NBA Fantasy Basketball: Post-Deadline Breakouts You NEED to Watch | Late-Season Risers

NBA Fantasy Basketball: Post-Deadline Breakouts You NEED to Watch | Late-Season Risers

Let’s talk about players who really burnt into our memories, put up big numbers in the fantasy playoffs at the second half of the season after the trade deadline. Does it mean anything? Michael Bolton. Thanks, Josh. It’s Michael Bolton here and it’s time for another episode of the Locked On Fantasy Basketball Podcast. Let’s get to it. Let’s get to it. Indeed. You are Locked on Fantasy, your daily NBA fantasy podcast, part of the Locked On podcast network, your team every day. Hello and welcome to the Locked On Fantasy Basketball Podcast, brought to you by Basketball Monster. My name is Josh Lloyd and I’m so fresh and so clean. I’m also the lead fantasy analyst at basketball.com and today’s episode is brought to you by Fanul. Right now, new customers can get $150 in bonus bets when your first $5 bet wins. Thank you also for making Lockdown Fantasy Basketball your first listen every day. We are free and we are available on all platforms. So this is a show again that I have pre-recorded. I’m recording this on the 3rd of July. Uh is going out about 2 weeks after that. The data that I present here doesn’t change. Maybe some of the analysis could slightly change depending on what on what happens. And there are a couple players we’re going to talk about in today’s show that currently sit as restricted free agents. I just expect they’re back on their teams, but I don’t know. But what we’re more trying to highlight is how big things can change from first half to second half. And again, I want everybody to understand that as a general rule, you put skepticism, you put skepticism onto performances in March and April, which is the majority of the second half. So we’re doing trade deadline as the cutoff. So there is some time in February. Remember the trade deadline was the 8th of February. So obviously there’s 20 more days of February, but there are I think seven or eight days in the middle of that where it’s the all-star break. So, nobody’s playing and you have this very weird sort of period of time leading up to the All-Star break where players and teams are being a little bit cautious about things and then you got that period after the All-Star break which is relatively serious in terms of the way that teams are approaching things. But then March and April, the numbers are all out of whack for numerous reasons. It could be that the team that you’re playing for is very high up in the standings. Therefore, when you’re high up in the stands, I might as well just put the little the little sheet across here so we can see it on National Gummy Worm Day. I might have already done that. That’s might be that you might be playing on a good team. You might be playing on Boston or Cleveland or Oklahoma City so we can pull minutes back a little bit. We can rest guys at certain times. We can make sure we preserve them for the playoffs. You might be on a really bad team and players ahead of you on the depth chart or even two players ahead of you on the depth chart have been injured, traded away, fake injured, whatever’s happened and they’re not there or their minutes have been reduced and your minutes have been risen or it’s a back and forward scenario. That happens too. You might say, “But Josh, what about the teams that are fighting for playoff seating in the four through 10 range? They’re trying to get into the play. Those teams are being serious, right?” Well, yeah, they are in terms of their lineups are more consistent. They’re they’re they they’re trying to win these games and the other teams are more about either trying to accumulate losses for lottery balls or preserving their players or sometimes there’s a mix of both. But the teams in the middle, they still have to play those other teams. They have to play the bad teams. Meaning that it is easier to put up those numbers against the bad teams. They have to play the good teams who aren’t taking it as seriously, who aren’t game planning as much, who are deciding they’re going to rest guys. So, yeah, if there’s a game between the team that’s eighth and ninth, the results from that game, they’re pretty useful, right? In terms of looking at the stats and how does this make sense, but there are so many teams that are out of it that are shutting guys down. There are so many teams that are in more preservation mode and have got buffers and they’re stand care if we’re the five or the six seed. Not really. we want to make sure this guy’s healthy. So, as a general rule, and the studies have been done on this a lot, is that you get more correlation by looking at season long numbers through to the next season versus what was the last thing you saw either post allstar break or post trade deadline, especially for younger guys. But you’re correlating that into the next season. But of course, there are individual circumstances to all of these. So, I’m going to go through the top 14 risers excluding two names. Moses Brown and Brandon Williams. Guys who did didn’t play at all. Brown came in and played like a small little stint uh before his contract expired and Brandon Williams put up really good numbers and they had the two biggest rises out of anybody from pre- deadline to post deadline. But Brown doesn’t even have a team and Williams is in a completely different