Those of you who have read this article all season know the format by now: The Forecaster chart is in the middle of the story, while the last section of narrative shows teams that are rated especially high or especially low on the Player Rater, and categorizes the teams as likely to contain stream or fade candidates. Generally, teams with Forecaster ratings of 8 and above are mined as potential schedule-based streamers, and a few names of interest are chosen.
All of that will still happen in this article, but the lead section has been expanded. Let's look at the glut of streamable talent found on teams with Forecaster ratings of exactly 7 -- the upper middle class, as it were -- of the Forecaster rosters for next week.
It turns out this week there are more teams with a 7 rating than with 8 or higher combined. Also, since the Rater heavily appreciates team scoring efficiency, teams like the Golden State Warriors and Houston Rockets always score extremely high, even though they don't have a lot of obvious stream candidates since so much of the production is concentrated toward the primary players.
But it turns out that there is some good talent that isn't overly owned among the "upper middle class." Let's explore. The teams with 7 ratings this week are: Cleveland Cavaliers, Indiana Pacers, Los Angeles Lakers, Miami Heat, Toronto Raptors and the Utah Jazz. All of them have four games in the week, and here are some streamable candidates:
Bojan Bogdanovic, Indiana Pacers, 66.4 percent available: Bogdanovic is averaging a strong 19.1 points, 4.1 rebounds, 2.7 3-pointers, 1.6 assists and 1.0 steals during his past 10 games, numbers that go beyond merely streamable and into purely pick-up-able.
Larry Nance Jr, Cleveland Cavaliers, 68.7 percent available: Nance has scored double-digit points with at least seven rebounds in three of his past four, and four of his past six games. He's not a sure thing in any given game, but for as long as Kevin Love is out, he projects as a solid producer over a four-game week.
Dwyane Wade, Miami Heat, 50.6 percent available: Wade followed up a throwback 27-point explosion on Tuesday with another 25-point effort on Thursday. The Heat are dealing with injuries to their backcourt, most recently to Tyler Johnson (again), and if Wade's body can handle the stress, he has the opportunity to score some points moving forward.
Pascal Siakam, Toronto Raptors, 96.1 percent available: Siakam has turned in four straight strong games, averaging 14.8 points, 6.0 rebounds, 3.0 assists and 1.6 combined blocks/steals during that stretch.
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.
The week ahead
This is a week when every team except one plays either three (16 teams) or four (13 teams) games, with the Minnesota Timberwolves as the one team to play only twice. As such, most of the teams have moderate scores between 4 and 7 on the Forecaster, with only seven teams outside of that range (three over 7, four under 4).
The Timberwolves, the only team with two games, come in with the minimum score of 1 on the Forecaster. This puts all Timberwolves into the fade category, with Karl-Anthony Towns as likely the only Wolves player who might still get regular play this week.
The Atlanta Hawks, Detroit Pistons and Phoenix Suns all rated 3 on the Forecaster with three games each. There are some impact players in that trio, such as Andre Drummond, Blake Griffin and Devin Booker, but when in doubt you might bench more marginal players from these teams in favor of players who have similar potential but better schedules.
At the other extreme, there are three teams with very high Forecaster scores: the Rockets (Forecaster score of 8), the Denver Nuggets (9) and the Golden State Warriors (10). Above, I already went through some really good stream candidates from the upper middle class. Now, here are a couple to think about from the penthouse teams:
Wilson Chandler, Denver Nuggets (59.0 percent available): Chandler has been starting and playing well for the Nuggets. The elephant in the room is that Paul Millsap is back and likely to eventually retake his starting job, but Millsap came off the bench and played limited minutes in his return, and Chandler likely maintains a solid amount of playing time over the next week.
Trevor Ariza, Houston Rockets (50.5 percent available): Ariza was out for a while and isn't a high impact player even when available. With that said, he can get hot from downtown and he plays enough minutes to rack up garbageman production in the other categories over a four-game period.
