I just had to have one of the toughest imaginary talks of my fantasy career.
I handed Draymond Green his unconditional release. Sent him to the wire. One of my favorite fantasy players of the past 10 years: gone.
Because in Fantasyland ... the month of March has no truck for the sentimental. And James Johnson is almost always available.
Points or categories. Head-to-head or rotisserie. No matter your format, all of us are down to a six-week sample size, 24 or 25 regular-season games. Our job: play within the margins, put in the extra work to squeeze every available stat out of our box scores.
And just like in actual basketball, closing out a championship is all about momentum. Hitting the correct timing. Catching the crest of a player's statistical wave.
Fantasy momentum arrives in myriad forms. You could hit the jackpot on the waiver wire. A young player you've patiently hung on to all season could make the jump. One or more of your players could suddenly catch fire from the field.
Last week, I talked about heating-up 1+1+1 players. Risers who offer a conflagration of the three key low-volume counting stats (steals, blocks, 3s). Today, I want to discuss the other end of the valuation pool: percentages. Hot and cold shooting.
Streakiness from the field balances out over the course of an 82-game campaign. But within our abbreviated amount of remaining games, hot or cold shooting could make the difference between winning and losing.
How to best quantify shooting efficiency in fantasy? By leaving the traditional percentage categories -- FG% and FT% -- behind. Because fantasy shooting performance is best considered in the aggregate. (And that's why this discussion applies to points leaguers as well as category leaguers.)
Three-point percentage, 2-point percentage, free throw percentage. In fantasy ... all three are connected. No percentage exists in a vacuum. A good field goal percentage can be canceled out by a bad free throw percentage. You want players who lift you up across the board.
You want impact true shooting percentage (TS%).
We discussed TS% earlier this season: the stat that folds 2-pointers, 3-pointers and free throws into one convenient metric. But it's worth revisiting now to see which players are heating up (and cooling down) entering the final stage of the season.
Ideally, you want high-shot-volume shooters with a rising true shooting percentage. But we're plumbing for the ultimate: peaking high-shot-volume, high TS% players who are delivering that rising production with consistency.
Consistency is key because you want players you can count on in crunch time. It's good to have high TS% players ... but it's important to identify which players can run hot and cold on a game-to-game basis. Especially if you're in a playoff format.
Because as crazy as it sounds, you may need to bench a big name in certain high-leverage situations. Say you've built up a lead in your matchup's counting stats, but you are in a dogfight in the percentages. In that spot, consider benching a historically streaky shooter to preserve your percentages.
(For purposes of this discussion, stats are over the past 30 days. A 12-13 game sample size.)
Big names on fire
(Players rostered in nearly all leagues who currently bundle a high TS% with a high volume of shot attempts)
No shockers on this list. If you follow fantasy closely, you already know that these players are building all kinds of momentum. Jokic is coming off one the great across-the-board months in recent fantasy history: 25.2 points, 9.8 rebounds, 7.8 assists, 1.1 3s, 1.8 steals, 1.2 blocks with a 67.7 TS%. Only Harden has been arguably better: 31.9 points, 7.3 rebounds, 7.4 assists, 4.5 3s, 1.8 steals, 1.0 blocks with a 64.5 TS%.
And while it's nice to know Gobert and Whiteside are boosting our efficiency, their performances are missing a key ingredient: 3-point production. We'll gladly take their blocks per game in return, but their TS% aren't as eye-popping without the 3s.
That's why efficient stretch bigs like Collins, Jokic and Porzingis are such a premium fantasy commodity. They're giving you out-of-position production (in 3s) while boosting your TS% in the same vein as traditional bigs,
One area where impact non-3-point shooters tend to excel: consistency. The lack of shooting range by non-stretch bigs may not give us any 3s, but they do deliver less variance. To give you an idea of which hot-shooting big names are producing consistently, here's a list:
Steady big names
(Players rostered in nearly all leagues who currently bundle a high TS% with a high volume of shot attempts and low game-to-game variance.)
Gobert is the steadiest shooter in fantasy by far. Gobert's rate of field goal and free throw attempts is shockingly uniform.
Barnes is especially valuable because of his consistent 3-point production. Historically, he has been streaky, but he's been surprisingly consistent over the past month. I normally stay away from Barnes because he's an empty points player, but lately, he's added some decent supporting stats (4.0 RPG, 3.0 APG, 0.6 SPG + BPG).
Collins is especially valuable because of his stretch-big status. The fact that he's shooting so efficiently and consistently pushes his current run into heroic territory.
When it comes to CP3, this is just another laudable aspect of his bounceback campaign.
(A brief public service announcement: Somehow, Christian Wood is available in 14.5% of ESPN leagues. I'm assuming that must mean 14.5% of ESPN leagues are currently having wi-fi issues. But if Christian Wood is still available in your league, find a more competitive league.)
OK. Let's get into some players who still might be on your wire. These are some names I've been mentioning with greater frequency as of late. Names to keep a close eye on for the stretch run. The reason: These are the kinds of rising waiver wire players who usually need only a few more touches per game to make a sizeable fantasy impact.
Heating up and available
(Players who are rostered in less than 90% of leagues and have a rising TS% and low game-to-game variance)
Production for these players tends to become self-fulfilling fantasy prophecies. Because the better they shoot, the more playing time they'll get over the next six weeks.
Another trait some of these players have in common: They're role players on playoff teams. Meaning that as teams lock in their playoff positions, some of these players could log an increase in minutes over the last couple of weeks of the season. Players like Duncan Robinson, Landry Shamet, Derrick Jones Jr., Ben McLemore and Seth Curry could be in line for an endgame boost -- just when your team needs it the most.