scenario that it doesn’t really mean that much. I didn’t want to focus too much on him. Let’s talk about the biggest riser after that though. it was Quentyn Grimes. Now, he is one of the players that I don’t know where he’s going to play because he’s currently a restricted free agent. I imagine he’s back in Philadelphia. But what I also imagine is that the stuff that Grimes did in that second half of the season, and you can see that um you see it in a second, it comes up on the screen how well he actually produced in the second half of the season was ridiculous. The numbers that he put up, he averaged 22 points a game with four and a half assists, three threes. He had one and a half steals. He played 34 minutes. He was the 46th ranked player. He was traded from Dallas to Philadelphia. So that’s all Philadelphia, the 46th ranked player. But of course, Paul George missed a lot of that time. Tyres Maxi missed a lot of that time. Joel Embiid missed most of that time. Kelly Ubé missed chunks of that time. So all of this stuff that’s happened with Grimes, it’s a big step forward. We know how good he was. I think we all know this, but this has just got no reality. He played on a terrible team. They played a lot of bad teams. His role was completely inflated. So, it was great to see that he was able to do it, but the reality of that is it’s just not a thing that’s going to keep going. We could also say the same thing about the next guy, Kyle Filipowski, who I do like. I like him as a fantasy player. I like him as a real life player to a degree, but Philipowski in the second half of the season, he only played 25 minutes a night. It’s not like he started playing 33, but he wasn’t really even getting those minutes to begin with. What we saw was a big usage bump. He averaged 14-8 with 2.1 assists. He shot 51 from the field. They’re pretty good numbers. He rose from nowhere, the 288th ranked player to 109th. But of course, as things currently sit, the Jazz’s front court is weird. There’s Kessle, there’s Nerkage, there’s Markin, there’s Bailey, there’s Collins, there’s the return of Taylor Hendris. Can we even expect like in Philipki got 21 minutes for the entirety of the season? Can we even can we expect that he gets those 25 that he got post deadline? Don’t think so. Why would we expect that? I mean, he could, but also, even if he did get those minutes, will he be playing without other usage guys the way that lasted? Now, Sexton’s gone, obviously, and Clarkson’s gone, and things are a little bit different, but it’s another one of those ones where we use Kyle Filipasowski. We liked what he did, but is there a carryover there? Not really. Same with Stfon Castle, and I know that you will call me a Stfan Castle hater. That’s okay. I I understand that. I I don’t value him as highly as others. He was pretty good down the stretch. There’s no debating that. played um yeah he still only played 28 minutes a night which is you know still not much for the guy that won rookie of the year. He averaged 18 five and five or close enough to five and five. He had one steel game. He shot 45 and 73 including under 30% from three. So still bad numbers. He was the 120th ranked player in that post trade deadline stretch and now he has to deal with Victor Women who played like five games in that period. He’s got to play with Darren Fox who played what eight or 10 or something. He’s got to play with Dylan Harper. He’s Is he going to start? Is he going to even exceed those 28 minutes? I expect that he improves as a shooter. But the usage that he had down the stretch there, which was 29%, I’ll give you the real hot tip now. Zero shot. No way that is happening. It’s just not going to happen. So even with 29 usage, he was 120th. He will get drafted highly. He’ll get drafted like in that 80s I think and I think it’s going to be a disaster pick but you know he was at one he was one of the biggest risers from 275th to 120th and it is worthy of us talking about it. I’ll just quickly mention Kawhai Leonard because we know that he didn’t start his season until January. We know that he did start he played it back to back in the second half of the season. Kawawaii is a very different story to these other guys because Kawawaii is Kawai. So again, that’s why context is always important because Kawawaii was the 20th ranked player after the All-Star break or after the trade deadline. He averaged 24, six, and three and a half with two steals shooting 51 and 83 in 36 minutes. He was just Kawaii. Before that, he wasn’t. He played he was 135th ranked player. Now, it’s very possible that Kawhai’s a top 15 player, top 10 player per game for next season. I won’t be drafting him anywhere inside the top three rounds because I do not trust the knee at all. I don’t trust him getting through the season. And I hope he does, but I don’t trust it. But we just saw him being back to being Kai. Not fully back to being quiet cuz back to being Kai’s top eight player, top seven player. He was 20th, but he was great in that period. Keshan George for the Washington Wizards had some moments early in the season. Then they did trade away Kyle Kosma and then they had situations where Middleton came in and didn’t play and Maka Smart was there and didn’t play and Marvin Baggley was gone and they just started giving more minutes to Keshan George and as you’d expect a rookie on a bad team was able to jump up. He averaged only 10 