Every Wednesday this season, I will publish my top-130 fantasy basketball rankings for the remainder of the season.
These rankings are based on season-long rotisserie formats. That means that players who excel in one or two categories will be ranked higher and those who fail miserably in percentages will be ranked lower than they would be in a points system.
So, a 3-point specialist like J.R. Smith gets a bump, while a young star like Andre Drummond, who misses a ton of free throws, sinks. You will want to adjust accordingly based on your league's scoring system.
These rankings are forward-looking. If you want to know where players stand based on what they have done thus far this season, check out the ESPN Player Rater.
My goal here is to give you an idea of how much I value each player for the rest of the 2015-16 campaign. In its most basic sense, I am asking myself if I would rather have Player X over Player Y through April. If so, I rank him higher.
As always, I value your feedback, so feel free to hit me up @AtomicHarpua.
On Monday, our ESPN fantasy basketball experts took part in a midseason mock draft to see exactly how the first half of the season has impacted our views of and expectations for players the rest of the way. We will publish the results on Thursday.
It was a great exercise that helped me identify some players who were either too high or too low in my rest-of-season rankings. There is a difference between constructing a team in a draft versus ranking players for the remainder of the season, but there are a lot of similarities, mostly because you have to believe in a player or at least his potential for the remainder of the season in order to draft him.
One player near the top who dipped a bit in my eyes was Pau Gasol, who I have dropped below Karl-Anthony Towns and Klay Thompson. Gasol remains in my top 20 because he churns out great stats and should continue to sport a heavy usage rate for the Chicago Bulls. However, Towns and Thompson are much younger, so I see less risk of injury with them. Furthermore, they have more upside.
One of the biggest leaps upward in my rankings this week is Jrue Holiday, who went from No. 56 to No. 29. I know the injury risk inherent in his frail legs, but as the season winds down, that risk shrinks, because there will be fewer games remaining. The New Orleans Pelicans babied him for the first half of the season, so he should be able to run 30-33 minutes per game the rest of the way. And considering the other injuries with which the Pelicans are dealing, they will need Holiday to score, dish and play defense in order to compete. Add it all up, and his upside now outweighs his injury risk.
Meanwhile, Tyreke Evans' knee has me extremely concerned. He has had too many problems with the joint to consider him remotely reliable going forward. I dropped him way down this week. The only thing buoying his ranking is his tremendous upside when he is actually healthy.
Last week, I dropped Blake Griffin from No. 13 to No. 33. At that time, he was expected to miss another four to six weeks due to his hand surgery. A later report suggested he could miss two months plus a likely suspension for his off-court antics. Due to his high-end upside, I still like the idea of buying low on him from a panicking owner. If Griffin ends up back in action by early-to-mid-March, he could be a difference-maker, especially in head-to-head leagues. Nonetheless, I had to drop him further down my rankings, because if he isn't back until late March, it could be too late to help you much. He is barely in my top 50 at this point.
As the season winds down, I'm always focusing on youth. Younger players, especially on middling or bad teams, get more action down the stretch, while veterans get rested or injured. With that in mind, I moved Al Horford, Carmelo Anthony, Serge Ibaka and Marc Gasol all down below a large group of younger players. The vets are still good, but I'd rather have the youth going forward.
I've remained high on Will Barton up to this point, but he has struggled to be consistent long enough that I had to slide him down about 20 spots. I still think he will be okay as a quality player to round out starting lineups, but he will have to find his shooting stroke to move back up.
Another huge adjustment I had to make this week was to Monta Ellis. It was only a few weeks ago that he was barely hanging into my top-130 rankings, because he was struggling so much. Well, he has hit his stride lately and seems back to form as an impact guard, who can score, dish, hit the occasional 3 and rack up quality steals. He should be locked in as a top-60 player going forward now that he has found his rhythm and appears to be over a knee issue that hampered him in December.
Making his debut in my rankings this week is Denver Nuggets big man Nikola Jokic. I've been pumping up Jusuf Nurkic all season long, but as he has been slowly working his way back from knee surgery, Jokic has come into his own as a beastly double-double threat. I still think Nurkic is going to make noise this season, but for now it's the Jokic Show in the Nuggets' frontcourt.
Others jumping into my rankings are Josh Smith and Aaron Gordon, both of whom are worth adding if you need big men, as each has a good opportunity to produce notable stats the rest of the way.