Every Wednesday, Chris Towers will take a look at the Fantasy landscape with either a trade values column -- here's last week's -- or a stock watch. This week, he looks at the players whose stock has risen or fallen over the past two weeks.
Stock Up
Purists might not like it, but I'm all-in on big men spacing the floor from 3-point range. And Marc Gasol has quickly established himself as one of the best in the league at it, nailing 42.3 percent of his 78 3-pointers so far this season. Not only had Gasol never attempted more than 17 3-pointers in any given season, but he has already attempted more 3-pointers this season than in his first eight seasons combined.
Of course, we know Gasol isn't just a one-trick pony, as he proves every time he steps on the court that there might not be another big man with quite as many tricks. He has 22 assists over his past three games, as he has been forced to take on a larger playmaking role than ever with Mike Conley sidelined by a back injury. For the season, Gasol is averaging 19.2 points, 6.0 rebounds and 4.2 assists per game, with everything but the rebounds representing the best rates of his career.
That he has done all of this less than a year removed from a serious foot injury makes this that much more impressive, but also serves as a black cloud over the whole affair. As Brook Lopez, Yao Ming and Joel Embiid among many others can attest, foot injuries tend to come in bunches. You might wince every time Gasol goes down to the floor or steps on someone's foot, but as long as he is healthy, Gasol has re-established himself after his absence as one of the most well-rounded big men in the league. Hold.
I've been skeptical about Bradley Beal for years, and not without reason. There has always been a lot to like about his game, but he has often struggled to put it all together. Injuries haven't helped, obviously, but that doesn't explain all of it. Beal has also just had pretty rotten shot selection. For someone as athletic as Beal, he has too often found himself driving into no man's land, unable to get to the rim and forced to take low-percentage mid-range shots.
Beal is taking fewer of those shots than ever this season, as 65.5 percent of his field-goal attempts have come from either 3-point range or within 3 feet of the rim. It is no surprise, then, that Beal is enjoying the best season of his career, averaging 21.4 points per game, while shooting 41.5 percent from 3-point range on 2.9 makes per game.
It's never been a question of talent with Beal. It's been about shot selection and health. The latter will always be an issue, given the nature of his stress-related leg injuries. However, Beal can control his shot selection, and that has moved in the right direction for a third season in a row. If you want reason for even more confidence, how about this: Beal, a career 62.2 percent shooter within 3 feet of the rim, is at just 51.4 percent this season. If he improves on that, the sky is the limit. Buy.
I've got several hundred words about the things that have gone wrong for the Magic lately, but I'll try to get on the city of Orlando's good side with a few hundred about the best thing about this team right now: Serge Ibaka is starting to look like himself again.
There was a lot of talk about Ibaka's slow start in Orlando, given how much they gave to acquire him. Through his first 10 games of the season, Ibaka had just one game with more than two blocks, and was averaging just 13.8 points, 6.6 rebounds and 1.2 blocks per game. He was shooting well from the field overall, but was still struggling to make much of an impact while searching for his place on the floor.
However, he has rediscovered his bounce lately, blocking at least three shots in all but three games, and averaging 1.0 steals to go with his 2.9 blocks. Add in 1.4 3-pointers to go with his 15.5 points, and Ibaka is looking an awful lot like the guy the Magic were hoping to get this season. And their .500 record over the past 10 even counts as a major improvement. In some ways, things are finally sort of starting to look up in Orlando. Buy.
Kentavious Caldwell-Pope's overall numbers look almost unchanged from last year right now. A few more assists, a few fewer steals, but for the most part, he looks a lot like the guy he was in his third season. However, it is worth noting that Caldwell-Pope got off to a pretty slow start, averaging just 12.9 points per game in the first 14, while shooting just 37.9 percent from the field in those games. He has been much improved over the past two weeks, canning 47.2 percent of his shots, including 40.0 percent of his 3-pointers en route to 17.9 points, 4.6 rebounds and 3.6 assists per game in his past nine games.
Those would be far and away the best numbers of Caldwell-Pope's career, and the 3-point shooting is especially important, because he has always seemed like he should be a better shooter than he is. If he can be an above-average shooter, Caldwell-Pope has a real opportunity to break out. Whether he will remains to be seen, however, making him a sell-high candidate to this point. Sell.
The Wizards are a mess, but it's not all bad news in Washington: In addition to Beal and Wall playing at perhaps the highest levels of their careers, Otto Porter is really blossoming into a nice player.