and a half points but two threes, five rebounds, three assists, a block and 1.3 steals and he shot really poorly. I expect that his shooting does go up, but I am also not convinced that he’s going to be a 28 minute a night player from the from the leap. He had 18% usage. He was 118th ranked player. He jumped over 100 spots. But Alex Sar is going to be also in year two. We know that they drafted Trey Johnson. CJ McCullum and Chris Middleton are there. So is Marcus Smart at the time of me recording this. There is Yeah. versus like Quinton Grimes and some of them Steph Castle. It is possible that George maintains 28 minutes a night improves his shooting is actually better than 118th but there are other names in the mix. There are other players there now that will have an impact on George full season. I still think you should be looking at him as a starter and probably playing more minutes than this. So it’s again it’s context. Does he have a shot of maintaining those numbers but actually improving? Sure. But we still have to look at that team was very up and down. They were they were and the other part of it they were also limiting his minutes and games played. So he actually could have had a better post deadline run but he didn’t get sort of let go and unleashed to that degree. So he sort of falls into a different pool versus some of the other guys. Got some more guys we’re going to come back and talk about but he keen George obviously one of the bigger risers there. Today’s episode brought to you by Fanel when summer sports in full swing. It might be baseball, might be NASCAR, might be soccer, might be golf, might be WNBA. It’s all in full swing at the moment. So, FanDuel is the best way to make all of that action more exciting. You can follow the action. Well, you already are, but now you’ve got your knowledge that you put to the test. You put it there on same game parlays, on live bets, on spreads, on totals, all of that stuff is there on FanDuel. And it is a great way to track your favorite matchups and again just show what you’re able to do. You might want to be putting on um parlays of who’s going to hit a home run. Yeah, not the greatest idea, but you can do it. you do live same game betting on um WNBA games and check the spread and look at the totals and and put the futures on for the upcoming NBA season. It’s all there on FanDuel. And if you are a new customer to Fanul, well, you can bet five bucks and get $150 in bonus bets if your first bet wins. Open the FanDuel app today or visit fanul.com to get started. All right, let’s go through some more of these players who did take some big steps forward in the second half of the season. Um, Aaron Gordon’s an interesting one because I think your immediate reaction would be, “Yeah, but he didn’t really play that much post trade deadline.” And I I understand that thinking, but that’s not it’s not really true. He did have multiple calf injuries obviously, then a hamstring injury in the playoffs, and that’s a real concern. But somehow Aaron Gordon was able to put together an unbelievable run post trade deadline. He played 22 games. He only played 30 minutes a night. But it’s also one of these things, and I didn’t even mention this at the start and I should have, is that these games, we’re talking like 30 games, 34 games or whatever it is post trade deadline that happens, right? It’s a third of a season. It’s not half a season, it’s third of a season. Shooting numbers in that sample can be 10 percentage points more than expectation, 15 sometimes. And we know how big influence those things are. So while Aaron Gordon was 81st post deadline, he was 180th pre- deadline. How? He shot 47% from three. He went 55 from the field, 82 from the line. He averaged 185 and three and a half. Still no steals and blocks, but basically just every shot went in. Like he just hit every three. He hit his twos and he now hits free throws apparently. So for the season like his numbers are great. 44% overall, 53%. This is basically he played 51 games total. So, it’s a little bit less than half of his overall season that it enabled him to put up these good numbers, but I’m I’m not going to believe that Aaron Gordon is this level of shooter. Remember, so we’re putting this in like the Nuggets. They were fighting for seeding obviously, but they they played bad they played bad teams. They played teams resting guys also. So, there’s those two factors. Plus, Aaron Gordon shot what you could say was maybe 15 percentage points better than usual over from three. Even if you count him as a 38% shooter, he was still like 8 n percentage points higher and they’re just numbers that aren’t realistic for him to hold. And when that comes down, your field goals come down, your scoring comes down, your three-pointers come down. Now, he could play more minutes easily. But there are things there again that we just have to look at that and go, if you had Aaron Gordon, you would have loved what he was doing. And if you just do simple searches and filters to check what happened post trade deadline, you’ll look at the numbers and go, unbelievable. And you’ll get excited. And then we get into a different sort of player, Assar Thompson. Because the beginning of the season for Assar Thompson, he was on this minute restriction due to his blood clot. And then he was on a miniature restriction in the second half of the season due to JB Big Staff who kept telling