A few weeks ago I wrote about how much it would drive me nuts to own Joel Embiid in fantasy and why I thought it’d make sense to trade him if you could get comparable value for him, even though he’d been playing well lately. And how has Embiid responded? By playing even more incredibly. He scored 38 on Sunday, has scored 30 or more over his last four games, and is averaging 28 points, 8 rebounds, 4 assists, and (perhaps most impressively) 34 minutes per game in the month of January. It’s the best he’s looked in two years and he’s once again performing like one of the best big men in the entire league.
But would I still try to move him? Me personally, yes. And it’s not because I doubt how great he is or because I don’t think his numbers are sustainable when he’s healthy, but because his perma-injury management would terrify me going into the fantasy playoffs. Embiid doesn’t play in back-to-backs and missed the Sixers’ game on Monday due to injury management, and when you get to the fantasy playoffs, the odds that he’s going to miss at least one start during one of your critical matchups that week is pretty high. When that’s someone’s floor, I’m never going to be comfortable with them – even when they’re playing this well – because I’m always going to be nervous about the next shoe dropping.
At the same time, that’s why I had no interest in drafting Embiid at all, and if someone did draft Embiid – no doubt because they thought his upside was worth the risk – then they have to feel pretty damn vindicated right now, especially given how rusty and lethargic Embiid looked during the start of the season. His recent play is really the best case scenario for taking a shot on someone who’s coming off an injury, and with any luck he’ll sustain this through the end of the season. The fact that the Sixers look like they’ll have to scratch and claw to avoid the play-in tournament makes it likelier that Embiid will get heavy usage towards the end of the season, too. We shall see…
Other notes from this weekend:
Ja Morant will be out for at least three weeks with an elbow sprain, which might spell the end for his time in Memphis. It’s a shame how routinely he gets hurt, because he’d produced a double-double in three straight games before this injury and looked especially buoyant in his last game against Atlanta. Who knows where he’ll be playing a month from now or if he’ll playing a month from now, but as always he’s worth hanging onto.
Sandro Mamukelashvili collected 10 points, 5 rebounds, 3 assists, a steal and a block in 32 minutes on Sunday. Though those are modest numbers, he’d scored 20 in three of his previous four games and with Collin Murray-Boyles dealing with a thumb issue and Jakob Poeltl increasingly looking like he might not come back at all, Mamukelashvili is a very solid add right now.
Dylan Cardwell notched 4 points, 9 rebounds, 5 assists and 2 blocks off the bench on Sunday. He’s been outplaying Maxime Raynauld off the bench by a pretty wide margin, and if Domantas Sabonis gets traded and Cardwell gets elevated to the starting lineup, there’s potential for him to become rather valuable, as he’s already one of the best shot-blockers in the league.
Brandin Podziemski had 12 points, 6 assists, 5 rebounds and 4 steals on Sunday. His numbers haven’t been amazing since Jimmy Butler went down with a season-ending injury, but he’s locked in for heavy playing time the rest of the way and is capable of producing hodgepodge stat lines like this not-irregularly. He’s worth scooping up if he’s available.
Saddiq Bey went for 24-10-4 against the Spurs on Sunday. He’s averaging over 26 a game over his last three and is flourishing amidst the Pelicans’ recent rotation changes. He’s a strong add at the moment, though it remains to be seen what his value will be after the deadline.
Grayson Allen went for 18 points, 6 rebounds and 3 assists in 35 minutes against the Heat. He took 11 threes in this game too, which is a great indicator of how much run he’s been getting. And with Jalen Green suffering yet another hamstring injury, he looks increasingly deadlocked in the Suns’ starting lineup the rest of the way.
Michael Porter Jr. had only 9 points and 4 assists on Sunday. The irony of him being a fantasy beast in Brooklyn is that the Nets occasionally lose so spectacularly that he doesn’t even have the chance to put up big stats for them when it happened. He scored only 12 two games earlier too and Brooklyn lost that game and their game on Sunday by a combined 91 points.
Miles Bridges had 20 points, 4 assists and 3 rebounds on Saturday. His name is getting mentioned in trade rumors lately, but there’s little risk of him going somewhere where he’d lose much value, and if anything might be in line to gain value since he’s having his worst scoring season since 2021.
Jalen Suggs returned to the Magic after a three-week rest and collected 9 points and 6 assists in 24 minutes on Saturday. It’ll be interesting to see how well he pairs with Anthony Black – who played 40 minutes in this game – but he should be worth owning no matter what.
Matas Buzelis had 14 points, 8 rebounds, 5 assists, 4 threes and a block on Saturday. He’s been a pretty big bust this season, but the one saving grace is that he’s been one of the fifteen best shot-blockers in the entire league this year, which has been a much-needed life raft to his fantasy value.
Max Christie had 24 points on Saturday and has now scored 20 in four straight games. He’s getting heavy minutes too, and while he doesn’t do much besides score and hit threes, he’s been doing it so consistently lately (17 threes over his last three games!) that he increasingly looks severely under-rostered in fantasy leagues right now.
Jusuf Nurkic went for 17-12-10 over the weekend, producing his third straight triple-double. That sentence would’ve seemed absolutely impossible at the start of the year, but Nurkic has been a fantasy godsend of late. The one bugaboo with him is that he misses games all the time but it’s hard to quibble with someone who literally averaged a triple-double last week.
