Week 15 Fantasy Basketball Waiver Wire: Carroll, Calathes, Sullinger

Nick Calathes
Nick Calathes
Grizzlies guard Nick Calathes Tim Fuller USA TODAY Sports

DeMarre Carroll (Owned in 35 percent of Yahoo leagues): I’ve been hitched to the Carroll bandwagon for several weeks now and the Hawks’ forward hasn’t stopped posting very solid fantasy lines. Carroll has now scored double-digits in 11 of his last 12 games and is averaging 15.7 points, 5.7 rebounds, 2.3 threes, and 1.7 steals over his last seven. As we mentioned last week, his shooting percentage is slowly starting to even out from the 60+ it had been for over a week but he’s a dangerous shooter from downtown and has been contributing in a big way for Atlanta.

Nick Calathes (5 percent): With Mike Conley out for at least a week, Calathes has about four starts in him. In his first career start, the longtime European standout posted 22 points, four threes, five rebounds, three assists, and a steal. More importantly, he played 40 minutes and got 12 field goal attempts. He’s a short-term grab but he’s a good fantasy basketball waiver wire target to get you through the week and in daily tournaments.

Jared Sullinger (51 percent): Between Sully’s inconsistencies and Brad Stevens’ inability to decide on playing time game-to-game, it’s been a bit of a frustrating ride with Boston’s top rebounder. Still, we can only go where the numbers tell us and Sullinger has played at least 35 minutes in back-to-back games and has gotten 40 field goal attempts over that pair. In the two games, he’s combined for 45 points, 29 rebounds, a steal, and a block. As long as he’s starting, and getting starter minutes, he’s always a threat to post a double-double and can certainly explode on any given night, especially against the weak competition in the East.

Taj Gibson (47 percent): Gibson has now scored double-digit points in seven straight games and has made a solid run for Sixth Man of the Year all season. Over that stretch, the Bulls’ big man is averaging 15.9 points, 6.3 rebounds, 1.9 blocks, a steal, and is shooting better than 50 percent from the floor. Despite coming off the bench, he’s averaged over 31 minutes and 12 field goal attempts per game on this current run.

Tim Hardaway Jr. (20 percent): I live in New York so Tim Hardaway is on my screen far more often than most players. Is he especially impressive? He’s okay. Does he do anything but shoot? Not really. I do believe in riding out hot streaks, however, and Junior has been hot in Iman Shumpert‘s absence. He has now scored double-digits in five straight games and is averaging 20 points and 3.8 threes per game over his last four. He’s shooting a phenomenal 56.6 percent from the floor and 53.6 percent from downtown over that stretch, percentages that will definitely come down, but if you need a steady dose of threes, grab him and ride this one out.

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Igor Derysh
Igor Derysh is Editor-at-Large at XN Sports and has been featured in The Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Boston Herald, Baltimore Sun, Orlando Sun-Sentinel, and FantasyPros. He has previously covered sports for COED Magazine, Fantasy Alarm, and Manwall.com. !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');