us he was on a blood a minion due to the blood clots, but it wasn’t. He was on a ministry because he didn’t want to play, right? And I’ve been on that rant a million times. Assar was someone who did struggle early in the season. Couldn’t really find his rhythm. Took a while for him to get back and play. He played 30 games post deadline and played only 25 minutes a game, but he was the 100th ranked player in that time, up from 193rd. He averaged 12 points, five rebounds, and three assists with a block and 1.7 steals and shot 56 from the field, including 24 from three. He was bad on his free throws. We could look at these numbers from Thompson and with Detroit losing Malik Beasley, Tim Hardaway. Yeah, there are opportunities there for other players. Although Jaden Ivy will return, Tobias Harris is still there. But you would expect that Thompson will be locked in as a starter, I guess, or could be Duncan Robinson. He you I would guess that he would start, but remember the only times he really ramped up were games that Tobias Harris was out. But still, I think it’s a fair bet to suggest that we get more even than the 25 minutes night he played post trade deadline. But someone could easily make the argument the other way around that the way that he was weirdly limited in the playoffs might suggest otherwise. So again, we can look at this and look at the trajectory of Assar and go, “Okay, well that’s great. We’ve got some good stuff coming, but maybe not. It is possible that he stays the 25minute guy and we get Holland, we get Robinson, we get Ivy, we get Harris, all cutting into that. I have to mention Naji Marshall because he was a great option down the stretch when the Mavs had no Kyrie Irving, no Anthony Davis, no Derek Lively, no Daniel Gaffford, and now they’re going to have Cooper Flag and Anthony Davis. They still won’t have Kyrie, but they got D’Angelo Russell. Marshall’s going to come off the bench without any question. He played point guard down the stretch and he was a useful player for big periods of time. But of course, like these this is the the ultimate and the easy to recognize one that makes who cares. He played 32 minutes a night post trade deadline. He was the 94th ranked player. He was 187th before that. We wouldn’t even consider him in a 14 team league. It was one of it’s the clearest example there of taking advantage of a team completely chucked up in the air due to many injuries and him filling a role that he has no shot of filling. As we move forward, I found it interesting that Don Sharp is on this list. Now, Sharp was a restricted free agent. They took away his qualifying offer, but then they resigned him. Now, I am recording this on July the 3rd, so I don’t know if Brooklyn’s made any moves. Obviously, they drafted Danny Wolf. I don’t know if Nick Claxton’s still there, or is Sharp just going to still be the backup. He did this though, playing only 19 minutes a game in 21 games. He averaged eight and seven with 1.2 blocks on 54%, 73 from the line. These aren’t spectacular numbers, but his beginning of the season was so poor that he was able to be really useful in that second half of the season. We all know that if Dron Sharp found a 26-minute a night roll, we’d be drafting him probably in round six. But again, we talk about the production cuz it’s not it’s not only his minutes. He played 19. That’s not a huge amount. But it’s the level of competition from his teammates or their level of play plus the level of competition of the opponents where they go, “We’re playing Brooklyn.” Like do we actually are we actually trying here? Lots more garbage time in those games enable permanent rates to jump up quite a bit as well. Faster pace at times too. So like he was good. He was 108 in 19 minutes. So you might be tempted to go, well he’s the backup again. He’ll play 19 minutes. Should I just draft him? I I I would like to see that happen not in the clown portion of the season, which is exactly when it did happen. Who else have we got here? We’ve got probably the guy that you weigh into here and I think I’m probably going to put him on the thumbnail and that’s Josh Giddy because Giddy was out of all of these players we’re going to we’re talking about here the guy that ranked the highest in the post trade deadline period. He was 10th post trade deadline. He was undoubtedly fantastic. Now like Quinton Grimes, me recording this right now, he’s currently a restricted free agent and there’s been no real movement. Are the Bulls going to sign him? What’s going to I don’t know what’s going to happen. He was 85th before the trade deadline. He was 10th after it. So what changed? The obvious thing, the surface thing is you will say Zack Lavine was traded. 