Fantasy Impact: Making Sense Of Monday's Flurry Of NBA Trades

November 17, 2020

Justin Carter’s fantasy basketball analysis of the first day of trades ahead of the 2020-21 NBA season. These NBA players could be lineup sleepers and busts for fantasy basketball managers.

The NBA allowed trading to begin on Monday, and by the end of the night, the Milwaukee Bucks had reshaped their entire team, while the Rockets looked poised to begin a long rebuild.

With the NBA draft and the start of free agency on the horizon, let's try to make sense of what all of these moves mean, both in real life and for you, the fantasy basketball managers reading this content.

Ready? Let's get started.

The Bucks Are Going For It

The biggest takeaway of Monday's trades is that the Milwaukee Bucks are going all in on Giannis Antetokounmpo signing a supermax extension with the team. They had to make significant moves to ensure Giannis stuck around, but they've not put themselves in a position where their long-term future is in significant peril should the the Greek Freak wind up leaving anyways.

But again, they had to do this. Playing things out with the current team only to lose in the second round of the playoffs in 2021 was going to drive Giannis into the waiting arms of the Golden State Warriors or some other big market club. The Bucks had to do what it took to show they were dedicated to winning.

Well, this seems like a start:

The Bucks are giving up both 1) a lot of depth and 2) a lot of picks, but they're also going to have the best starting five in the Eastern Conference barring a deal that lands James Harden on an Eastern Conference team.

Offensively, Holiday will provide more scoring upside than Bledsoe did, plus more...well, everything, really. Bledsoe's an underrated player, but Holiday adds another dimension to this offense. He's a better three-point shooter than Bledsoe and should be in line for his most efficient season in awhile playing in this offense. The only real issue I see in terms of fantasy value for Holiday vs. where his value was at before is that the Bucks have shown some hesitance to play their starters heavy minutes. But maybe getting rid of their whole bench will help mitigate that and will keep Holiday over 30 minutes per game. Considering he's averaged at least 32 per game for four straight seasons, it's clear that he can handle that kind of workload. Hopefully the Bucks give it to him, or an uptick in efficiency will be offset by fewer opportunities to do things on a basketball court, which would ultimately drop his value just a bit.

The other addition for Milwaukee is Bogdan Bogdanovic. He's a clear upgrade over last year's fifth starter, Wesley Matthews. Matthews averaged 7.4 points, 2.5 rebounds, and 1.4 assists in 24.4 minutes per game. In Sacramento, Bogdanovic averaged 15.1 points, 3.4 rebounds, and 3.4 assists in 29.0 minutes per game. I think the way things shake out in Milwaukee is that Bogdanovic plays an amount of minutes more in line with his 2020 numbers and not Matthews's, but that his 22.6 usage rate winds up dropping a noticeable chunk. Not to the level of Matthews and his 12.5 usage rate last year, but probably somewhere in the upper teens. That definitely hurts Bogdanovic's value, but he'll still be significantly more productive than Matthews. I think his fantasy value in Sacramento was leaning towards mid-round value, while now I'd rather wait a couple more rounds to take him than I would have before.

How New Pieces Fit In Sacramento And New Orleans

The other side of these Bucks deals is how the players traded away from Milwaukee will work out on new teams. And for fantasy managers, that answer is...not great.

Let's start with the one player we can guarantee still has value: Eric Bledsoe. Bledsoe had been starting at point guard for the Bucks, but is likely to slot in as the two beside Lonzo Ball in New Orleans, as the Pelicans seem to be pretty committed to seeing if Lonzo can be their point guard going forward. If Bledsoe gets the same minutes in New Orleans that he did in Milwaukee, this would be a clear negative for his value. However, if the move to shooting guard is accompanied by an uptick in minutes that sees Bledsoe average 30-plus minutes for the first time since the 2017-18 season, a drop in assists can be made up for by higher scoring numbers. Considering the main reason for a reduction in minutes with the Bucks was the coaching staff playing the bench too much, I'm going to assume Bledsoe does play more. He projects to be a solid mid-round fantasy pick.

The other piece in New Orleans -- aside from all of those draft picks, which will be pretty valuable down the line -- is George Hill. Hill's 34 years old. He led the league with a 46 percent shooting mark from three last year, but also played his fewest minutes per game since his rookie season with the Spurs. Hill's going to have value as a three-point specialist, but his minutes won't be high enough for him to really be an every day fantasy play. Especially with Bledsoe being able to slide over to the one when Ball sits, it's likely we see even less of Hill than we did in Milwaukee last year. Late round flyer pick, but without a ton of upside, so I think there's better players you can go after.

