RADIO
The deeper a fantasy league, the harder it is to hit a winner with your last few picks. It is also harder to find decent help from the waiver wire if your late-round picks don't do you justice. If you picked up a few stinkers, don't lose hope just yet. I will try to help you pick up a winner.
Here are my deeper league waiver wire pickups for your fantasy basketball teams. These players should be available in most leagues and they might just help you out, whether it's a few weeks rental or a long-term fix to a problem your team is having.
If a guy on your team is frustrating you with his weak performances, give some of them a go. They might just be worth it.
Cedi Osman (SF/PF, CLE)
8% rostered
Cedi missed a few games from Apr. 14 to Apr. 25 but he came back to the court that latter-day. Starting at SF against the Wiz on Sunday 25th, Osman got to play a ridiculous 37 minutes already, and he then went on to log 38 and 32 in the next two games before getting back to the bench last Friday (checking in at 19 minutes) and then came back to the starting five on Saturday facing Miami for 38 minutes. While not a league winner, Osman is more often than not a good contributor making it work on pure brute force more than efficiency when it comes to fantasy results.
Osman is having a rather bad season when it comes to per-minute production, averaging just 0.79 FP/min (league average at 0.90) but posting a good enough 24 FPG in games he plays 20+ minutes and an even better 28 FPG on those in which he logs 25 or more minutes on the court. You see the correlation. More minutes, more points. Doesn't take a genius.
Cleveland is going nowhere this season, and there is nothing preventing Osman for keeping up his minutes, playing time, and chances, even if he just plays 20 a night. Osman is averaging a tasty 14-3-3-1 line in the last five games spanning a week translating to 30 FPG. He makes most of his damage on the scoring cats, with 14.5 PPG, 2 3PG, and a reasonable 42% shooting from the floor on a healthy 11+ FGA diet. Osman is coming off his second-best game of the year with 42 FP and a 15-7-11-1 dub-dub against Miami last Saturday.
Edmond Sumner (PG/SG, IND)
8% rostered
Sumner wasn't too relevant (if at all) through the first half of the season. While he already played back on Dec. 31 he did for a stupid 2:21 minutes. He strung four starts in the middle of January going for an average 22 MPG, but that was pretty much an outlier-span as he didn't start a single game until Mar. 22 and his average playing time from the season's tipoff to the end of March just amounted to 23 MPG. That all changed at the start of April, though, as Sumner was put in the starting lineup against Charlotte and he's started 16 of the 17 games he's played since then.
Indy has suffered some injuries as the season has grown old, and Sumner has been a joker of sorts starting at three positions from the point to the shooting guard and the small forward spots (this one most recently, in all of his last six games going back to Apr. 19). Sumner's value is (to some extent) tied to Domantas Sabonis' return from injury and his availability ROS, and also to what happens with Jakarr Sampson, as Oshae Brissett has been too good as to lose his current starting role. Sampson hasn't been that good, though, so Sumner should stay on the small-ball starting lineup. That is, in fact, what happened last Saturday with Sumner giving way to Doug McDermott at the starting SF position moving to the SG slot (starting) and also making room for Sabonis to feature at C with Brissett at PF.
Sampson averaged a good 11-2-2 line in April to go with 1.2 stocks per game. That is nothing even remotely close to a mind-boggling baseline, for sure, but Sumner is just finishing 17% of Indiana's possessions while attempting a low 8 FGA. Sumner has improved since he was called to man the SF position in the last six games of April, though, averaging a much healthier 13-3-2-1 while shooting 51% from the floor and posting an impressive 62.3% true shooting. That's because he's hitting 1.3 3PG, and he's reached a sweet 16 points in three of the last four games he's played last month. Not bad for a deep league flier.
Dwayne Bacon (SG, ORL)
4% rostered
Say hi to the poster boy of the "Mo' minutes, mo' points" motto. Bacon's production is completely tied to his minutes on the court, as he's a putrid 0.68 FP/min per-minute player on the year. On the other hand, when Bacon logs 25+ minutes, he's averaging a not-entirely-bad 20+ FPG. Nothing to help you score massive wins on a daily basis, but some points available for free in almost every league right now.
