Every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, we pose a question to a panel of ESPN fantasy basketball experts to gauge their thoughts on a hot topic.
Today's contributors are ESPN Fantasy's Joe Kaiser, Jim McCormick and Kyle Soppe.
For our fantasy basketball managers who are going to be proactive during the holidays, name a player you recommend acquiring in a trade now because you expect his value to heat up as the season rolls into January.
Kyle Soppe: I'm playing the public and taking this opportunity to get Lonzo Ball on my roster. Based on the circus that follows him, everyone is aware of his production more so than they are most players, thus skewing how good or bad he is actually playing.
He currently ranks 90th on our per-game Player Rater (26th among point guards), a ranking that well undershoots where I think he stands the rest of the way ... and that is without your trade partner overreacting to some of the early season struggles.
The floor on Ball is a high one, given his versatility (at least five rebounds and five assists in six straight games along with averaging 2.8 blocks-plus-steals in December), and his shooting percentage is looking less like a batting average these days.
The Lakers are fully committed to the Lonzo Ball experience (they lead the league in pace of play), and as the rookie continues to gain comfort, it wouldn't surprise me at all to see him flirting with a 15-9-7 type of stat line sooner than later.
Jim McCormick: It's Chris-mas time, as in you should spend the next few weeks pursuing Chris Paul in a celebration of cerebral point guard play.
I understand Paul's managers won't part with him willingly, and it will require a considerable offer to acquire the "Point God," but I also believe he should be treated as a top-five fantasy commodity in any categories format (he loses some luster in points leagues that don't celebrate the nuance of his game).
Consider Paul is leading the NBA with a ridiculous offensive rating of 132 points per 100 possessions while on the floor. He's also fourth on the Player Rater over the past 15 days and is sixth overall by averages.
I don't think (though maybe I'm wrong) that most fantasy managers still consider Paul a high-end, first-round-caliber commodity. With incredible utility in assists, 3-pointers, clean shooting numbers and elite steal results on what is an historically efficient Houston offense (league-best 117.2 offensive rating the past 10 games), I think you should bear any durability risks and aggressively pursue shares of Paul.
Joe Kaiser: The player I'd strongly consider going after is Ball. His game is quickly improving, aside from his shooting, but as his confidence grows, even his scoring and shooting could take a step up.
And let's talk about that confidence for a second, because it's so vital to his value on the court. When Ball is believing in himself and being aggressive on the court, everything opens up for him. He becomes not only a passer, rebounder and capable steals and blocks threat on the defensive end, he becomes a slasher who can penetrate the lane and get the easy bucket.
We are already seeing coach Luke Walton using Ball more in crunch time than he did earlier in the season, when the rookie often sat in the fourth quarter and critical stretches of the game, and all these things make Ball an excellent player to go after in a trade.