The Sacramento end of things is tougher to deduce. Bogdanovic wasn't the asset that Holiday was, so what the Kings got back was more of a collection of guys who might have upside, but really were just needed to make the sign-and-trade work.

Donte DiVincenzo was the main get for the Kings. The third-year guard started 24 games in Milwaukee last season, averaging 9.2 points, 4.8 rebounds, 2.3 assists, and 1.3 steals per game while shooting 45.5 percent from the floor. He'll likely slot in as a bench player with Buddy Hield moving into the starting five. He'll probably get some decent run, but not enough to justify him as more than a late-round flyer, albeit one with more upside than the aforementioned George Hill.

Ersan Ilyasova and D.J. Wilson will join a crowded collection of bigs. Ilyasova's shooting touch will earn him some minutes, but his production won't be consistent enough for me to draft him anywhere. And Wilson is still young and could stick in the NBA, but it's really hard to see any path to relevant minutes for him unless a lot of things change in Sacramento. He's not on my fantasy radar at all right now.

What Are The Rockets Doing?

On the surface, the Rockets only actually did one thing on Monday, which was send Robert Covington to the Trail Blazers for Trevor Ariza and two first round picks.

But this trade seems significant because it signals that the Rockets might be realizing that the writing is on the wall for them.

First, Covington's fit in Portland: it'll be good. Covington is one of the NBA's best three-and-D players and projects to immediately move into the starting lineup for Portland, where he'll provide strong numbers on both sides of the ball. Covington plays a well-rounded game and doesn't need a ton of shooting opportunities to produce, so even on a slightly crowded Blazers club, he should continue to post productive stat lines, especially in steals and blocks.

But on the Houston side of this, yikes. Trevor Ariza's been a good player in the past and can provide you with a worse version of what you'd get with RoCo, but he's pretty clearly on the downside of his career. He's a low ceiling late round fantasy pick.

Trading Covington away also forces us to talk about something else, though: James Harden.

ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski has reported that Harden wants out of Houston. Harden reportedly turned down a contract extension from the team and has made it clear to management that he wants to play for the Brooklyn Nets. Nothing is imminent and Harden being under contract still for multiple seasons means Houston's hand isn't being forced yet, but it's a situation that is clearly worth monitoring, and trading away a key piece like Covington that makes your current team competitive for draft picks is a sign that maybe you aren't planning to be as competitive. Houston needed to recoup some draft assets after giving most of them away a year ago to acquire Russell Westbrook (who also wants traded!), so this doesn't mean a Harden deal is imminent or anything. But as I said, it's something worth monitoring.

Oh Yeah, Chris Paul Got Traded Too!

Almost forgot about the fact that one of the greatest point guards in NBA history got traded on Monday, didn't we?

Chris Paul is now a member of the Phoenix Suns, where he pairs with Devin Booker in the most interesting backcourt in the NBA. (Key word: "interesting," because this could end up going an untold number of ways.")

The Thunder get Ricky Rubio, Kelly Oubre Jr., Ty Jerome, Jalen Lecque, and a 2022 first in the deal.

Paul should continue being Chris Paul in Phoenix. Having Devin Booker on the receiving end of his passes will keep the assist numbers up, and while he may cede some scoring to Booker, Chris Paul posting something closer to his 15.6 points per game his last year in Houston with James Harden instead of the 17.6 points per game he posted last year isn't enough of a drop to keep Paul out of the top tier of fantasy point guards, especially if he's able to get back to averaging eight-plus assists per game.

On the Thunder end, lot of moving pieces, but Rubio and Oubre are the two players who can have an instant impact.  Oubre averaged a career-high 18.7 points per game last season along with 6.4 rebounds while shooting 35.2 percent from three. Provided Oubre is fully healthy after a knee injury last year, he should provide similar production to what he gave the Suns last season, which was 18.7 points and 6.4 rebounds per game. Maybe the scoring falls off a little, but this Thunder team will need to find offense somewhere, so why not from Oubre?

As for Rubio, he averaged 13.8 points, 8.8 assists and 4.7 rebounds per game last season in Phoenix, but is likely to share playmaking duties with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in a way that may cut down on Rubio's production. He should still be a solid mid-tier point guard option in fantasy leagues, though a lot rests on the assumption that last season's shooting improvement was real, as he shot a career-high 36.1 percent from three and 41.5 percent from the field. If those improvements were a product of playing beside an elite scoring threat in Devin Booker, Rubio could see his numbers slide down this season.

More Fantasy Basketball Analysis