Angle Fantasy Basketball

There’s been a couple of trades this week! Siakam is an excellent fit for the Pacers offense and provides more length to their defense. Bruce Brown (now in Toronto) and Aaron Nesmith are both under 6’6. Obi Toppin and Jalen Smith are mediocre defenders at best. Siakam brings more length than the better Pacers defenders as well as better overall defense than most of the Pacers frontcourt. Fantasy wise I think we can see more of the same or even better from Pascal because the Pacers didn’t have many high usage players to begin with. We also saw Marvin Bagley and Isaiah Livers head to Washington. Bagley was in a crowded frontcourt in Detroit. Now he is on a team with one of the thinnest frontcourts in the league. Expect him to be a decent source of points and rebounds the rest of the way even when Gafford returns.

Foreign Imports

The competition from players across Europe is really beginning to heat up. For starters, a lot of the first round of this 2024 draft class are players from overseas. None are Americans just playing overseas such as LaMelo Ball did. There are also signed free agents such as Simone Fontecchio of the Utah Jazz and Duop Reath of the Portland Trail Blazers. Both always perform well for their respective countries Italy and Australia during FIBA competitions. Both have also had 12 team streaming appeal throughout the course of this NBA season. For deep league dynasty managers, adding these guys only cost FAAB. That is great value for players that fill out your bench well. Keeping an extremely close eye on standout performances in FIBA competitions is important.

Fontecchio is not a rookie unlike Reath. Simone was on the Jazz last year as well but didn’t play nearly as much as he has this year. Reath would have been more buried on the depth chart if not for Robert Williams getting injured. It seems as though teams prefer to give these international imports a year to adjust before increasing their minutes. This may be the case for rookies Sasha Vezenkov and Vasilije Micic, who have played about as much this season as Fontecchio did last season. What makes Micic and Vezenkov different is they were drafted and had their signing rights owned by NBA teams. It is easier to grab guys like this as opposed to Fontecchio and Reath who just came in as free agents. Players in Europe who have their draft rights owned by a NBA team are available to grab right now on platforms such as Fantrax. These players when they officially sign with teams should only be free agents and not included in a dynasty rookie draft. If you are a tanking team with not many assets to work with in a deep dynasty league it is worth it to research some of these players overseas that were drafted by NBA teams. You can stash these guys now before they officially sign with their respective NBA teams. Especially when the NBA starts adding expansion teams, which is likely to happen, more of these European stashes will begin coming over to fill the extra roster spots.