Get to the Points: Trade Candidates for Playoff Contention
Yahoo Fantasy analyst Dan Titus and contributor Justin Henry explore a few players to consider dealing if you're competing for a playoff spot.
Video Transcript
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DAN TITUS: What's good, y'all? I'm Dan Titus, that's Justin Henry. Now let's get to the points. We're coming out of the All-Star break. And Week 17's going to continue on. We got four more days left of this week. So it's going to be really important because this is the home stretch for a lot of fantasy leagues. The standard leagues playoffs will start Week 22.
So we gotta start talking about playoff stashes. And, Justin, we got some really good names to talk about here, man. And the one off the top that I wanna talk about is Keyonte George. What are your thoughts on him and how he could play for the rest of the season?
JUSTIN HENRY: Well, you know, we've talked about this a lot, Dan, and just those young players with increasing minutes and increasing roles. And for this Utah Jazz team, Keyonte George has been a light, especially as of late. So this is a player, when you start to think about fantasy playoffs or potential adds later, you wanna think about players who can start to score the ball a little bit more, get to asked to do a little bit more on the court.
And Keyonte George is already-- saw him in the Rising Star Challenge. He's-- this is a player who they do wanna get more involved. So Keyonte George is a player that I think he should be looking for, especially if you got a playoff spot already sewed up. This is a good player to have on your bench.
DAN TITUS: Yeah, totally agree. And I think a lot of fantasy managers started to jump on this right during the All-Star break, not even before his Rising Stars Challenge and how good he looked there. But he dropped a career-high 33 points with three steals, right before the break.
But I really like what I'm seeing from him through the month of February, man. He's averaging 15 points, 5 dimes, and almost 3 assists. And one of the things I got a chance to talk to him about while I was out at All-Star weekend was, like, how are you coming along and progressing as a rookie? And he's like, Kris Dunn and Jordan Clarkson have both been really helpful in trying to give him that confidence and that he can do this.
And now that he's been named the starter, at least for the foreseeable future, I think he's got a lot of upside going forward. And when you look at him, at least from a rostership standpoint, he's still available in 55% of leagues. So I would make a move to jump on him, if you haven't already.
JUSTIN HENRY: Yeah, that's a good player, man. And when you talk about young players too, you know, sometimes there's players that go-- they go drafted highly. Right? And we thinking of, ah, maybe they haven't performed as of-- as we all expected them to.
And you and I talked about this at the top of the year. Scoot Henderson is a player that did take a little bit longer to develop. Now, I know he said he thinks he still has a chance of Rookie of the Year. That's not a case. Right? But this is a player who is increasing his role.
And one of the things that, you know, I start to look at, expert fantasy players start to look at, is playoff schedule. And the Portland Trail Blazers are the only team with four games in each of the Yahoo standard fantasy playoffs. So in the fantasy playoff weeks, each game-- each week, the Portland Trail Blazers play four games. Scoot Henderson is going to get a lot of volume. You see an uptick in minutes. And he's been playing well as of late as well.
DAN TITUS: Yeah, man. I feel like it's Scoot season. Chauncey Billups already said that he's gonna be starting the rest of the way. We already know what Malcolm Brogdon's situation is. This man just can't stay healthy. So I feel like the way that Scoot's been playing, even though he's gonna struggle with efficiency, he might be a bold take. But I feel like he's gonna be a top 75 player in points leagues the rest of the season.
And I feel that way because of what I've seen from him in February, man. He's averaging over 18 points, with 6 dimes. He's getting the-- he's getting the rebounds as well. I feel like Scoot's gonna learn, and honestly, just have not that much competition to really get those minutes and be productive in fantasy.
So I don't know where I'd rank them in head to heads cause he's-- you know, the efficiency definitely drives his value down. But for points leagues, I'm all in.
JUSTIN HENRY: Yeah. He's a player-- like you said, in category leagues, maybe he's a little bit of a knock down. But for me, Scoot Henderson, man, I like the way he's come out a lot more especially. And you talked about it. The only thing that we're gonna see with him is the efficiency drop. But in points leagues, you know we don't care as much about efficiency.
DAN TITUS: No, not at all. And, like, one thing that I wanted to bring up, man, because there's a lot of teams that I feel like are in this point of, are they-- where are they in the standings? Are they trying to get their young players more involved? Or, like, what teams need to see more out of somebody?
And one of those teams I think is the Washington Wizards with Corey Kispert. He's a guy that's played well whenever he's been given the opportunity to play. We know what he can do from 3 ball. Like, the guy is definitely a bucket from deep. But do you think that there's a chance that maybe we see, like, Kyle Kuzma get shut down? You know, they wanna give minutes to Bilal Coulibaly down the stretch. But I feel like Corey Kispert could be a guy that many fantasy managers might be sleeping on towards the end that you may wanna stash.
JUSTIN HENRY: Yeah, especially here over the last, you know, few games, over the last seven games. He's been averaging over 16 points a game. So we know the uptick is coming. And, yes, this Wizards team is not very good. And you talked about players who could potentially be shut down, Kyle Kuzma being one of them. We don't know what they're gonna do with Jordan Poole. He hasn't been playing as well as we thought.
So this Wizards team coming into the final stretch here is gonna be leaning on their young guys. And guess what, they kinda need to see what they have as they go into this off season. So Corey Kispert's a guy who's been getting more minutes off the bench, seeing an uptick in scoring. And I think his role's gonna increase here as the season goes on.