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.
You're in a weekly transaction league, and you need to decide by Monday evening who your starting lineup will be for the week. Should you consider sitting usual impact starters Khris Middleton or Devonte' Graham? Or perhaps starting someone like Ish Smith or Joe Harris who might generally be on your bench, perhaps even your waiver wire?
As pointed out in the Forecaster this week, there are only nine teams with four games, a whopping 18 with three games and three with only two. The Potentially Sittable list contains almost every Pacers, Timberwolves and Magic player due to their sparse schedule. Karl-Anthony Towns is the one exception, because he averages so many points that he still ranks in the top-70 for the week despite playing only two games.
There are several players that fell due to injury concerns that should be further monitored before Monday's lineup lock. Jayson Tatum, Jamal Murray and Jaylen Brown are all examples.
Kawhi Leonard and Zion Williamson are the two players in the NBA most likely to miss half of a back-to-back for load management, but neither the Clippers nor the Pelicans have a B2B this week so neither got that particular score decrement.
Victor Oladipo is expected to make his season debut next week, but is likely to be limited in minutes and games so likely isn't start-worthy yet. Check out the list of guys that stood out in one direction or the other below, and for more detail see the complete rankings.
Methodology
The "potentially startable" list is generally composed 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 composed 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 injury question marks might see 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 even if they don't fit the exact criteria but if I feel they're close enough to be of interest.