100% true. Zack Lavine was traded and that did help Josh Giddy. What else happened? Vu was injured for a period. Lonzo B was out and barely played at all. In fact, let’s just check how much Lonzo did play. Lonzo played five games uh after the trade deadline. Vu played 22, so about 2/3 of the games. Um, Iodumu played five games post trade deadline. Um, you obviously had no Zack Lavine there as well. And Giddy was able to just run the show. And when Josh Giddy runs the show, he will put up numbers. There is really no doubt about that. He will put up numbers. He will put up triple doubles. He played 33 minutes a night. The early part of the season, he was getting benched in fourth quarters because his lack of defense and the shooting. And much like when we go back to what Aaron Gordon did, there’s just stuff that he did that’s not just Zack Lavine was gone. And that is why I have the skepticism about Giddy. His usage was at 24. It is entirely possible that Giddy can hold a 24 usage all season. So 24 usage, right? It’s not sky-high. His season usage was 22.7. It’s not sky-high. So he didn’t get this huge huge usage bump which would be something we could look at and say well that’ll hold because it’ll be him and Kobe White with no Lonzo the addition of Isaac and Noah Essen no Lavine like the usage can hold it he might even push to 25 but that’s not what happened that’s not the answer right that’s not why he was able to be as good as he was and you know what’s you know what’s coming he shot 45% on threes now Josh Giddy is an improved three point shooter, but what’s your expectation? 37%, 38. So, just let’s just drop that all the way down, right? Let’s drop that seven percentage points down. You lose points, you lose threes, you lose field goal percentage. His two-point numbers were relatively steady, 51%. That’s okay. He also blocked a shot a game, which I don’t know. I don’t know about you, I don’t really look at Josh Giddy as being this elite level shot blocker. Do I think that Josh Giddy is a very strong passer? Obviously, yes. like he is a very very good passer. Like there’s no question about that. But this man blocked 6.6.4.4 blocks in his four seasons. At post trade deadline, he averaged a block. It’s a big jump. It’s like a 67% increase. The rebounds also went through the roof. He he averaged 9.9 in that 33 minutes, which is a higher rebound rate. Now, will he continue to do that? Lavine wasn’t a rebound guy. Will the rebound rate hold? Was Vu being there twothirds of the time in factor? I don’t know. There’s just a lot about what Giddy did that yes, they’ve cleared the decks a little bit. So, his minutes will be fine. His minutes will be up. His usage will be up. He will be better than he was overall for the season. But unless you’re buying a 45% shooting run plus 10 rebounds and a block, he’s not this player. And the Bulls, a clear idiot franchise, they were playing against a bunch of teams that did not care. And yeah, you can easily cherrypick games where Giddy played against good teams, against teams that were trying to put up good numbers. It’s easy to do that. But we’re talking about the totality because you can have good and bad games. And if you’re playing the majority of your games against teams that aren’t trying, right, that they’re not putting their full effort into it, your stats can will almost certainly will be inflated. So, I’m not hating on Giddy. I’m not going to tell you he’s not draftable. I’m not going to tell you any of those things. All I’m going to tell you is that those numbers, the time of the year that they happened, the way that they happened, the shooting that led to these numbers is not going to hold. It’s not real and it’s not going to stick at those levels. Today’s episode is brought to you by Hungry Root. Planning for meals and grocery shopping can be overwhelming. Busy schedules, picky eaters, trying to eat healthy, it’s a lot of stuff that you got to do. And that’s why Hungry Root is going to be something that you love. It takes the stress out of planning. by filling your cart with personalized groceries and meal options based on what you like and what you need. They got their smart cart technology to recommend groceries, recipes, and even supplements that are tailored to your preferences. You might be dairy free or gluten-free looking at your gut health or just trying to eat better. Hungry Root has got you covered. One of the best things that you don’t waste time at the grocery store trying to find all the stuff and go, “What do I need here? How do I plan this?” Hungry does all that for you. It’s a great way to stick to your nutritional goals as well. So, take advantage of this exclusive offer for a limited time. Get 40% off your first box plus a free item in every box for life. Go to hungryroot.com/lockonba and use the code lockdown onmbba. That is hungry.com/lockba. The code is locked on NBA to get 40% off your first box and a free item of your choice for life just like the nwo. Okay, so who else is on my list here of improvers? Brandon Pajki. We were gas lit. We weren’t cuz we knew it wasn’t true. But the Warriors were talented. He was going to take 10 threes a game. It was just literally never going to happen. He lost his starting spot. In the end, he got it back in the second half of the season after the Jimmy Butler trade. And he was really strong. I It is an important time for Pajki. It’s year three coming up. I would imagine that he comes in alongside Steph and Jimmy and Draymond as starters. Don’t add no resolution at this point to the John Don Kaminga news, so I don’t know. But also remember in this period of time, John Kaminga was out for most of his part with the Warriors. He might still be out. He might not be on the Warriors next season at all. But they also might bring him back or he might be signed and traded. And he got a full season of Butler. But again, most of the stuff that Pajki did was with Butler there. He went from 186 to 112. So he was fine. He averaged in this time frame 15 points in 30 minutes with two and a half threes. He shot 41% from three. So there’s scope for that to pull