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          Fantasy hoops: Start or sit rankings

          Talen Horton-Tucker should be scooped up in your leagues with the Los Angeles Lakers having a favorable schedule. Adam Pantozzi/NBAE via Getty Images
          • André SnellingsNov 19, 2021, 05:00 PM ET
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              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.

          Click here for the fantasy basketball Forecaster

          Read below for weekly rankings and start/sit recommendations

          These rankings are based on the assumption that all NBA teams will play their scheduled games over the next week. Please stay plugged into potential schedule changes due to COVID-19 up until rosters lock on Monday, and adjust your lineups accordingly. With that said ...

          ... So, you're in a weekly transaction league, and you need to decide by Monday evening what your starting lineup will be for the week. Should you consider sitting a usual impact starter like Nikola Jokic or Luka Doncic? Or perhaps starting someone like Talen Horton-Tucker, who might generally be on your bench, perhaps even your waiver wire?

          Right off the bat, the fact that Jokic and Doncic are in the previous paragraph is wildly unusual. We're talking two of the highest scorers in the game, both of whom will likely have NBA MVP and fantasy basketball MVP hardware on their shelves before all is said and done. So, let me make it clear that I would be extremely hard-pressed to sit either of these titans, even with only two games, unless I was in a very shallow league in which my alternatives were other star-caliber players. With that said, their presence on the potentially sittable list indicates that, by averages and Forecaster scores, both project to be outside of the top 100 producers for the week. This just emphasizes how important the number of games can be, if you have to think twice even for two of the best.

          The other name mentioned in the opening is also noteworthy, because Horton-Tucker has burst onto the scene like a superstar. After missing most of the first month of the season, erstwhile reserve THT has debuted with averages of 23.3 PPG, 7.3 RPG, 2.7 3PG, 2.0 APG, 1.3 SPG and 0.7 BPG through his first three games. Clearly, these types of averages would surge THT up the rankings (I hope you grabbed him when I recommended him earlier this week) ... if it continues. But LeBron James is scheduled to return from injury any day now, so we'll have to see how the King's return affects Horton-Tucker's numbers. That said, I'm starting him in almost any format unless and until I see that LeBron's return brings him out of "He's on fire!" mode.

          Check out the overall rankings to get a more in-depth look at how we think things might go next week, but we do make it easy to get the high points at a glance with the startable and sittable lists below.

          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).