Angle Fantasy Basketball

A lot to talk about today from the NBA to the NCAA. Do we have a new best dynamic duo in the NBA? Is Zion Williamson cooked due to injuries? Who is Isaiah Collier’s NBA comparison? Let’s find out.

Brighter Days 

Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey may surpass Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray as the best 2 man game in the NBA. Some, including myself, think the Philly duo has already surpassed Jokic and Murray. As much beef as there is between Embiid and Jokic fans regarding the MVP debate it is amusing to see Embiid’s team basically adopt the same philosophy as Jokic’s team. Use your MVP big man as the offensive hub and have a former Kentucky guard to pair with them. Obviously it is far more in depth than that, but it seems more than coincidental we have the two most recent MVPs partnered with former Kentucky guards to form the best two man games in the NBA. As we saw last year in the playoffs, the two man game of Jokic and Murray became far better than it was in the regular season. Does this mean Maxey and Embiid potentially have another level they can get to? The similarities between the two teams go beyond their dominant duos as well. They both have supporting third scorer option forwards in Michael Porter Jr. for Denver and Tobias Harris for Philly. Both offenses feature tons of off ball screening and cutting actions around the star big men. Those who know me know I am very outspoken in my opinion that Doc Rivers is not a good NBA coach. Doc’s decision making plus James Harden being a black hole on offense made Philly one of the most unbearable teams to watch that season. Take away those two glaring problems and Philly is now one of the most exciting teams to watch in the league. They did it through getting rid of things that didn’t work instead of acquiring more assets to force the situation to work. Something their recent trade partners the Los Angeles Clippers should learn from, and something I’ve already seen the Lakers learn from when they got rid of Russel Westbrook at the trade deadline last year following his abysmal stint with the Lakers to acquire better fitting pieces. Sending the house for a star isn’t always the answer.

Doctor’s Orders

We need to talk about what’s going on with Zion Williamson. I was just as hyped as everyone else during the “Zion Mania’ that followed his NCAA career at Duke as well as his NBA draft leadup. To be perfectly honest, it feels as though we have already seen Zion Williamson’s peak. This peak started in the Bubble during the 19-20 season and carried over to 61 games in the 20-21 season. During this period of time, Zion was as close to unguardable as anyone can be. This was then followed by only 29 combined appearances from 2021 to 2023. This season we finally got Zion back, for now. However, Zion looks so slow. The man that burst through his shoe due to sheer athleticism in college appears to be gone. There was always going to be a tradeoff with Zion. The extremely unique athleticism along with his body type was always going to come with the caveat that his body won’t be able to support that athleticism over the course of an 82 game season. A medical doctor that has a popular YouTube channel covering sports injuries raised all sorts of red flags regarding Zion’s health risks before his NBA career seriously got under way. Check out that video here. A big factor looked at in the video with Zion is his gait, better known as a person’s manner of walking. The video is 4 years old, but looking back on it now, this guy called it. Now we are essentially left with a reduced version of Zion which likely is the only version of him that can last a decent amount of an 82 game season. The legendary field goal percentage and high scoring we enjoyed from Zion as a fantasy asset has been downgraded. This is now causing poor free throw percentage, nonexistent three pointers and poor defensive numbers to become more of a problem without the high production in other areas to offset this. In the right punt Zion is still easily a top 100 player, but I seriously have my doubts Zion will beat his Fantrax ADP of 47.91 for any fantasy managers that took him near that range, including myself (I took him 59th in one league). I do not want to call this a buy low opportunity because he looks too diminished physically to suggest a major bounce back.

Isaiah Collier Player Comparison

On Tuesday night of this week, Angle Analysts Andrew and Mitchell attended USC v UC Irvine together to watch top 5 projected pick Isaiah Collier. Later this week you will see a video from us at the game where we share our analysis. The game was a brutal loss for USC as they struggled without team captain Kobe Johnson and leading scorer Boogie Ellis. Collier was bad in the first half but had a much better 2nd half. To be honest I feel like we witnessed what will be one of the worst games for Collier this season. So it is very important to not let that bias our take on him and continue to monitor him moving forward. At the end of the video, Mitch and I tried to give you our very early NBA player comparison for Collier. Mitchell said Jaden Ivey and I said Eric Bledsoe. In the video you will see our explanations as to why. However, I want to add a couple of things. I think the comparisons Mitch and I gave for Collier are more for his floor, not his ceiling. At least from the game we saw, Collier’s play style seems more old school than what the modern NBA does. So I wanted to take some time to search NBA players that were in their prime more than a decade ago to come up with a better comparison for Collier’s ceiling. Collier’s ceiling comparison is young Dwayne Wade. Watch some Wade highlights from his first three years in the league and then watch Collier play for the rest of this NCAA season. Let me know how you feel about our comparisons. If you have a comparison you would like to share, please do!