back. He averaged four assists and six rebounds. Like they’re pretty good numbers. They’re not elite numbers. PJsky again. And this is a scenario where we’re looking at the numbers post deadline where some things can still go wrong from there and he still wasn’t awesome. So while we did use him and he was better, there’s no guarantee that that’s something that’s able to hold all the way through. We’re going to talk about one of his teammates in a sec as well. Let’s go up to Toronto. Emanuel Quickley was someone that was incredibly disappointing all season. um multiple injuries early on. So when he missed time, he had rust when he came back, he had minutes restrictions, he struggled. And then down the end, we got the Toronto Raptors in and out uh plant, which you know, you sit one game, you play the next one. He played 21 of the games post trade deadline. He averaged though in just 29 minutes in that time. We saw the improvements come. Now, he was 109th overall in category leagues and 93rd in points. Overall, I don’t think the season was a complete disaster, but he was 90th post trade deadline in 29 minutes. Now, the Raptors were a team that definitely fudged everything they were doing. They were trying to lose as deliberately as possible, and they played a million bad teams. So, they couldn’t even lose as much as they wanted to cuz they somehow had the schedule where they played every bad team, and they just couldn’t lose. Quickly averaged 18, four, and six. He shot 38 from three. He hit three threes a game. He had 25 usage. Now, it’s going to be an adjustment with Brandon Ingram coming in and seeing how that all works. But what Quickly did there in 29 minutes, it’s not crazy. like why can’t he play 33 minutes next season and do that with extra five six minutes on top of it and be a top 60 guy. I I think it’s possible. Ingram will be an issue for sure. But this is one of those ones where we have some skepticism but some of the numbers are not crazy. The assist rate maybe falls. The usage may be falls but the shooting numbers and stuff they’re all about normal. So again it’s context dependent. He was bad early on. Why? injuries, limited minutes, struggled with his shot. Second half was flying, but a lot of weird context. And now the team looks a little bit different as well. Paulo started the season really well. First four or five games were great. Strangers oblique out for a long time. Came back and had some really, really bad moments. But his other portion of the season post trade deadline actually pretty good. And I don’t know that many people really recognize that. 28 8 and 4 and a2. Now he’s not a big steals and blocks guy8 steals and6 blocks but he also had a true shooting in this time of 58% which is above league average and for using my Durant category league rankings he was the 25th ranked player. He was 87th before the trade deadline. So it was a gigantic improvement. And again I look at these numbers and go all right he shot 47 from the field 78 from the line and 34 from three. He didn’t have big steal and block numbers. He 35 minutes a game. He had 34 usage which I guess is a is a risk of coming down with Desmond Bane there but Parlo is the man. What it shows I think with Paro and we want we do want to see him be able to do it over the course of the season that it shows that he can do it. It shows that he can be at least a third round guy in category leagues and and a top 10 player in points leagues. He can do it. whether he will do it with Bane there and whether that level of free throw shooting improvement because it’s you his post deadline is five and a half percentage points higher on his free throws, a couple of percentage points higher on his field goals overall. Yeah. Can he do it? I I’m not that’s what we’re going to find out. I don’t know. And we got to see how the impact there is of Bane. But it was a 28 game sample. Again, we understand a lot of teams were bad. The Magic were they were pushing and fighting. So, it wasn’t them that was adjusting their lineups. It’s the quality of their opponents, but he showed that yeah, he can do it. And it’s not like he went and shot 47% Aaron Gordon style or 44% Josh Giddy style or doubled his block rate. Didn’t do any of those things. He just sort of was there. And the free throws is the question mark, isn’t it? Cuz that changed that changed what he did. He went from 73 to 78. I hope he can hold. I don’t believe it. But it did show that it is possible. The last name is, like I said, Brandon Pimp’s teammate, Draymond Green. I don’t I don’t know that you would think that how good Draymond was down the stretch when Jimmy Butler arrived from a fantasy point of view cuz the numbers don’t like they don’t pop. He played 31 minutes a game. That’s not that high. He played he played in 32 games. He had 16 usage. He averaged 10 six and six. But what he did do is he averaged 1.9 steals and one block a game. He shot 44 from the field and 76 from the line and 30% from three. So nothing spectacular there. In fact, some of his shoot numbers were worse. He went from 108th to 51st largely because he added an extra half a steel per game. Now steals are incredibly volatile. So while that is great from Draymond, it showed that playing alongside Jimmy doesn’t new to him completely, he still averaged 5.8 assists during that time in 30 minutes a game. So it doesn’t kill him. But realistically the difference here is