First Week Thoughts

Firstly, News Roundup:

Kawhi's coming off the bench and he's on my team. Deal with it

Pat Bev's starting (so is Lonnie Walker but who cares?)

Jevon Carter's starting!

The Jazz are just as unreadable as predicted. I wouldn't panic too much about Clarkson and Vanderbilt starting. Since they won their first game, expect some changes soon

#1 overall pick Caruso is starting. With how hurt Lonzo is, this, unfortunately (for Cody) feels real

Dinwiddie's starting. THJ's fully healthy, so that might be for real. We'll monitor it for a week and cross that bridge when we come to it

Royce O'Neale started but Joe Harris is expected back very soon so that's a non issue

Deni Avdija started and that might be real. Another one to monitor

SGA's suddenly fully healthy and starting. Go figure

There's so much more going on, but these felt the most important to us

Now, on to the Best Free Agent Signing

The Best Free Agent Signing of the week goes to Steven of the (goddammit don't make me say it) Uranus Stinky Petes for picking up Cedi Osman. Whether it was great research or marvelous luck we'll never know. What we do know is that Osman played 28 minutes and picked up 23 nice and easy fantasy points. Here's to hoping he calms down a little and stays on the bench. While we're tugging off Steven, Christian Wood has been the highest scorer so far (in a very small sample size).

Risers and Sinkers - All the risers are Free Agents (as I write) but some of the sinkers are on teams

Risers, in order 

Alperun Sengun - Someone I've never heard of is starting over him. Since I snagged Kawhi I feel honor-bound to wait at least a few hours after I send this email to try and get Sengun. Can't think of why he's not starting; I love him. Go after him

Doug McDermott - Looks like they're going with the rookie I so desperately wanted in Charlotte, Sochan. Look for Dougie Buckets to put up plenty of meaningless points this year. He's a top-tier free agent

Trey Murphy III - What'd I tell ya'll? 37 fantasy points in the first game and they play Charlotte tonight. He's a killer. Now, did I take my own advice and draft him? No. Will I pick him up now? Maybe

Bennedict Mathurin - Pacers rookie who'd be in their starting lineup if they were trying to win games. He looks legit already

Noah Vonleh - I don't particularly think he played well, but he got plenty of minutes in a team so talented your least favorite uncle could squeak out 10 points

Nick Richards - Having seen him in person a couple times I don't know that he can keep up this double-double pace he's on, but Clifford's playing him WAY more than our rookie Mark Williams. Similar to Vonleh, if you just need a big who's not gonna hurt you, snag Richards

Reggie Jackson - Gonna have to wait a little on this one, but John Wall looked incredible in the Clips' opener. Given, it was against the Lakers, but time's ticking on Reggie going to the bench and becoming a real hot commodity for us

Sinkers, in no order

Matisse Thybulle - In the wake of not getting an extension done, it looks like Thybulle's days in Philly could be numbered. In the first two games combined he played a grand total of 41 seconds. Doc claims he'll earn some minutes soon, but with PJ Tucker essentially doing everything Thybulle can do, and with Melton and House now on the bench, I don't see a road map for Thybulle to break in, barring injury

Pat Bev - He can't shoot and he fouls like a madman but he's the only good defensive player in the Lakers starting lineup. Which is why he was such a good pick for our league. The main problem is that after how bad they've looked in their first two games, I don't see any way he drops to the bench. 

Montrezl Harrell - Tough start for Harrell, who saw 3 mins, then 11 mins in back to back games. Given, these were against the cream of the crop in the Eastern Conference, and he really does do his feasting on the lesser teams in the league, but it's still unfortunate to see that the 6 MOY from 2019-20 has fallen so far from grace. Just the first week, but we may have to view him in a different light now

Isaac Okoro - Added 4 fouls to a Tony Snell Special on opening night in only 12 minutes. That's impressively unfortunate

Peyton Pritchard - Pritchahd landed a big ol' DNP-CD on opening night. You could argue Philly was a bad matchup for his horrible defense. You'll say the same about the Heat tonight. You'll find yourself saying that a lot, actually. Not that Pritchard was particularly high on anyone's list, but at this point you're better off grabbing just about anyone else