Furkan Korkmaz (SG, PHI): Week 18 Waiver Wire Pickups

BALLER MOVE: Add In 14-Team Leagues

OWNED IN: 10% of leagues

ANALYSIS: That heat you feel? It's the Furkan Korkmaz Fever catching up with you. If you don't know much about Korkmaz, I won't blame you. It's only been a week, after all, but what a seven-day run for the last Turkish sensation before reaching the All-Star break. Philly made Korkmaz its 26th pick all the back in the 2016 draft, and he's played three seasons (116 total games) for the Sixers already but never to great success. That's why his recent exploits have seemed to catch everybody by surprise.

All of a sudden and in back-to-back games against Memphis and Chicago, Korkmaz uncorked his talents and dropped 34 and 31 points on those two teams respectively. He didn't even need more than 32 minutes in either of those games, shot 76.5 and 70.6 percent from the floor, scored 7 and 6 triples, and paired those scoring outings with 11 rebounds, 6 assists, 3 steals and a block combined through those matches. While Korkmaz had shown some talent earlier in the season--he had a five-game run of scoring at least 10 points with 3+ triples in mid-January--he reached his peak a few days ago.

I won't try to convince of you picking Korkmaz up from waivers expecting those numbers to stay up. Far from it. Korkmaz is a bench player averaging 21.3 mpg on the season and a 10-2-1 line in his 54 games so far this year. That's why we see him as a useful addition in deeper leagues more than in shallow ones. Philadelphia is hurting for help and looks worse on the court than on paper, which means they'll need every single drop of talent they can squeeze from everybody in their roster to make a deep run this season. Enter Korkmaz. He might not play heavy minutes and stay limited in his role, but when he's out he's shown scoring prowess and has very nice shooting percentages from the floor and three-point range (his 57.2 True Shooting percentage is the third-best among players average fewer than 22 mpg and shooting more than 7.5 field goals per game).