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There probably won't be a reason for this show next week, so let's call this the last Add, Drop or Hold of the season. Better make it count!
PLAYERS COVERED: Jay Huff, Nickeil Alexander-Walker, Quentin Grimes, Kyle Filipowski, Julian Reese, Immanuel Quickley, De'Aaron Fox, Dillon Brooks, Franz Wagner
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Every team, every topic, everywhere. This is believed.
So I think this might be the last one of these guys winding it out.
Not last show.
Last ad drop or hold edition of old man squad presented by fan dual.
And the fan dual sports book. I'm Dan Bespritz. It is indeed a drop hold day here on the show.
And it's winding out so much that I didn't even have ten names to talk about.
We got nine though.
And even that's a little bit of a stretch.
Because it's just you roto die hards basically at this point.
Love you guys. Keep going. Rollin on through. Remember we go all off season long as well.
So plenty of shows upcoming. Let's get right into the names that we need to discuss on today's program.
D nift with a son emoji.
Says J. Huff.
For a long time this year, J. Huff was a pillar of consistent and consistency.
No matter what he was doing over any month span, he was basically number 100.
But I fear that those days are done with the Pacers flexing regular starters into and out of lineups.
Keeping minutes in check when games are in jeopardy of being accidentally won.
And Huff's blocks have also receded alongside all this other stuff going on.
And so over the last two weeks, J is outside the top one 50 in 22 minutes per game is about nine and a half points per game.
Four boards, couple of assists around two, three pointers under one block per game.
It's worse than that over the last single week where he's playing only 18 minutes per game.
And that's why J. Huff can be dropped because there's no consistency to any of this anymore.
He played 32 minutes against the Lakers because everybody plays a bunch of minutes when they play the Lakers.
Since then played 20 minutes against the clippers 16 against the heat and then 17 against the Chicago Bulls.
Lakers, they don't play the Lakers again, by the way.
So if you're thinking, oh, maybe there's a game blended in there where they're going to let J. Huff cut loose.
Maybe, but trying to point to it and get do the, you know, decaprio meme from Wolf of Wall Street.
You guys know the one.
I don't think there's that obvious game remaining for Huff.
He's wildly overrastered right now considering how completely inconsistent he's been.
Really since the Pacers started bouncing starters into and out of the lineup again.
It's been about three weeks over that span.
When all of a sudden he went from playing 25 minutes or more almost every single game to 25 minutes or more literally one time since March 12th.
14 16 20 22 21 18 28.
Sorry, two times 32.
There's a back to back in there.
Very good one.
Not a back back games, not back back days.
It was back to back games.
2016 and 17 so two out of his last one to three four five six seven eight nine 10 11 games.
He's played enough minutes to where we can say, yeah, he'll probably have fantasy value.
By the way, in those two games, he kind of only had fantasy value in one of them anyway.
He's had a couple of better shooting nights blended in there, but with the minutes down.
There's just no way to guarantee he's going to get enough blocks to float his value.
So J Huff.
You are a drop.
Six says Nikhil Alexander Walker.
And I'm not really sure why this name pops up on the list, but we'll talk about it anyway.
He's number 30 in all of fantasy basketball this year.
And he's actually been a first rounder over the last month.
So I don't think that this is a case of.
Do we want to do a drop hold?
I think this is the case of six here.
Just wanting to talk about how good.
Alexander Walker's been early this year.
His value was tied to the fact that tray young went down.
And so there was just a ton of extra usage, but.
The hawks got rid of tray young.
They brought in CJ McCollum, who's much more of a shooting guard, small forward than a point guard.
And that's slid Jalen Johnson, Dyson Daniels, Nikhil Alexander Walker.
It's led point guard role to all of those guys in some capacity.
And you can see the difference in how the stats shake out.
Alexander Walker has actually been a second rounder for two months.
Basically since the tray young trade went down, he's been a top 20 fantasy player.
Pretty amazing stuff.
That's where he's been for half the season now.
Here, look at this.
Last 40 games.
Alexander Walker's number 13 in nine cat.
21 points, three threes, three and a half boards, four assists, 1.6 steals on.
46% from the field and a brilliant 94% at the free throw line.
All the stuff that we didn't really ever know was in him.
Has been unlocked in Atlanta.
