Sleepers and Undervalued

The concept of undervalued guys and sleepers is really all about the market. In fantasy hoops, the market isn’t nearly as efficient as fantasy football. If you’re in competitive fantasy football leagues compared to basketball ones, you’re way more likely to be surprised in a basketball league. In this column, I broke up the Undervalued guys as guys you’re looking to take in the middle rounds. The opportunity cost of taking these guys is much greater than for the Sleepers (and Deep Sleepers here). Basically, I would focus more on the Top 150 and our rankings to determine where you may want to pounce.

On the Sleepers, it’s a little easier to take a bunch of these guys. Once you get to about Pick 100 in your draft, who cares about the floor? Just take the ceiling outcomes, and you’ll have other opportunities to take more swings if they miss. While I mixed in some high-floor guys, I noted with each guy if they were more of a ceiling or floor play. Let’s get it!

Undervalued (guys you could get after 40 who could easily pay off their price tag)

OG Anunoby – Last year’s steals leader is quite an easy guy to like in category-based leagues, but the offense has really started to show. Anunoby has become one of the better volume C&S players in the league at 1.19 PPP, and he was in the top eight for transition efficiency among guys with 20 possessions (58 qualifiers). Of course, there’s a whole lot different for the Raptors heading into the 2023-24 season. No more Nick Nurse could shift some things around in a positive or negative way. Nurse viewed Anunoby as one of his main shooters with Fred VanVleet, so he could have an even bigger role from deep. We saw Anunoby create his own shot a decent bit with 30.2% of his makes coming unassisted (38.5% the year before), so more of that could come. On the downside, Nurse loved to live in transition, which was OG’s strong suit. Plus, the trade buzz could add some downside if they are going to choose to sit him or be more cautious. Either way, Anunoby’s value should be strong and it’s hard to imagine he burns you with his steals output.

Cameron Johnson – Johnson’s hamstring issue shouldn’t affect his availability for Opening Night, but those are never good. On the plus side, Johnson won’t be getting steam without the preseason buzz that I think he would certainly create. As a Net, we saw Johnson thrive as a ball-handler more often, as coach Jacque Vaughn let him mix in more PNR handling. There’s a chance that this is all a small sample of him crushing on 40 possessions because he was awful as a handler with the Suns, but hey. If he can get it going again, his Brooklyn efficiency didn’t pop because he couldn’t knock down his go-to C&S output, so he could be a huge plus offensively. With the Nets having some big holes on jump-shooting, Cam may really have to fire away with volume.

Jalen Williams – Well, we’re not going to be able to take him in the last round again. J-Dub was just out of this world to close out the season. After the break, Williams went for 19/5/4 on 55/43/88 shooting in a 22-game sample. Of course, OKC was missing a lot of key pieces to boost his usage, but the efficiency holding would be the key. After the break, he made an impressive 60.9% of his layups, and he was in the top 10th percentile on C&S post-break (68.1 eFG%, 165 qualifiers). He can score and he’s too good not to have a big role, which could really cut into Josh Giddey, Lu Dort, and others. OKC could also trim their rotation to give Williams an unusual amount of minutes from what we’ve seen from the Thunder. It’s tough to really reach on him, but betting on talent is something we always want to do.