Hassan Whiteside (C, UTA): Week 18 Waiver Wire Pickups

BALLER MOVE: Add in 14+ Team Leagues

ROSTERED IN: 37% of leagues

ANALYSIS: Tons of folks out there disappointed by Utah and its deadline moves, which might be reasonable considering this franchise should be all-in while the Gobert-Mitchell pair is at the peak of its talents. Alas, no substantial moves happened other than adding Nickeil Alexander-Walker in exchange for Joe Ingles' expiring deal--Ingles is out for the year too, just in case. That means the big-boy rotation will stay the same: Gobert C1, Whiteside C2. And we love that.

See, Whiteside might be an empty-calorie, empty-stat player, but we don't necessarily worry about that in the fantasy realm. He puts up numbers, we acknowledge it, roster him, and ride Hassan while reaping the goodies he produces. And those, simply put, have been fantastic since he moved to Salt Lake City. Whiteside is playing a ton since he flipped the calendar page to 2022 taking advantage of Gobert's absence through January and keeping a good off-the-pine role once The Croissant came back.

Whiteside's sitting at some 25 MPG off the pine while he got to average 31 MPG covering for Gobert's injury in January through seven starts. The per-minute production has been incredible this full season with an average of 1.20 FP/min through 44 games played. Even on the games in which he's played more than his season-wide 19 MPG, Whiteside has been good for 1.14 FP/min (games with 20+ minutes played). He gets you good points and shooting percentages because he operates exclusively in the paint, is a constant rebounding/blocking threat (11 RPG, 2 BPG this calendar year in 11 games played), but he's not offering much more than that. The scarcity of blocks and his production on that front is worth the gamble just by itself, though.

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