Friday served as a clear reminder to fantasy basketball owners: As the Feb. 18 trade deadline approaches, a player’s value can soar or plummet on a moment’s notice. Josh Smith suddenly has a new lease on life after the Los Angeles Clippers shipped him to the Houston Rockets, while the Cleveland Cavaliers are suddenly a fantasy quagmire after firing head coach David Blatt.
Accordingly, owners must stay glued to the rumor mill over the next few weeks. If one of your player’s names keeps popping up in trade rumors, you have to consider whether you’re willing to risk him moving teams midseason. In the meantime, monitor recent production (and minutes!) to find players who might be worth targeting if you do decide to start shopping one (or more) of your guys.
Here, we’ll highlight three players who’ve caught fire of late and three players whose fantasy stock is plummeting. You shouldn’t necessarily sell high on the rising players or buy low on the falling players; instead, use this to recalibrate your expectations for all of them moving forward.
Rising
Tyreke Evans, PG/SG/SF, New Orleans Pelicans
With Eric Gordon sidelined by a broken right ring finger for the next four to six weeks, the Pelicans suddenly have a hole to fill in their backcourt. Norris Cole slid into the starting lineup in Gordon’s place on Thursday against the Detroit Pistons, but Tyreke Evans did the most damage among New Orleans’ guards, finishing with 22 points on 8-of-14 shooting, 10 assists, four rebounds, two steals and two triples in just 31 minutes.
Evans’s balky right knee remains a legitimate rest-of-season concern, as head coach Alvin Gentry recently told Scott Kushner of The Advocate, “I think as a coach, sometimes I’ve got to…make him understand that when you’re injured, sometimes you can’t play.” If he can avoid any further setbacks with the knee, though, he should easily provide top 50 value so long as Gordon remains sidelined.
Carmelo Anthony, SF/PF, New York Knicks
Carmelo Anthony has long been one of the league’s premier scorers, but unlike LeBron James, Kevin Durant or Blake Griffin, he didn’t often create offense for his teammates. That’s no longer the case, as the Knicks star is averaging a career-high 4.1 assists per game this year to go with 21.6 points, 7.5 rebounds, 1.4 triples, 0.9 steals and 0.5 blocks, including 22 dimes over his past three contests.
Anthony’s newfound playmaking is no coincidence, as Knicks head coach Derek Fisher told Newsday‘s Al Iannazzone that he thinks “there will be times when we can put the ball in his hands more and allow his size and his ability to create shots for other people to be more of a feature.” Adding that type of well-roundedness would be music to the ears of the Syracuse product’s fantasy owners, as he hasn’t lived up to his second-round ADP through the first half of the 2015-16 campaign.
Chandler Parsons, SF/PF, Dallas Mavericks
Chandler Parsons was one of the biggest risk-reward mid-round picks this season, as he was coming off a “minor hybrid” microfracture operation on his right knee, according to ESPN.com’s Tim MacMahon. Though he missed only two games at the start of the year, he sat out an additional five through early December and wound up coming off the bench for much of that month.
Lately, though, Parsons is beginning to look like his old self, having averaged 24.0 points on 57.4 percent shooting, 6.0 rebounds, 3.7 triples, 2.7 assists and 1.0 steals in a whopping 38.5 minutes a night over his past three games. While many of those figures are unsustainable — the shooting percentage, three-pointers and minutes, most notably — it’s worth floating an offer to Parsons’s owner now before he strings together more monster performances.
Falling
Amir Johnson, PF, Boston Celtics
Just last week, Amir Johnson made an appearance in the “Rising” section of this column, as he was fresh off averaging 13.1 points, 8.4 rebounds, 2.7 assists, 1.0 blocks and 0.7 steals in 26.6 minutes a night over his past seven games. Though I cautioned Celtics head coach Brad Stevens “is wont to juggle his frontcourt rotation on a game-by-game basis,” Stevens’s recent praise of Johnson seemed to suggest the big man would maintain his grasp on a sizeable role.
Naturally, Johnson proceeded to follow up that scorching stretch with just 4.0 points, 3.0 rebounds, 1.0 blocks, 0.7 assists and 0.7 steals in 21.2 minutes a night over his following three games before missing Friday’s win over the Chicago Bulls for personal reasons. Given the Celtics’ inconsistent frontcourt rotation, owners who were relying on Johnson during his scorching two-week stretch shouldn’t hesitate to cut bait on him, especially if Myles Turner or Willie Cauley-Stein is available.
Evan Fournier, SG/SF, Orlando Magic
Evan Fournier was one of the league’s best early-season fantasy surprises, having averaged 17.2 points, 3.9 rebounds, 2.4 assists, 2.3 triples and 1.3 steals per game through November, but his owners have endured a rockier ride over the past month-and-a-half. Heading into Friday’s game against Charlotte, Fournier had per-game averages of 11.1 points, 2.8 assists, 2.3 rebounds, 1.6 treys and 1.5 steals since Dec. 1, as his minutes plunged from 34.6 to 30.0.
Magic head coach Scott Skiles shook up his rotation Friday, moving Fournier to the bench for the first time all season. Though the Frenchman finished with 15 points on 6-of-14 shooting, two rebounds, two assists, a block and a triple in the overtime loss, the fact he played just 33 of a possible 53 minutes screams “sell now!” With the Magic in a free fall as of late, Fournier’s owners should brace themselves for far more volatility than they experienced during the first month of the season.
Mario Chalmers, PG/SG, Memphis Grizzlies
Mario Chalmers was a fantasy gold mine during the recent six-game stretch in which Grizzlies starting point guard Mike Conley was sidelined by an Achilles injury, averaging 16.7 points, 7.0 assists, 4.5 rebounds, 2.0 triples and 1.8 steals in a whopping 37.1 minutes per game. That fantasy relevance appears to have been short-lived, though, as Conley returned to starting lineup in Memphis’ win over the Pelicans on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
In the two games since Conley’s return, Chalmers’s production has plummeted, as he’s averaged just 4.0 points on 25.0 percent shooting, 5.5 assists, 2.0 rebounds, 0.5 steals and 0.5 triples in 20.8 minutes a night. He’s not necessarily a must-drop, at least until Conley proves he’s completely over his recent Achilles injury, but it’s become clear that Chalmers will only have deep-league appeal whenever Conley is healthy enough to play.
All ADP and ECR info via FantasyPros.com. All player rankings via ESPN’s Player Rater and are current through Friday, Jan. 22.