And the funny part is too, like.
You see that last 41 games like half the season effectively.
He's number 13 overall.
He's number 30 earlier this year, the big difference for him.
Yeah, I mean, the free throws have been better lately.
The big difference is that.
The sample size.
Like the numbers themselves are not that different.
21 points, three and a half boards, little under four assists.
If you look at the last three months, 21 points, three and a four.
It's just over four assists, steals are a little bit higher.
It's mostly that a lot of guys that were inside the top 30 earlier this year,
just stopped playing.
So that's actually been really helpful for him.
But the tray young absence, like it unglued him.
He was glued to whatever the old Alexander Walker was.
And that guy is gone.
I think maybe the talking point for Nikhil should be where he's going to get drafted next year.
Because it's not like the Dyson Daniels phenomenon where his value was completely tied up in one category.
That if that category went down by any meaningful number,
his value falls from second round to, you know, fifth round or whatever.
I think he's end of fourth round right now, which interestingly,
that's right where he said we should draft him.
That's fun.
That all came back around.
Didn't it?
But his deals are down from three to two.
For Alexander Walker, if you're looking at all the stuff this year,
there really isn't anything that you're like, well, that doesn't seem particularly sustainable.
Because as long as he gets the usage, he's getting right now.
This stuff is all stuff that he could do again.
And two turnovers, like you're not pointing at that and going all that's super weird
or that's where a lot of the value is tied up.
No, turnovers have been fine.
Free throw number is obviously very high, but he never had.
A free throw rate anywhere close to what we're seeing this year.
But field goal percent is all pretty close to where it's been the last two to three seasons.
Three point percent has actually been on the rise.
It's just that the volume went way up.
He's been a 38, 39, 40 percent three point shooter for three years in a row.
The free throw is the big jump, taking four a game instead of 1.4.
He was around 80 percent prior to this year.
And now he's at 90.
Does that hold?
I don't know.
Steel's rate has also gone up, although it also kind of always felt like if he got full starters minutes, he'd be around 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, something like that.
He just never really had the chance to and then last year in Minnesota.
He finally played some more minutes and the steel rate went down.
But like again, you watch him play.
You watch the way the Hawks play.
It doesn't feel like the Steel's rate is about to drop off.
The assists are up because he's playing on a team that sort of everybody is a point card.
Jalen Johnson point forward kind of being the best example of that.
This guy feels like he's a dude that could put up their ground value again.
Where would I draft him next year?
I think I'd obviously try to get him back of that if possible.
I have no idea where he's going to get picked, but my guess would be he probably gets drafted in the 40s or 50s.
And that feels kind of safe and fair.
E-Eller Brock says Quentin Grimes.
Well, this one, I don't think we have to spend a lot of time on.
He's a Dumpo.
Dumpo.
Send him into the river.
Quentin Grimes over the last two weeks is number 81.
And then a bunch of his teammates came back this last week and he's dropped outside the top 200 since that happened.
He's 10 points, three boards, three assists, no defensive stats, two threes on not outrate.
Not great, but not awful percentages.
Kind of like slightly sub average.
There's no usage for him left.
Not a chance.
Like there's absolutely no way that this is going to work out.
Paul George is playing Tyrese.
Maxi is playing VJ.
Edge comes playing Joe on the beat is sick.
Although it sounds like he doesn't feel like he's sick.
I don't know.
Whatever.
Like four guys in front of him and Kelly Ubrey.
Also back, I should mention.
Five guys in front of Quentin Grimes in the pecking order.
No, you don't want a team's sixth option if they're not elite in one of the hard to find fantasy categories.
This is a really easy call.
I'd love to talk more about Grimes, but with the whole team back, there's absolutely no reason why you need to be rostering Quentin Grimes.
This is a super easy one.
We can move on.
Two Kyle Philipowski who's been kind of tough to figure out minutes have bounced around when he's played big minutes.
He's put up great numbers.
The minutes were super low a week ago.
And now they've come roaring back and are honestly super high, but almost the highest they've been at any point all year.
But for like a three games stretch right at the beginning of March where they were like, yeah, yeah, yeah, go ahead, you know, cut a loose bud.
And then they rained him in.
And now he's kind of partially cut loose again last four ball games 25 29 24 31 minutes.
