Talen Horton-Tucker (SG/SF, LAL): Week 16 Waiver Wire Pickups

BALLER MOVE: Add in 12-Team Leagues

ROSTERED IN: 14% of leagues

ANALYSIS: A couple of weeks ago, in advance of hitting the trade deadline, Kyle Lowry was flooding everybody's Twitter TL with talk about a potential move to the Lakers. Ultimately it didn't happen, seemingly because of L.A.'s reluctance to include THT in the deal. There are different opinions about how smart that was of Los Angeles, but the truth is that Talen Horton-Tucker has been a good off-the-pine, role player for the Lake Show and is helping the team with some nice scoring numbers while playing his "first true season" in the NBA--he just played 6 games in 2020.

THT low minutes on the year coming off the bench are obviously going to cut his upside nightly. The average is 19 MPG over the full season, and Talen has topped 25 minutes only 10 times in 2021, doing it for the first time not long ago on Feb. 8. In the past month, though, he's broken that mark six times starting on Mar. 15 and doing it twice in April already. His fantasy-point average in those six matches? A very neat 31 FP/G with an impressive 1.12 FP/min mark (league average at 0.90).

Looking at games in which LeBron James and Anthony Davis were out (the last 9 of them), THT has put up a 10-3-2-1 line in 23 MPG. He keeps coming off the bench for the Lakers, but his scoring has mostly been great, and he's produced numbers every time he's been given the chance: in games when THT has shot 9+ FGA he's scored an average of 16 PPG, hit 1 3PG, and sustained a great 50+ percent shooting from the floor. He's strung three such games in a row to kick April off, and his usage has topped the 25% mark in the past four. If that's the THT we'll experience for the next couple of weeks until LBJ/AD start coming back, then don't hesitate adding him.

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