Marquese Chriss (PF/C, GSW): Week 15 Waiver Wire Pickups

BALLER MOVE: Add In 14-Team Leagues

OWNED IN: 5% of leagues

ANALYSIS: After three seasons and a half in the league, it is fair to say Marquese Chriss has been a bust. He is a former 8th-overall draftee but he has far from lived up to the expectations, though the current version of Chriss is probably the best we've seen in a long time. Playing (and starting) for a depleted Warriors team that had just traded Willie Cauley-Stein to Dallas, Chriss posted a 13-3-1-2-2 line against Indiana last Friday in just 21 minutes. Not his best game of the year, though, as he has already logged three double-doubles off the bench.

Chriss' role is undoubtedly going to keep growing now that the interior corps have lost WCS. Alghough Chriss is only averaging 17.6 mpg on the year, I'd expect a bump up to around 24 at the very least. In the 15 games Chriss has played 20-plus minutes this season he's averaged 10.1 ppg, 6.2 rpg, 3 apg, 1.2 spg, and 1.6 bpg while shooting 54.1% from the floor on 6.7 attempts. Those 15 games are a big enough sample to hold high hopes in Chriss' production going forward.

It is hard to think of him keeping up those averages (only Anthony Davis, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Bam Adebayo are doing so in the season), more than anything in the steals/blocks categories, but even if those two drop to 0.5 per game each, he'd still be doing something (putting up a line of at least 10-5-3-0.5-0.5) that only 23 players are doing this season, and no one playing under 30 minutes. Consider adding Chriss if only because he won't have many players to fight for playing time at the position so the stats will come no matter what.