is that the steals just added 33% onto his steals cuz the other stuff like what do you average for the year? 9 six and 5 and a half and then post deadline he averaged 10 six and 5.8. The the difference is like a half a steel extra and that’s sort of what bumped him up. Again, understanding the the quality of competition in that time of the year is a joke, but he still put up the numbers. What I do want to do now is just give you a couple eight more names. Just the next grouping of the biggest risers just just to finish off the list. We got a couple here from Portland. One of them is Shaden Sharp. Sharp. Um again, they Simons missed some time down the stretch. Eighton was out. Jeremy Grant of course was out. Ides of March 105th to 100 153rd to 101st their team remains weird because now Drew Holidayiday is there even though Simon’s an eight and a gone. So we’ll see what happens. Alex Sar, he got the second half rookie improvement 162 to 110. I think there is way more coming. Dinenzo who really struggled early on had the toe injury then came back and was 151st up to 99th. The Wolves may make some moves. I I think there is a decent chance Dvenenzo begins the season as a starter but also that wasn’t really what they did in the playoffs all the way through but they have lost Alexander Walker now so there is three four extra minutes maybe unless Rob Dillingham steps up and then Scotty Pippen was 170th into 119th as he started starting alongside Jarant now remember Desmond Bane is gone but they did bring in Ty Jerome and knowing Memphis you’re going to have a million more injury reports come through we’ve already got a Jarren Jackson one and a Zack Edit one Pippen will be lower ceiling I think just because of the addition of Jerome Even though and like obviously Sedra coward so there’s no guarantee that he comes in and starts cuz KCP is also there. So we loved what Scotty Pippen did. We were impressed but 119th is not blowing us away. He did it in 22 minutes. So that is great. But like what is his minutes now? 24 maybe. Like it’s not even guaranteed to be there. Denny Avdar one of the big rises 50 spot jump from 88th to 38th. He was really good down the stretch. Again, similar stuff. We We saw the team without Eightton. We saw the team without Grant. This team is not going to have Eightton. I don’t know if they have Grant. I don’t I don’t know what their lineups are going to be. Drew Holiday is there currently as I’m recording this. Avdia was in was strong. He saw his usage rise to 26 during that time. He averaged 21, 9, and five. The five assists is intriguing, but like if Scoot starts, and I don’t know whether he will, will Scoot run the offense more or will Denny run it? Did Denny have some shooting luck during that time? Like, yeah, he shot 41% on his threes. I don’t know that I buy him as being that when at times he’s been a 34% shooter. So, yeah, there is some risk of that not holding. The usage could drop, the assist could drop, three-point shooting could drop. Even the minutes at 32, I expect they stay around there, but there’s also no guarantee with this weird Portland team. And yet Kongu, we know the story. He went from 93rd to 45th. He was great. And now Porzingis is there. I think Porzingis limits his ceiling, but I don’t think it completely eliminates him. It doesn’t make him strictly a backup. They will play together. And I think he still gets at least at least 26 or 27 minutes. Tobias Harris struggled early on. I think with 71st post trade deadline, which is bang where you want him to be, largely just from shooting improvement. Jayen Ivy being out helped a little bit. It wasn’t just all that though. and Harris would be a guy you want to pick probably around 11 110 I’m guessing this season I probably won’t go as high as I did last year and the other name there is Kobe White all very similar stuff to Josh Giddy 82nd into 39th with the absences of Dumu the absences of ball the absences of Lavine the half absence of of Vuch he played 34 minutes he averaged 23 points he had a 25 usage but unlike Giddy he didn’t like shoot well above his numbers he was 36% from three 48 from the field which is probably a little high including 57 from two So maybe that comes down. But White was really strong. Now would I look at him as a top 40 go? No. Again, all these sort of guys where you’ve got some of those doubts, you might want to just drop 20 30 spots off them maybe two rounds and then and then reevaluate from there. I think that’s a decent way of looking at that. I hope that that information just highlighting a bunch of guys which we went through about 22 guys is the biggest risers. some of them rising or the the lowest riser there was like 40 spots in the rankings from pre- to post trade deadline and illustrating again the reasons behind why it happens and there’s multitudes of them. Your team sits guys down, your opponents sit guys down, your opponents don’t take it as seriously because they’re locked in at the top or the bottom or you have unreasonably high rate jumps in, you know, blocks or assists. there’s a player that’s out that’s given you a different role or your shooting just goes through the roof and that stuff isn’t always replicable. Hit subscribe on the video guys. You’ll see more stuff coming in this next week or two. We’ll be back live in about 10 days or so. Guys, we are done here. Thank you so much for listening everyone. See you. [Music]

