The Shy Away List

As the old saying goes, don’t hate the player, hate the ADP. I mentioned in some of the content like Exploiting the Ranks on Yahoo and ESPN, but it feels like the market got a little sharper in the last couple of years. It seems like yesterday I could easily get to 40 guys to shy away from, but it’s just too tight to get that high.

As usual, the guys I’m mostly shying away from are veterans who have major missed-games risk. It’s how I always draft, and it works out more often than not. Besides that, another decent portion of these guys are players who just vastly underperform as category-based guys. The rest are guys I’m just not into or have low upside.

Kyrie Irving – It’s just all about games played on guys you’re taking in the top 30. Why take on that risk so early? Sure, Kyrie Irving’s minutes on the Mavs led the league, and a lot of his recent DNPs were due to off-court stuff. Still, even before the recent run, Kyrie was missing a ton of time for leg injuries. It’s a pretty easy fade when you can just take players with similar upside.

Kawhi Leonard – He just tore his meniscus in April, and we’re thinking this new rule is going to keep him on the court? Yeah, I’m not buying it. Sure, we know Kawhi has top-10 upside per game, but I’d rather shoot for a guy with top-15 upside and nowhere near the same amount of risk.

LeBron James – Besides the obvious 39th birthday coming in December, the quotes from the team and LeBron are setting him up to be managed. He’s played 1,421 games in the regular season and another 282 in the postseason. Even arguably the most durable ultra-athlete of all time just has to be managed.