NBA Player News

While his defensive ability has made McDaniels a mainstay in the Timberwolves starting lineup, he’s been a bit frustrating in fantasy basketball. He’s yet to produce a top-100 season, with the 2022-23 campaign (116th in per-game value, per Basketball Monster) being McDaniels’ best. However, with Julius Randle (shoulder) not guaranteed to be ready for the start of the regular season, McDaniels is worth rolling the dice on in standard league drafts.

With the injuries that New Orleans is dealing with, this is basically the BI show, with only a few supporting actors that casual fans will recognize. Unfortunately, ratings haven’t been good with Ingram as the star of the show. Sure, he’s still putting up some decent numbers, but those have been accompanied by poor shooting and turnovers. In the three games since Zion went down, BI is averaging 17.7 points, 5.3 rebounds, 6.7 assists amd 2.3 triples, though that has come along with 38.9% shooting and 6.0 turnovers per game. The team has also lost all three of those games and scored exactly 88 points in two of those. This spin-off of the main show hasn’t gone well, but there isn’t anything they can do other than simply wait for the other stars to get healthy.

Oubre Jr. was efficient with 20 points on 14 shots. He made 2-of-5 attempts from behind the 3-point line and was 2-of-2 from the free throw line. With he 76ers shorthanded, Oubre Jr. figured to take on an increased scoring role. While he did to some degree, he ultimately took a backseat to Jared McCain. Philadelphia plays again on Friday against the Magic.

Thomas has been a scoring machine all season, but the last two games have been quieter. He played a season-low 28 minutes in this game, and he took just 11 shots, which was his second-lowest mark of the year. The lowest came on Monday night, when he shot just 10 times. Thomas has been awesome this year, but if he isn’t seeing the same volume of shots, his value will tamk quickly. He’s still a top-100 player in 9-cat leagues, but more performances like this will tank that quickly.

This was a second straight quieter performance from Schroder, though he didn’t play poorly. He made 60% of his shots and only turned it over once, but he just didn’t contribute much in the box score. Schroder still ranks in the top-50 in 9-cat leagues, but his numbers are starting to regress back to what we have expected from him in recent years. Schroder should still be a solid option for the rest of the season, but he is cooling off after a scorching hot start.

It was McCain’s first start of his NBA career and he didn’t disappoint. The 16th overall pick in the draft last summer, McCain poured in 34 points and had 10 assists. The 76ers were without Tyrese Maxey, Paul George and Joel Embiid and McCain picked up the slack on the offensive end with an explosive performance. The 76ers play the Magic on Friday and McCain is certainly on the streaming radar if he can find his way back into the starting lineup.