He's scoring 25 26 20 25 points in those games.
He's averaging 10 rebounds.
He's at three and a half four assists in those games.
He has five steals and two blocks over those games.
He has 10 three's over those four games.
Sorry, not two games four games.
Philipowski's been on a vicious tear.
Now that it's pretty easy to say that the field goal percent is not going to hold as high as it's been.
Is it 64% over the last week.
So that'll drag down a bunch of stuff with it.
And the scoring will get dragged down as well.
But all of a sudden they're letting him play.
And he looks amazing.
You can see the stats on your screen, YouTubers, but traditional pod listeners.
Top 10 per game numbers for Philipowski over the last week 24 10 and four.
1.8 combined defensive stats two and a half threes on 64 80 splits with only 1.3 turnovers.
He is hammer dunking on the fantasy universe in the way that we all kind of wanted it to be.
Utah's been a little finicky at times with whether or not he's going to get the full minutes.
But he's getting him right now.
And so Philipowski is very much a hard ad.
Big ad mega ad with obviously the knowledge that he goes back to being like the fifth string center when the jazz are healthy to start next season.
But who the hell cares about that.
Just basically don't be fooled into drafting him going in the next year because you got the likes of Larry Markin and JJJ and Walker Kessler and on and on and on.
Like the jazz are actually going to be a pretty fun team to start next season.
It's just not going to be because of the guys doing stuff right now.
The nice thing about Utah right now is that they finally paired it down and like seven guys are playing huge minutes.
That's fantastic.
That's all we want from tanking teams.
Pick your four, five, six,
Rediculo tankers and play them all the minutes you can find.
Thank you, Utah.
Finally doing it.
Maybe we can get EJ Harkelis back and get him into the mix as well.
But Philipowski.
Yeah, pretty big time ad hold.
He's been great.
Casey Hoosier's.
Oh, I forgot to say that James Mnarris was the submitter on Philipowski.
Casey Hoosier says Julian Reese.
Yeah, I've almost been suckered into the Julian Reese thing a couple of times.
But he's not playing.
That's the big issue there.
If you knew the day he was actually going to get into the lineup, you can almost guarantee he's going to see gigantic minutes.
But figuring out exactly when that's going to be is a bit confusing.
He's on a two way contract.
Pretty sure that he can play in every remaining game if they wanted him to.
So maybe we take a peek at what's coming up there on it.
They're on like a three day break right now.
So like if you're in head to head, not something you need to worry about.
Frankly, if you're in roto, not something you need to worry about because they don't play again until Saturday.
And when Wednesday, Saturday, but like if you look at the Julian Reese game log.
It's all over the map.
He played four games in early March, then he took three off.
Then he played a game against the Warriors on the 16th and he was off for four games.
They played on the 25th, missed the 27th, played the 29th, missed the 30th and first.
And he again, like eligibility wise, this is the time they could drop him in if they wanted to.
So, you know, I'll say like from an intrigue standpoint, he's a monster of a rebounder.
And see quite clearly in the limited amount of playing time he's gotten.
You know, anytime he's cleared 30 minutes, he's put a big rebound numbers.
8, 2017 and 13.
When he's cleared 30 minutes, those are his rebounding numbers.
That's huge.
8 is the only one of those you heard that was under 10.
8 was the only one of those you heard that was under 13.
The rest of his stuff is a big question mark.
I think you can assume he'll be okay from a field goal percent standpoint.
I don't expect him to take a bunch of shots from the perimeter.
He hasn't, I don't think he's even attempted a three pointer this year.
I'm not expecting a ton of defensive stats, even in the big minutes games.
He hasn't gotten many of those.
You know, he had a one block two steel game blended in the area at a three steel game one time.
But he also had a couple of zeros.
I mean, is it going to be enough?
Yeah, maybe another guy who's wildly overrastered because of a couple of good ball games.
Here's what I would say.
If you're a, you know, if you're in a rodeo league, if you're in a head to head league,
I don't think you can do anything with him until you find out if he's actually going to,
if the plan is to play him in all the ball games.
If you're in a rodeo league and you wanted to get out in front of it.
Go for it because like if he plays, he's generally gone 25 to 33 even 39 minutes a couple of times.
They haven't played him and not played him pretty big minutes.
