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 will be in your starting lineup for the week. Should you consider sitting usual impact starters Zach LaVine or Devonte' Graham? Or perhaps starting someone like Marcus Smart or Reggie Jackson who might generally be on your bench, perhaps even your waiver wire?
As pointed out in the Forecaster this week, there are 15 teams with four games, 14 with three games and only one squad, the Bulls, that plays twice. The Potentially Sittable list contains every Bulls player due to their sparse schedule.
There are several players who fell due to injury concerns that should be further monitored before Monday's lineup lock. Marc Gasol and Jamal Murray are prime 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, and the Clippers have a B2B this week so Leonard received the score decrement. Williamson and Victor Oladipo are both on a minutes restriction as they return from injury, so both were decremented for that reason.
The Mavericks have four games this week, but Luka Doncic is injured and could potentially miss the entire week. This would be a boon for his backups, but there is too much uncertainty to really boost them until his prognosis becomes clearer.
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.