Porter's scoring is up from 11.6 to 14.4 points per game, but he is taking only 1.3 more shots per game, a good indicator of just how much more efficient he has been. Porter is making 60 percent of his 2-pointers and 41.7 percent of his 3-pointers, both of which would be the best numbers of his career by a healthy margin.
The question is, are we witnessing a true breakout season from a 23-year-old former No. 3 overall pick, or just a hot month and a half. I'm inclined to say the latter is closer to the truth, but Porter didn't have a single month last season where he averaged more than 12.6 points per game, while his newfound hot shooting touch actually dates back to last year's All-Star break, as he hit 44.7 percent of his 3-pointers in the final 31 games of the season.
This might just be a fluke -- Porter is returning close to first-round value in Rotisserie leagues right now -- making him a moderate sell-high candidate. On the other hand, Porter is hardly a big enough name that people are going to beat down your door to get him, so he still might have more value on your roster than in trade. Sell.
Stock Down
Rajon Rondo has always been the kind of player most charitably described as "mercurial," and we've seen him butt heads with teammates and coaches in the past. His time in Dallas a few years back in particular was marred by personality clashes, and Rondo ultimately found himself benched during a playoff series loss to the Rockets. Things haven't reached that point in Chicago yet, but Rondo was suspended this week for conduct detrimental to the team, and returned to action with just 10 points, three rebounds and two assists in a loss to the Pistons.
At his best, Rondo's passing acumen gives you a big head start in the assist categories, but he hasn't even been doing that for you this season; Rondo has just four games with 10 or more assists in 18 games, compared to 51 in 72 games last year.
If he isn't racking up huge assist numbers, Rondo has little to offer to Fantasy players, and it's hard to see how he gets back to the days of nightly triple-double watches when playing next to Dwyane Wade and Jimmy Butler. As an assists specialist, Rondo still has value, but he's looking like a pretty big bust so far. Sell.
The Pacers' decision to sign Monta Ellis didn't make much sense at the time, and it isn't a decision that is aging particularly well either. Once a reliable Fantasy contributor across the board thanks to the sheer volume with which he accrued numbers, Ellis has taken more and more of a backseat in Indiana, and he pretty clearly doesn't have the skill set to make up for a any drop in usage. He is averaging just 10.4 points and 3.9 assists per game for the season, and his numbers have gotten even worse over the last few weeks.
Ellis hasn't recorded more than three assists in a game since Nov. 20, and just isn't doing much ballhandling these days while playing next to Jeff Teague. Ellis' value has been declining for years, and it isn't crazy to think about dropping him. Sell.
I don't know if the Magic just aren't any good at developing young players, but Elfrid Payton is the first of two recent lottery picks for the Magic seemingly trending in the wrong direction. Payton was recently benched, and the good news is, his production hasn't really taken a hit. The bad news is, well, his production remains lacking; in six games off the bench, Payton is still averaging just 10.7 points, 4.7 assists and 1.7 steals, despite logging 27.1 minutes per game.
He is one of the worst shooters at his position and, unlike Ricky Rubio to name one extreme example, Payton doesn't really do enough else well to make up for his deficiencies. Payton is still worth a roster spot in most leagues, but it's hard to expect much improvement after three years of nearly identical production. Hold.
The idea of Aaron Gordon has always been a lot more interesting than the reality. It's not hard to see him taking a step forward and becoming an all-around monster, stuffing the stat sheet like a prime Shawn Marion. And, at just 21 years old, it's far too early to write Gordon off for the long run. But it's getting harder to expect that to happen this season, as Gordon continues to flounder in a less-than-ideal situation in Orlando.
He remains interesting as a potential playmaking stretch four, but he isn't playing power forward much, and remains a work in progress as a playmaker. Gordon still makes sense as a buy-low candidate of sorts, but I wouldn't blame you if you decided he wasn't even worth a roster spot at this point either. Buy.
Even at the best of times, Jahlil Okafor has not (yet!) been a player Fantasy owners can get easily excited about. His soft touch and deft footwork can lead to some nifty scores out of the post, but a lack of range, an inability to get to the free-throw line, and an utter lack of secondary skills has mostly limited Okafor's impact even when he has been on the floor. He is averaging just 18.3 points and 7.1 rebounds per 36 minutes, and injuries and the only sightly unlikely emergence of Joel Embiid as a legitimate superstar have limited Okafor to just one appearance with more than 30 minutes so far.
Okafor could play more minutes moving forward, but Embiid has already had his minutes restriction raised to 28 minutes, and the 76ers could have Nerlens Noel back on the floor within the next few weeks. Add it all up, and Okafor hardly looks rosterable on some nights. Sell.