So from a games cap standpoint, that makes him a relatively safe quote unquote option.
Because either you're going to get a zero, which means he doesn't play and he doesn't count against your games cap.
Or he's going to play 28 to 38 minutes and he's going to get you a crap ton of rebounds.
Like you don't want us to pick up a guy who's going to play 14 minutes and you're like,
well, where the hell did that come from?
I don't think that's the plan here with Reese.
If he's going to get in, it seems like they're going to play him a bunch.
So go ahead.
I'm going to call him an ad in games cap leagues.
Let's see what happens on the fourth fifth.
They've got a back to back against Miami and Brooklyn and then Chicago on the seventh.
You know, these are high octane teams semi tanking teams mixed in there.
I like Reese for a games cap play understanding that you might get a handful of zeros.
Squished in there as well.
It's an interesting one.
That's why we spent a little bit more time on it.
Guys, if you think the Celtics win the finals are plus 600 over at Fandule right now.
Caves, interestingly, have the fourth highest odds to win the title at plus 950.
That's a weird one.
Because honestly, they haven't looked that great to me.
Thunder plus 135 spurs plus 550.
If you think the Lakers go on a heroic run there at plus 3000.
Hornets plus 6500.
Hawks plus 17,500.
They're streaking.
Yeah, maybe not the greatest idea on earth.
That's again over at Fandule and the Fandule sports book, who's the next name on the list.
A manual quickly.
This is a tough one, because he's missed a handful of games in a row now.
And this is a type of year where you don't really want to roster guys that aren't playing.
He's getting ruled out a day in advance.
That's a bad sign.
He did get out of his walking boot on Wednesday.
And they haven't yet issued any kind of timetable for his return.
Thing is, like, if you're in a head to head league, what the hell are you still doing playing right now?
If you're in a head to head league, obviously, you just drop, like, don't take zeros.
And if you're in a games cap league, he should be IL eligible.
So I would say hold on because even if you get only a couple of games at a quickly to finish off the season,
it's better than whatever you're going to pick up off the wire.
He's a top 50 guy this year.
So I would say hold and just pray like he might not play the rest of the season.
It's very quite conceivable that, you know, they got Memphis Friday night and then five games after that Boston on Sunday.
They might not play the rest of the regular season.
But how much does it hurt you in a games cap format to squat on a top 50 60 type of guy in the hopes that he plays.
Even if he doesn't.
Do you not have enough healthy guys to hit your games cap?
If that's the case, then you have to move on for the same reason that you do in head to head like you just.
If that's what's going on with your roto team right now, that you can't hit the games cap.
You need to go get somebody who's actually playing that even matter who they are.
I think if you three points in three rebounds, still better than zeros, it's something.
Then obviously you kick yourself in the butt if quickly comes back and plays the final three.
But like you know your team, you know your team.
I don't I would hold on to him as long as I possibly could.
But maybe you have like two guys ranked higher or three guys ranked higher than quickly that are also out for your team.
Maybe you're waiting on Steph Curry or Anthony Edwards or Cade or MB or someone who might show up again.
Jalen Brunson who got a rest day.
But there aren't that many guys ahead of quickly where you're like, well they won't they play the rest of this year.
Most of them you're kind of like, yeah, that guy's probably out.
That guy's probably out like Cade, he got, he's going to be re-evaluated in a week.
That's the end of the year.
So you know how many of these guys but ahead of quickly are you like, well, I don't know maybe I can squeeze three games out of them if they come back.
He's one of the top ranked.
Will they won't they guys in the league right now.
So this is a long post from Joey, but the name embedded in it is deer and fox.
And the question is what the hell do I do with the ear and fox and the answer was probably shouldn't drafted him, but that doesn't help you now.
Number 83 on the season.
Honestly, at this point, he's almost become like a role player around Victor, Wemba Nyama, Stefan Castle.
And then you know, you got all the guys that are stream level and lately Fox has been among them.
But he's a guy you hold on to because he's still at the end of the day.
He's still the Aaron Fox and he's in a little bit of a minor shooting funk and Wemba is on a major tear at the moment.
He's been the number one player in fantasy over the last three weeks.
He's been in the number one player in fantasy over the last two weeks.
He's been the number two player in fantasy over the last week.
