RADIO
There is a thing the NFL does that the NBA does not: hand a Comeback Player of the Year award after every season. As the very own NFL defines it, this award is given "to the player who shows perseverance in overcoming adversity, in the form of not being in the NFL the previous year, overcoming a severe injury, or simply a poor performance."
With that in mind, I'm bringing this accolade to the realm of (fantasy) basketball and giving you some names of who should be candidates to have a "Comeback Season" in 2022-23 after missing time of late or straight playing way below their true-talent level in the past few months and/or years. With more than 450 players regularly playing in the NBA, it's understandable that you have forgotten about some of those guys missing time recently and for long periods of time.
Here are a few picks of players with Forward and Center eligibility expected to have bounceback campaigns when the upcoming season tips off that you might draft without other fantasy GMs really noticing those players' presence on the board after they forgot about them!
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Fantasy Basketball Comeback Candidates - Wings and Big Men
Kawhi Leonard, SG/SF - Los Angeles Clippers
This load management thing got a little bit out of hand last year for Kawhi as he missed last season entirely. Now, that's a bad, easy joke to make, but Leonard is now (or should be) fully rested and available to play his customary 60+ games in 2023. That last sentence, even if it might look like another joke, is not. That's Kawhi for you: a man tasked with playing 60-to-70 games through the regular season only for him to stay warm and ready for when things start to matter in the playoffs.
Kawhi, even on that limited playing basis, is a bonafide fantasy darling. He's improved steadily in virtually all of his years in the NBA on a per-minute basis, posting FP/min figures starting at 0.80 in 2012 and topping at 1.48 in the 2020 season. He dropped from that mark in 2021 but only to a still-elite 1.31 FP/min (his 2019 figure, for that matter) and he has finished three seasons in a row (the one in Toronto and two in Los Angeles) as a top-35 overall player and top-10 forward.
Leonard, as the veteran player he is, is one the most well-known assets at this point in his career and he shouldn't make you overthink his value or what might or might not you will be getting from him. For starters, you can count on 20+ PPG, 6+ RPG, 3+ APG, and 1+ SPG. That is the lowest of possible projections, so just imagine. Even then, that'd already yield a baseline of 35+ FPPG.
Add some blocks, some bonus points via three-point shooting, and an uptick in all of the aforementioned cats, and all of a sudden you're looking at a daily 45+ FPPG average on par with the cream of the crop of fantasy NBA performers. Fantasy GMs out there aren't scared at all of Kawhi's minute-managing and time missed judging by his current ADP of 24th OVR. And that's still low.
Jonathan Isaac, PF/C - Orlando Magic
The latest reports coming off Orlando regarding Jonathan Isaac's recovery from injury speak of a fully available player come opening night. We'll see how that goes, but the truth is that Isaac has missed two entire seasons while only playing 34 games in the 2019-20 campaign.
In other words, when the season tips off in late October, it'd have been nearly 800 days since the last time this young man sat feet on a basketball court (Aug. 2, 2020; Isaac played back-to-back games to close July and open August logging 30 combined minutes before getting shut down for good in the bubble and he's been out until now).
As sad as it is, the train of hope is inching closer to leaving Isaac behind sooner rather than later. Some fantasy GMs, though, seem to still believe in the two-ACL man of mystery. And there might be an actual reason for that. Isaac's last active season in 2020 was a promising one as he finished that year as a steady starter in Orlando (32 of 34 games started) while putting up a 12-7-1-1-2 per-game line in less than 28 MPG of playing time.
That might seem like a low bar to match, but it's definitely not. Even not accounting for playing time and including players with larger amounts of minutes played per game, only five players have had seasons with a per-game stat line average of 11-6-1-1-1 in the last decade: Dwight Howard, Anthony Davis, Joakim Noah, Jusuf Nurkic, and Jonathan Isaac. That is some solid company if you ask me, and even if Isaac's ceiling ends at Noah's level I don't think most folks out there would be too mad at that.
Isaac's player profile is very unique when factoring shooting into the equation. Only 14 times in the history of the NBA has a player posted a combination of 2+ BPG and a 55% or higher TS% with Isaac having such a campaign in 2020. It might look like cherry-picking, but if you add a 1+ SPG baseline to those other two stats you only get a three-man list: Isaac, Andrei Kirilenko, and Anthony Davis. The possibilities are endless and the sky should be the limit, but there will always be health concerns until Isaac is back and proving he can be out there on a nightly basis.
James Wiseman, C - Golden State Warriors
Watching Wiseman play basketball at the high-school level of play was highly fun but incredibly unfair when you stopped to think about it for five seconds. He was so dominant that he was clearly a man among boys in those mini-varsity gyms back in the day. Wiseman was drafted in the summer of 2020 with a second-overall pick but his name might not even ring the smallest bell in some casual fans' heads.
It could be argued that Wiseman is actually more known for his amateur basketball than what he's done in the professional circuit. He's been two years in Golden State and he's an NBA champion already but he's only played 39 games of a possible 164. He's logged 836 regular-season minutes but none in the playoffs. You get the idea.
The Warriors won the chip last season and then covered their backs by erring on the safe side this summer knowing Wiseman's injury woes. Alas, the Kevon Looney three-year extension and projected start for another year at the center slot barring an impressive comeback from Wiseman. Judging by his Summer League and what he's already shown in his brief NBA stint two years ago, though, that might very well be the case.
Wiseman is coming off 81 minutes of total playing time in the last Summer League over four games played. The big man out of Memphis posted an average 10-5-1 line with 2 BPG on top of that. He shot a good-not-great 48% from the field, though he attempted 1.5 3PA per game, hitting 33% of those.
The production will be there the minute he hits the floor in an NBA game. It is what it is. Don't chase Wiseman crazily, but surely keep an eye on him as a late-round pick or a surefire early WW target. Fantasy GMs are drafting Wiseman with the 132nd OVR pick in the early days of September.
That ADP will surely go up a bit in the next few weeks. Not really necessary, but let me mention some names that I feel are currently getting a bit overvalued and drafted before Wiseman that shouldn't: Nic Claxton, Onyeka Okongwu, Isaiah Stewart, and Richaun Holmes.
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