Which NBA players exploded after the trade deadline — and can you trust them in your fantasy drafts?

Josh Lloyd dives deep into the biggest late-season risers like Quentin Grimes, Josh Giddey, and Paolo Banchero. Are these second-half surges legit or fueled by injuries, tanking teams, and meaningless March stats? This episode breaks down which players’ jumps were sustainable, who benefited from weird team situations, and how it all reshapes your fantasy basketball draft board.

Plus, insights on under-the-radar leaps by Day’Ron Sharpe, Kyshawn George, and Aaron Gordon.

Get critical strategy tips to navigate misleading end-of-season numbers and prepare smarter for your fantasy basketball league.

🎧 Watch now for Josh Lloyd’s expert analysis on late-season NBA trends, post-deadline breakouts, and their real impact on your fantasy rankings.

Follow and subscribe on all major podcast platforms: Be a double banger, watch the video, then listen to the audio
🎧 https://link.chtbl.com/LOFantasyBasketball?sid=YouTube

Check out Locked On NBA League-Wide for comprehensive NBA coverage, including team insights, fantasy tips, draft updates, WNBA news and more:
🎧 https://linktr.ee/LockedOnNBA

Get personalized shout-outs, messages and more on Cameo:
https://www.cameo.com/josh_doezl9tzyg25?qid=163210364

Improve your fantasy basketball team with the latest on waiver wire moves, trades, adds, drops, and other essential strategies. Take advantage of these resources:

Projections: https://basketballmonster.com/projections.aspx
NBA Lineups: https://basketballmonster.com/nbalineups.aspx
NBA News: https://basketballmonster.com/playernews.aspx
NBA Schedule Analyzer: https://basketballmonster.com/weeklyteamschedules.aspx
NBA Fantasy Basketball Team Analysis: https://basketballmonster.com/teamanalysis.aspx

Intro music by:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAPWJaPqxcWTAn-l8JjHCVg

Connect with us on other platforms:

Website: https://basketballmonster.com
Apple Podcasts: https://buff.ly/2xQx1tw
Spotify: https://buff.ly/2RVJ1RW
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/joshlloyd.bsky.social
Instagram: https://instagram.com/lockedonfantasybasketball

Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!
Monarch Money
Take control of your finances with Monarch Money. Use code LOCKEDONNBA at monarchmoney.com/lockedonnba for 50% off your first year

Gametime
Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONNBA for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. Download Gametime today. What time is it? Gametime.

FanDuel
Right now, new customers can get ONE HUNDRED FIFTY DOLLARS in BONUS BETS when your first FIVE DOLLAR BET WINS! Download the app or head to FANDUEL.COM to get started. Bet with FanDuel—Official Partner of the NBA.

FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN)

0:00 Introduction
0:35 Post-trade deadline analysis
4:38 Quentin Grimes performance
6:09 Kyle Filipowski improvement
8:43 Kawhi Leonard comeback
9:45 Kyshawn George potential
12:17 Aaron Gordon shooting
14:20 Ausar Thompson minutes
16:22 Day’Ron Sharpe production
18:27 Josh Giddey breakout
24:02 Brandon Podziemski role
25:33 Immanuel Quickley improvement
27:06 Paolo Banchero progress
29:10 Draymond Green impact
30:42 Additional player analysis
34:46 Conclusion