We're seeing an uptick in Wemba usage that has been at the expense of mostly the Aaron Fox, who's playing 23 minutes of game over the last week.
Because this person just whipping everybody and Fox's rotation doesn't put him back into the game until you know the last whatever it is 78 minutes.
So he's getting hurt more than the other guys.
So I'm going to hold on to Aaron Fox. He's on a bad week.
He's not a guy that's going to get drafted very high next year because of how incredibly disappointing he's been this season.
But again, it's another situation where it's like there isn't this obvious dude you'll pick up on your wire.
That's going to be better than even a bad deer in Fox.
So I would hang on to him.
He's about as bad as he can be lately and he's still kind of like top one 30-ish range.
So I think I would I think I would just hang on and if you get some good games you do if you don't you don't but it's not an obvious like you got to drop this guy kind of situation.
And the final one this has two names in it but I wanted to talk about both of them and they were together so I'm gonna.
This style says Dylan Brooks and France Wagner thanks for picking up picking two names that I wanted to actually talk about on today's show.
Normally I don't normally I ignore the ones the posts that give two names at the same time but this time it happened to be two guys that I was interested in.
So Dylan Brooks is the quick one he's a no.
Brooks only had fantasy value this year when he was kind of like the last man standing remember he was taking about 2021 shots a game.
He's painfully inefficient from the field bad field goal percent guy just like a traditional chucker on offense doesn't really do much besides score.
He's a 21 points per game on the year but again a lot of that came when when Jalen Green was basically all of that came when Jalen Green was out.
Booker missed some time in there Grace Allen missed like a half of the games in there so Brooks was getting 2021 shots at night and he was still just barely squeezing into fantasy value.
And he just came back from injury and he played 22 minutes and he had nine points and five boards and he didn't get a steal and that's the other thing with Brooks is that for guy who's good defensively he doesn't get many defensive stats.
So Dylan is an easy one he's a no France Wagner is a slightly more complicated one and I lean towards yes.
Because with France at least when you at least you know that when he gets revved up to full minutes he's top 60 fantasy player.
He's like the very poor man's version of koai Leonard scores a little less threes a little less boards a little less assists a little less steals a little less box blocks a little less he's well-rounded.
But he's not great at any one thing but he's good at a bunch of stuff and for France you know there's going to be a minutes cap here coming back he played 20 in his first game since his return but I don't know two games from now he might be up to 24 25 and that should be enough for him to get inside the top 100 where guy like Dylan Brooks he's not there's just there's no pathway for him to get there.
I don't I don't care who has a good or a bad schedule makes absolutely no difference to me I think both these teams actually have a good schedule down the stretch Orlando still has one of the four five six games left as of doing this show Phoenix has five plus the Charlotte game depending on when you're listening to or watching the show.
Brooks is bad at fantasy Wagner is pretty good at fantasy that's that's the big gap there so France is an ad for me I don't again I don't know if it's his numbers are going to tick up in the Dallas game or New Orleans or Detroit game but I think at some point you're going to get two or three good ones out of France Wagner down the stretch and you're not going to get any good ones out of Dylan Brooks down the stretch because he's Dylan Brooks he doesn't have good fantasy action.
And that's that friends that's that is it the last ad dropper hold probably appreciate you guys hanging with us all season long on this new show format it seems like by and large it was a well liked one even if you're down the stretch in roto it's a little different slightly different monster to try to assess because schedule don't matter.
And hopefully we'll bring it on back next year I've been thinking through a lot like how I wanted to do the day to day during the week next season and I want our specialty shows to be injury board show relatively early in the week a by low sell high show mid week ad drop hold has been a really nice fun one that people have enjoyed so those three for sure.
I'm trying to think of the other one that really landed well this week and now I can't think of it off the top of my head I'll go through and look at all the shows and what everybody liked the most if you have ideas of shows that you think might hit feel free to throw them in the comments section this is the time of year when I can actually read that stuff because there's only a couple every day because
a lot of you guys are done but again I'll say it beginning say it at the end please hang with us all off season long that's where we do all of our prep and then we can come in guns blazing the following year and really crush it again I'm Dan best for old man squad fantasy basketball presented by fan dual thanks for watching listening mostly listening you guys.
If you liked the show please take a moment to rate review and subscribe it really does help the show to grow thank you for listening.
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