Bacon, if you don't know, plays for the über-bad Orlando Magic. That's important because that's what is helping Bacon play a stupid 30+ minutes per game in the past two weeks of games in which he has started six of eight and topped 30 minutes in seven of them. LOL. Nothing to hate right there, though, as the long runs enabled him to close April putting up a daily 15-3-1-1 line in his last eight games from Apr. 18 on. Bacon hit 10+ points in six of those eight matches (with a high of 23 to kick May off), and that is with a kinda-bad 38% shooting from the floor on a healthy 12+ FGA.
Bacon finished the month coming off the pine on back-to-back games against Cleveland and Memphis, but with Chuma Okeke out banged up, and potentially missing a few more games, odds are Bacon keeps playing good minutes at least for another week, whether those come on starts or playing off the bench. On the second leg of a back-to-back mini-series against Memphis, Bacon came back to start on Saturday when he played 36 minutes and contributed a stuffed 23-2-2-3 shooting 60% from the floor and going 5-for-5 from the charity stripe.
Bryn Forbes (PG/SG, MIL)
3% rostered
Forbes has been Milwaukee's no. 2 point guard all year long, and that 1) won't change ROS and 2) might even improve in the remaining games of the regular season as the Bucks are pretty much locked into their current no. 3 seed out East. Just to close April, and in back-to-back nights of play, Forbes played 29 and 27 minutes starting the latter-day outing against Chicago putting up his first dub-dub to the tune of a 10-13-1-1 line.
Is Forbes going to play to double-double averages going forward? No, sir. That's not Forbes's level of play. But if Forbes gets some good minutes in upcoming games (should be the case) he should be good enough for deep-league managers. Going back to Apr. 9, and looking at games since then in which Forbes logged at least 18 minutes of playing time (nine of them) he's been able to score an impressive 15.6 PPG mark that included a pretty solid 2.8 3PG on just below 11 FGA. That has Forbes averaging a really high 67.4% true shooting on those matches. On Sunday against Brooklyn even on a low 19 minutes of playing time off the pine, he still dropped 12 more points including 3 triples and shooting 57% from the floor with an impressive 80.6% true shooting.
In the same group of games, Forbes has averaged a neat 24 FPG topping that mark in five of the ten matches included in that sample. Forbes has most of his impact on the scoring cats (points, treys, and shooting percentage), though he can definitely pull down rebounds as goods as any guard out there, although that comes with low numbers on dimes and steals. Given Milwaukee's tendencies to rest players, odds are Forbes is a solid play ROS with the Bucks load-managing ahead of the postseason.
Aaron Nesmith (SG/SF, BOS)
1% rostered
Do you manage a fantasy team in a super deep league? Do you find yourself fighting for the chip? Do you need a warm body with multi-position eligibility? And most importantly, can you afford or are willing to take quite a gamble? Then, let me introduce you to Mighty Nesmith, he of the 1% Yahoo rostership.
Nesmith played a season-high 31 and 30 minutes for the C's in the last two games of April after not logging more than 17 minutes in his last 20 games going all the way back to Feb. 23 when he played 22 against Dallas getting a putrid 0-3-0-0-1 line on that match. Ugh. No worries, though, as with Kemba Walker out Boston is even needier than you and Nesmith has been the man to call and force to step up of late. And he hasn't disappointed. Nesmith went back to playing 20 minutes to kick May off against Portland on Sunday, but he was still able to put on a show with 16 points (4 treys) and 4 rebounds shooting 86% from the floor and a stupid 1.143 TS% mark.
A 4-2-0-0-0 player on the season shooting 34% from the floor, Nesmith has ditched those preconceptions and gone for 15 and 16 points in his last two games to close April and 16 more to open May. Not only has he done that, but he's actually posted 15-9-0-3-3 and 16-6-1-1 lines in the first of those three matches, shooting 71% (!) from the floor on 28 FGA in all three games combined. He was so excited about it that he committed five personal fouls in each of those three matches. Now seriously: Nesmith's upside is totally linked to Kemba's availability. The minute he comes back he will start at the point with Smart at guard and a clog of at least four players sharing the secondary guard-spots. But hey, Boston plays three games this week and closes the season with a four-game week so there's that.
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