Fantasy Basketball Waiver Wire: Week 8 Adds Include Micic, Missi, Martin

Welcome back! Thanksgiving is over and the NBA Cup Tournament is here. It's led to some fun basketball on some silly (complimentary) courts, and I'm excited for the playoffs. More relevantly for our purposes, it has a lot of impact on the Fantasy schedule, so be sure to check out the Schedule Notes section at the bottom of this week's article. It looks long, but I broke it down by league type, so read that section's intro and then only focus on the section that applies to your league.

As always, the players in this article must be rostered in less than two-thirds of CBS leagues. Players are listed in the order that I recommend adding them, assuming they are equally good fits for your team.

Adds for all leagues

De'Andre Hunter, Hawks (64% rostered)

Hunter started the season with two great games before getting sidelined by an injury. When he finally returned, it took a few games for the Hawks to let him return to a full workload. Over the last seven, however, he's back up to 28.6 minutes per game, averaging 19-4-1 with 2.6 threes. The three-and-D wing out of Virginia has completely forgotten about the "D", recording neither a block nor a steal in five of those games. That said, the efficient scoring – he's shooting 51-43-93 in this stretch – plus the points, threes, and rebounds is more than enough to make him an attractive waiver pickup. 

Vasilije Micic, Hornets (23% rostered)

It looks like the mid-game benching in favor of rookie two-way player KJ Simpson (1% rostered) Tuesday was a one-time thing. On Thursday, Micic put up 14-1-12 in 35 minutes as a starter, while Simpson went back to 17 minutes off the bench. With LaMelo Ball (calf) and Tre Mann (back) both out at least another week, and likely more, Micic should have a few more games as the only healthy full-time point guard.

Yves Missi, Pelicans (58% rostered)

The return of CJ McCollum and Dejounte Murray has unlocked Missi's offense. Over the first 16 games, Missi was averaging 7.0 points in 23.3 minutes while shooting 53% from the field. Over the last six games, that has improved to 14.3 points and 59% shooting, albeit with a few more minutes of court time (28.3). He's also averaging 10.7 rebounds and 1.5 blocks during this stretch, continuing to contribute in the categories that first attracted our attention in October. Barring a trade that brings in a more established big man, I expect Missi to stick on rosters for the rest of the season – and hopefully keep improving, too.

Cody Martin, Hornets (23% rostered)

He headlined last week's column, and nothing has changed. He's not super exciting, and the low scoring is a legitimate problem that some managers won't be able to overlook. But he's contributing everywhere else. At least one team in every league should be rostering Martin.

Ayo Dosunmu, Bulls (44% rostered)

I'm typically a Dosunmu skeptic, but he's performing well as a starter these past seven games. Most importantly, Dosunmu combines two strengths that are often separated: assists and FG%. Since entering the starting lineup, he's averaging 5.7 assists and 60% from the field. On the season, the only players beating him in both categories are Giannis Antetokounmpo, Domantas Sabonis, and Ben Simmons. He's even adding some uncharacteristic scoring punch lately, up to 16.7 during this stretch. The Bulls have dealt with a lot of scattered absences during this run, especially to their backcourt, and a fully healthy stretch could hurt Dosunmu. But he's consistently playing great right now, despite the inconsistencies in the nightly surrounding cast, so he's worth adding as long as that lasts.

Guerschon Yabusele, 76ers (21% rostered)

Yabusele entered the starting lineup after Joel Embiid's (knee) most recent injury, and he's been playing a lot. He's seen 32.7 minutes per game across those six starts. His production is all over the place, but it's averaging out to a solid 11-9-2 with 1.4 stocks and 1.7 threes. On a night-to-night basis, he's only reliable for rebounds. But the large workload is letting him accumulate enough stats to pay off over time for managers who are able to start him every night. The flip side, however, is that means his value will almost certainly evaporate as soon as the minutes decrease. We really have no idea how much longer Embiid will be out – days? decades? – but Yabusele will make an easy drop whenever Embiid returns.

Other recommendations: Brandin Podziemski, Warriors (44% rostered); Julian Champagnie, Spurs (48% rostered); Marcus Smart, Grizzlies (55% rostered); Daniel Gafford, Mavericks (59% rostered); Spencer Dinwiddie, Mavericks (21% rostered); Goga Bitadze, Magic (46% rostered); Onyeka Okongwu, Hawks (54% rostered); Moe Wagner, Magic (33% rostered)

Deep league special

Cason Wallace, Thunder (12% rostered)

When scouring the deep league waiver wire, some of the most important qualities to look for are role, specialty, skill, and upside. We're looking for players who have a clearly defined role on their team, which helps to establish a floor they are unlikely to fall below. We prefer players with a statistical specialty, so that we know what stats we're hoping they'll help with, and this makes it easier to evaluate whether they are suited to our team build. We definitely want players whose skill level we believe in – good players are more likely to earn more minutes. And, where possible, we want players who also possess some untapped upside that could emerge later in the season. Wallace easily checks off all four. 

The Thunder started with Wallace in a sixth man role, but he's started as many games as he's come off the bench due to his positional versatility and the Thunder's rash of injuries. Wallace is a defensive menace, averaging 2.4 stocks while playing just 26.1 minutes per game. The 2023 lottery pick aces the eye test, and, I mean, he'd have to be good to be playing this much on the best team in the Western Conference. Wallace turned 21 exactly one month ago. There is still plenty of room for him to improve, and/or for his minutes to increase. He, therefore, has multiple possible avenues to possibly increased Fantasy value later in the season. 

