Dr. André Snellings is a senior writer for men's and women's fantasy basketball and sports betting at ESPN. André has a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Michigan. He joined ESPN in 2017 after a 16-year career as a neural engineer, during which time he was also a writer and analyst for Rotowire.
Read below for weekly rankings and start/sit recommendations
You're in a weekly transaction league, and you need to decide by Monday evening who will be in your starting lineup for the week. Should you consider sitting usual impact starters like Victor Oladipo or Klay Thompson? Should you start someone like Thomas Bryant or Luke Kornet, who might generally be on your bench, perhaps even your waiver wire?
The schedule is the key variable in this week's startables/sittables list. As shown in the Forecaster, the Denver Nuggets have five games this week with a perfect 10 Forecaster score. Thus, there are five Nuggets rotation players among the startable crew. On the other side of the equation, the Chicago Bulls scored a minimum 1 in the Forecaster with three games, so they lead the sittable list with three players.
The unusual nature of the schedule this week, with 17 teams playing four or more games, caused both the startable and sittable lists this week to be longer than usual. Oladipo and Thompson have three games apiece, but their projections put them as only fringe starters when so many players play at least one more game.
There are also a couple of huge injuries to watch, as LeBron James and Kyle Lowry are mentioned as sittable only because of their health question marks. If news hits that they will play next week, both would fly up the rankings list.
On the flip side, guys like Bryant and Tomas Satoransky have put up huge numbers recently as injury substitutes for the Washington Wizards, and their teammates' injuries are long-term enough that they should outperform expectations for the foreseeable future. Kornet, an unheralded center for the Knicks, has been playing very well of late with Enes Kanter spending more time on the bench.
Potentially startable players
Potentially sittable players
Weekly projections/rankings for Jan. 7-13
Methodology
The "potentially startable" list is generally comprised of players ranked below 80th in the season-long points rankings who ended up among the top-100 projected players for this week utilizing the Forecaster. Conversely, the "potentially sittable" list is generally comprised of players ranked in the top 100 of the season-long points rankings who ended up outside of the top-120 projected players for this week utilizing the Forecaster (or who are in the 120 range but projected much lower for the week).
There is also some correction for injury, so a player with an injury question mark may have his value lowered enough to end up on the sittable list even if he's not officially out. Similarly, an understudy would get a boost in value if he is expected to play, and that could land him in the startable category. Finally, I have the license to add players to either list if they don't fit the exact criteria, but I feel that it is close enough to be of interest.
