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 your starting lineup will be for the week. Should you consider sitting usual impact starters like Victor Oladipo or Marc Gasol? Or perhaps starting someone like Ed Davis or Tyson Chandler, who might generally be on your bench, perhaps even your waiver wire?
One question that I received on social media (@ProfessorDrz on Twitter and IG) after the debut of my weekly rankings caught my eye. It was an innocuous question from @fuze_13, but it raised an issue with these rankings that I want to address:
@ProfessorDrz weekly, pick 2. 3 game Donavon Mitchell, 3- Zack LaVine, 4- Jalen Brown, 4- J. Winslow
That week, Donovan Mitchell and Zach LaVine had three games while Jaylen Brown and Justise Winslow had four. Despite this, based upon my rest-of-the-season projections, Mitchell and LaVine both projected as the better plays. However, I had to acknowledge that Brown and Winslow had been very hot in the couple of games leading up to the start of that week, so I advised Fuze that if his gut said to play the hot hand, I could support that.
I wasn't satisfied with that, though. So I went back to the lab and tinkered with my weekly projection formula. This week, I'm debuting the new process here. I still use the rest-of-season projections as a baseline for who the player is, and I still factor in both injury and Forecaster scores to help evaluate how a player might perform in the short term. But I've now also added a recent performance factor that should help move hot or cold players around in my weekly rankings to a level more accurate to their current level of play.
Without further ado, let's see what those projections and the resulting start/sit lists look like for this week.
Potentially startable players
As you might expect, since the Lakers and Trail Blazers are the only teams to play four games this week, this list is littered with them. There are interesting questions about playing time for the Lakers with Rondo, Ingram and JaVale McGee all set to return to the lineup after injury/illness absences. Nevertheless, the Lakers play four fast-paced games with and should produce some fantasy-friendly numbers this week.
Dunn is on this list because his long injury absence and a few down games have depressed his season-long averages enough to lower him in the rankings. However, he is likely to eventually move back up the list on his own ... and with Zach LaVine out, Dunn has already started picking up the slack with improved play.
Nance has been one of the most productive players in the NBA of late, posting huge all-around efforts to step into the gaps that injuries have made on an already struggling Cavaliers team. Clarkson benefits from this as well, and the Cavaliers have a favorable schedule this week, which lands both of them among the startable list.
Potentially sittable players
Oladipo is one of the best producers in the league when healthy, which he now is, but the two-game schedule was just too much for him to overcome this week. Similar stories for Sabonis and Turner, both of whom have been playing well but not enough to bridge the gap.
Similar story for Gasol and Conley, who otherwise are weekly staple starters even with the offensive woes of the Grizzlies in general factored in. They're likely to produce each game, but with only two contests you may have better options to choose from.
Many of the players on this list are here because of injuries that will either keep them out or at the very least bring their full availability for the upcoming week into question.
I don't plan to name every injured player in this space every week, but for players who were either recently injured or have return expectations that might overlap with the upcoming week, I will generally list them.
Paul was the latest to join this list after he pulled his left hamstring, the one opposite the muscle that ended his playoffs last season, Thursday.
Weekly projections/rankings for Dec. 24-30
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 injury question marks 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 even if they don't fit the exact criteria, but if I feel that it is close enough to be of interest.
