2011-12 Fantasy Basketball Round Table: Bust Edition
Last time we discussed the sleepers. This time, we’re taking a look at who will be the biggest bust in the 2011-12 fantasy basketball season.
Patrick from Give Me the Rock got us started.
The aged Tim Duncan is an obvious choice given that this might be the year that he finally falls off a cliff. But I’ll go out on a limb all by myself and say Jrue Holiday. Everyone loves the guy—from Doug Collins to Sixers fans to fantasy owners—and it’s easy to see why when you watch him make his opponents look silly on the court.
But the GMTR statistical projections we did before the start of the season suggest that there is a good chance he doesn’t actually improve this season. That sounds crazy since he’s a 21-year-old point guard who is entering his third year in the league, but six of his 10 closest player comps going back to the year 1990 actually regressed on a per-36-minute basis in their age-21 seasons.
In addition, Holiday already averaged over 35 minutes a game last season, so it’s not like he can simply play more minutes this year to improve his overall numbers.
Statistical projections are only a part of the story though. Holiday is off to a slow start this season (averaging only 2.8 assists to go along with his 15.5 points) due in part to guys like Andre Iguodala and Louis Williams sucking up Sixers’ possessions with a lot of long, two-point attempts instead of letting Holiday attack the basket.
Holiday’s assists will go back up eventually as he’s given more control of the offense, but as long as Iguodala is considered “the man” on this Sixers team, we may have to wait for Holiday to take that huge step forward everyone is expecting.
Now we send it over to William from RotoProfessor.
Stephen Jackson: I was down on Jackson before the season started, and the early results have only further entrenched my doubts. Milwaukee is a deeper team than Charlotte was last season, and there is much more competition for playing time in Milwaukee where sharing playing time and running a deep rotation is part of their success.
Jackson has been a borderline top-50 player for several years now, and this season he was drafted 53rd overall on average. Jackson hasn’t shot better than 42 percent in a season since the 2006-2007 season. His success in fantasy leagues does not come from him being a quality shot-taker, but rather a quantity shot-taker. I think Jackson will be closer to the 15 points per game side of things than the 20 points per game side he has been the last few seasons.
All of this and we haven’t talked about his injury history. Jackson has missed multiple games in nearly every season in the last five. We’ve already seen the toll injuries can take in a shortened season. If Jackson gets banged up, an injury that sidelines him for a week or two means missing multiple games and not just a couple as it would be in a normal season.
The change of scenery, the offensive style in Milwaukee and the shortened season all have me believing Jackson won’t be close to a top-50 player this season.
Finally, Ryan from Lester’s Legends will weigh in.
The player I see taking a fall is Kevin Garnett. His scoring has been in decline the past three seasons, but his rebounding kept him among the top 50 fantasy players. At his age (35), and more importantly with his mileage (17th season), the condensed season is going to be a challenge. The real season begins during the playoffs for KG, and the Celtics and he will do their best to have gas in the tank come season’s end.
The Celtics have a capable backup to KG in the form of Brandon Bass, who is nine years younger. He has the body to bang with the big boys and take some of the toll away from KG’s body.
Garnett will likely finish with fewer than 15 ppg, 7 rpg, 3 apg, 1 bpg and 1 spg; numbers that are good across the board with a solid shooting percentage (around 50 percent), but clearly not ones that will blow you away.