Schedule Notes

Week 8 (12/9-15) has the fewest games of any week all season. Most weeks feature between 47 and 58 NBA games. The only exceptions are the abridged opening week, Weeks 8 & 9 (due to the NBA Cup), and the two weeks around the All-Star Break. Even among those light weeks, however, Week 8 is the most extreme. With just 25 games, Week 8 has less than half of an average week, and at least 24% fewer games than those other light weeks. 

That's a lot of words and numbers to emphasize a simple point: very few games next week.

As always, the first piece of advice is to check your league's settings. Most Fantasy host platforms (including CBS) handled the NBA Cup tournament's schedule by not handling it – they left the Fantasy schedule alone, keeping to normal seven-day matchups. Some host sites and/or league managers, however, were able to combine Weeks 8 & 9 into a double-long matchup (14 days, from 12/9-22) that features the same number of games (58) as a normal one-week matchup. One prominent host site made the bizarre choice (mistake?) of combining weeks 7 & 8 into a double-long matchup (from 12/2-15). The first step to approaching Week 8 is understanding how long your "Week 8" matchup is.

Here's how the games break down:

• During Week 8 (12/9-15): the Knicks play three times, 11 teams play once, and everyone else plays twice.
• During Week 9 (12/16-22): the Kings play four times, 12 teams play three times, and everyone else plays twice.
• During the two weeks combined: the Kings, Knicks, Raptors, and Pelicans play five times, everyone else plays four times.
• Almost all managers should be prioritizing Knicks right now. After that, it gets a little more complicated.

For Weekly Managers w/7-day Week 8: Prioritize the Knicks, and avoid teams with just one game as much as possible. No one has any back-to-backs, so there isn't even much nitpicking you can do to differentiate between the teams with two-game weeks. As a result, after the Knicks, you should prioritize waiver prospects from the Raptors and Pelicans, as they are the only teams with two games in Week 8 and then three in Week 9.

For Weekly Managers w/14-day "Week 8": Prioritize players from any of the four teams with an extra game, the Knicks, Kings, Raptors, and Pelicans. Everyone else has the same amount of games. However, the 76ers, Thunder, Bucks, Heat, Cavaliers, and Hornets all have a back-to-back as part of their four games. If you're looking for a schedule-based reason to start or sit someone, that back-to-back can be a tiebreaker against a player. The Kings and Pelicans also have a back-to-back (as part of a 3-in-4), but their extra game is more important.

For Daily Managers w/7-day Week 8: Because there are so few games, any weekly games max your league might have is irrelevant – you cannot hit it. All that matters is the weekly acquisitions limit. And, with so few games getting played, every extra start in your lineup has a bigger impact than it usually would. Figure out who your worst player is, drop them, and stream as much as your league rules allow. The extra win is worth more than the low probability upside that your 13th-best player might hit.

The first priority is to add Knicks, who are the only team with three games, including games on Monday and Wednesday. After that, the next best early-week target is the Raptors, as they play their games on Monday and Thursday, so you can get two games out of that roster spot and then drop the player to get more games in later in the week. After those two, you will want to add anyone you can who is playing Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday (if your league allows daily streaming, go for all three!). Those are tiny two- or three-game slates, so added starts can be extra valuable. Then, on Friday, try to set yourself up for a strong close to the week by adding players from one of the teams that play on both Friday and Sunday – the Pacers, Lakers, Grizzlies, Timberwolves, Suns, Blazers, Spurs, or Wizards.

For Daily Managers w/14-day "Week 8": This double-week ends up tied for the most games of any Fantasy matchup this season, with 58 games (the same as Week 3). If you have a "weekly" games max, you will easily hit it. If you have "weekly" acquisition limits, you'll want to be careful with those – make sure to save at least one in case a high-impact waiver target emerges. 

The efficacy of streaming will vary a lot from league to league. True streaming – adding at least one player every day to start that day, then dropping them the next – could be highly impactful, adding at least 10 extra starts to your matchup. On the other hand, adapted partial-streaming techniques might be unusually ineffective. Each additional start means less on a busy week, and this double-week will feature a ton of games. Since two days with no games, and two days have overloaded 12- and 13-game slates, there are really 10 days (not 14) to stream or pseudo-stream. If, for example, you are limited to three or four acquisitions per week, you're pseudo-streaming will barely impact the stretched out 58-game double-matchup.

• All that said, some schedule points to take note of and potentially take advantage of:
• Games are really separated during the first eight days of the contest, the closest sets of games are two games in three days, first by the Knicks (Monday-Wednesday), then by the following teams that play on both Friday and Sunday – the Pacers, Lakers, Grizzlies, Timberwolves, Suns, Blazers, Spurs, or Wizards
• The Knicks are the only team with three games over the first six days
• The Kings are the only team with four games over the last seven days
• The Hornets and Thunder are the only teams with a Thursday-Friday back-to-back in Week 9 (12/19-20); start adding them Monday or Tuesday (12/16 or 17)
• The Kings and Pelicans end the matchup with a 3-in-4