right up until the all-star break), there's no way the organization can be THAT bad and we should be seeing some kind of youth movement to close out the year as Sacramento races for ping pong balls once again.

Skal is the young gun with the most fantasy upside, and he is absolutely underowned at 13%. He returns solid percentages for a Center, similar to JaMychal Green splits, but he has more defensive upside than Green and can put up close to a steal and a block per game if he is given 30 minutes. There's a good chance the old guys like Randolph and Vince Carter will mercifully be rested on back-to-backs going forward, and there is a path to Skal getting those minutes. He should be grabbed in all leagues that run deeper than 12.

Nemanja Bjelica, SF, Minnesota Timberwolves (15% Owned in Yahoo! Leagues)

It's a great thing for basketball that Jimmy Butler avoided an ACL tear and gets to continue his MVP caliber season in the playoffs, but for all intents and purposes, his fantasy season is over, and Bjelica will be the Wolves starting SF for the fantasy playoffs.

While he isn't the highest upside option, Bjelica has had spurts of fantasy relevance in the past, and we all know Tom Thibodeau's affinity for playing his nominal starters huge minutes. Both of these factors work to suggest Bjelica being a top-120 to borderline top-100 option, which is more than rosterable in a 12-team and up league. Bjelica will not be a high usage guy, as Butler's shots will most likely be absorbed by Karl-Anthony Towns, Andrew Wiggins and Jeff Teague, but he will be a decent contributor of blocks, 3s and steals.

That kind of skillset is much more attractive than what someone like Jamal Crawford offers to most builds, and while I do think that Crawford's value goes up with the Butler injury as well, Bjelica is, in my opinion, the far better pickup.

Jakob Poeltl, C, Toronto Raptors (5% Owned in Yahoo! Leagues)

Specialists break apart match-ups during the fantasy playoffs, and it's hard to find a specialist for a category of as deep as magnitude as widely available as the Raptors center of the future in Jakob Poeltl.

Poeltl has averaged 1.3 blocks a game in just 18 minutes so far this season, and his minutes have trended slightly up in the last couple months to around 20 per game, and I expect to see that continue because he is a guy who the advanced metrics love and he is a big part of the league's most dangerous bench unit. In 20 minutes over the last month, Poeltl has averaged 1.7 blocks per game.

With the Raptors excellent playoff schedule, 4 game of Poeltl in a given week can contribute a massive 6-7 blocks per game, and along with the slight positives in FG% and rebounding as well, his skillset is the type that can help you win certain match-ups, and that's exactly the type of guy you look for in a single elimination match. Pick him up if you anticipate needing to contest blocks in the playoffs.

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