Welcome to the 20th and final week of the regular season in ESPN standard leagues. For those clawing and contending for the final playoff spot in weekly head-to-head formats, it's time to adopt that Memphis mentality and grit-and-grind your way to a berth. The Grizzlies are known to pull out games thanks to a blend of skill and hustle, with the latter often proving most prominent. Instead of smacking the floor like Tony Allen, hustling for fantasy managers means maximizing matchups and, perhaps most importantly, getting as many minutes-played from your roster this coming week as possible.
If you've already made the playoffs and can almost treat this next week as a bye, it's wise to speculate for upside on the waiver wire. The Mavericks' Seth Curry, for example, remains available in more than 40 percent of ESPN leagues despite ranking second on the Player Rater among point guards and tops among shooting guards over the past seven days. That's right, Stephen Curry's brother rates ahead of Giannis Antetokounmpo and James Harden over this small, but impressive, recent sample. Even as Dallas plays just three games in the week ahead, Curry is of impressive utility, given the team plays Brooklyn and Phoenix -- arguably the two best matchups for fantasy purposes in the league at this point.
Simply sifting through the Player Rater's backcourt metrics over the past week, Milwaukee's Malcolm Brogdon and Houston's Patrick Beverley are two other guards I'm eyeing as influential acquisitions in fantasy free agency (both remain available in a significant portion of ESPN leagues). Looking into frontcourt fantasy free agents of interest for the stretch run, the 76ers' Robert Covington -- available in more than 35 percent of leagues -- is earning an awesome mix of minutes, shots and defensive production on a depleted Philly roster that relies on his offense at this stage. Covington is first on the Player Rater among power forwards over the past seven days. Fellow Philly forward Richaun Holmes rates fourth among fours over the past week, thanks to 11 blocks over his past four games. Among centers, it's time to invest in the Hornets' Frank Kaminsky; "The Tank" is sixth among centers over the past week and has become a steady source of scoring and steals over the past month.
Leveraging these revealing seven- and 15-day samples on the Player Rater as profitable plays from free agency is simply another approach to earning an edge over the competition. Treating this crucial last week of the regular campaign with playoff implications, we've compiled an alliterative analysis of the week ahead.
Minutes
This week's ratings table and Joe Kaiser's seasonal grid are key resources in preparation for this decisive week ahead. As those of us in head-to-head formats have experienced throughout the long season, winning or losing a given week often comes down to just a handful of specific stats. A block here or a board there can prove pivotal in deciding a close matchup. For the playoffs, I try to get in as many games from my roster, which requires a little planning for such foresight. We have short benches in standard ESPN leagues, thus we'll need to churn out games from free agency. Mapping out the right waiver moves, especially in leagues with transaction limits, is the key variable.
Referencing Kaiser's grid, the week ahead is a particularly dense portion of the schedule; only six teams play three games this coming week, with 23 playing four games from Monday to Sunday. That leaves one team, the Portland Trail Blazers, playing five games. Struggling teams often come out of the All-Star breaks with some new rotational patters, so it's interesting to note Portland's Maurice Harkless has averaged 36.4 minutes per game since the break, leading to 1.3 blocks, 1 steal and 1 3-pointer made per game over this successful stint.
Harkless is available in nearly 70 percent of leagues, while big man Jusuf Nurkic is rostered in just over half of ESPN leagues. Nurkic has averaged 32.1 minutes, 14.3 points, 8.8 boards, two blocks and 1.5 steals since the break, and as you'll learn below, he's among the elite in opportunities for rebounds over this recent sample. Cutting a player from a team with three games this week and adding a meaningful contributor from the Blazers can net a manager 60 or so minutes. It really does often come down to maximizing opportunity for production -- which are naturally fueled by minutes.
Matchups
On those busy slates with at least eight games played, we have more players available to deploy than the finite number of starting slots. There are clearly a number of must-start assets we inherently use each night, but in our utility spots and at our deeper positional depth charts we must differentiate some close calls. In these cases, I like to employ DFS research as my primary tool, as matchup factors prove so prominent in our daily hoops content and on quality data models such as Fantasy Labs.
It makes sense that a one-day marketplace produces actionable information for our interests when playing in weekly leagues. As far as our ratings system in the table you can access below, in addition to the Blazers' perfect "10" rating, Denver has an appealing series of matchups with two games against the Kings. The Wizards are also in a great spot to produce this week thanks to a stretch of up-tempo meetings on a western road swing.
Access the downloadable forecaster chart PDF here
Matchup ratings are based upon a scale from 1 (poor matchup) to 10 (excellent matchup). These are calculated using a formula that evaluates the team's year-to-date and past 10 games' statistics, their opponents' numbers in those categories and their performance in home/road games depending on where the game is to be played. The column to the left lists the team's total number of games scheduled as well as home games, and lists the overall rating from 1-10 for that team's weekly schedule.
