Use It or Lose It

We’ll be on our way with the second half starting on Thursday and it’s an important day because of the NBA Trade Deadline. Rotoworld will have plenty of content on the trade deadline, but here are some trendy names popping up on Tuesday:

Editor's Note: Rotoworld's partner FanDuel is hosting a one-day $200,000 Fantasy Basketball league for Thursday's NBA games. It's $25 to join and first prize is $20,000. Starts at 8pm ET on Thursday. Here's the FanDuel link.

Follow me on Twitter @MikeSGallagher. You can also find all of these stats on NBA.com/stats.

Goran Dragic - The Suns want to re-sign Dragic and they’re spending today to figure out what they’re going to need to do to bring him back. The problem is they spent a combined $97 million last summer on their other two main guards, Eric Bledsoe and Isaiah Thomas.

The Suns are really in a tough spot in the standings. They are sitting in the eight seed with the Pelicans and Thunder both within at least 1.5 games of them. However, they’re 5.5 games behind the Spurs for the seven seed. Basically, they’re probably going to need the Clippers to falter from the six spot because I think we all know OKC is going to climb over them. That suggests being a seller isn’t that bad of an idea. Personally, I think Dragic stays put because the asking price is going to be too high, which it should be.

The Nuggets - They’re likely going to be the biggest sellers at the deadline. Arron Afflalo and Wilson Chandler are the two players most likely to be dealt. If you have them on your fantasy team, you should expect them to take a big hit because they would likely become backups.

As far as who steps up, it’s hard to guess because the Nuggets could deal basically everyone except Jusuf Nurkic and Gary Harris. Randy Foye might benefit the most, assuming he stays. Danilo Gallinari is unlikelly to have his minutes limit lifted any time soon.

Brook Lopez - The Nets kind of made their beds with Lopez and he is very likely to be dealt. He should play a little less with his new team and he’s also one of the most injury-prone players, so he’s a clear sell-high guy right now.

The Celtics - Interestingly, they’re going to have a tough time dealing Marcus Thornton and/or Brandon Bass. If Bass goes, we should see a little more out of Tyler Zeller and Kelly Olynyk once he gets back.

Enes Kanter - The Jazz want a first-round pick or something with real value for Kanter. He made it clear he doesn't want to be there anymore and the Jazz almost probably won't match an offer when he becomes an unrestricted free agent this summer. It's completely unclear where he'll wind up, but a team wanting to pick up Kanter probably isn't going to view him as a starter. Plus, Brook Lopez also being on the block decreases the price tag on Kanter because it sort of becomes a buyer's market for a center. For fantasy, I wouldn't be excited about owning Kanter, but he should be owned for now until he's dealt. As for Rudy Gobert, there's more on him below.

Besides the trade talk, there really hasn’t been a lot of news this week with the NBA taking off for a week. The All-Star break isn’t really the greatest display of the NBA and perhaps the coolest thing was that the NBA added Synergy stats for free before the weekend. MySynergySports.com was a premium service for about $60 per year and it was totally worth it for any stat fan — I don’t think Charles Barkley had a Synergy subscription. Now, you can go here and check out how each player performs on different plays for offense and defense. It will show performance and frequency on transition, isolation, pick-and-roll, post-ups, spot-ups, hand-offs, cuts, off screens and rebounding cutbacks. You can also check out the ranks for each team on both ends, too. I’ll admit the free stuff this year isn’t quite as great, but it’s something you’ll definitely want to check out. There will also be plenty of info from this stuff in this column, too.

We won’t have any games to track and we didn’t have any noteworthy injuries in the past few days. Here are a few guys with interesting usage/scoring stats heading into the second half.

LeBron James - It’s probably not a coincidence that we’ve seen the Cavs win games while LeBron’s usage rate has soared. With the Cavs going 14-3 since LeBron returned from his rest, he posted a whopping 36.1 usage rate in that span. Additionally, he also put up a 52.8 effective field goal percentage (eFG%) and a 32.9 assist percentage.

Before his rest, LeBron only put up a 30.5 usage rate in his first 29 games of the season. He had very similar efficiency at 53.3 eFG% to go with a similar assist percentage of 37.5. Even with the similar efficiency, LeBron has been struggling in several parts of his game. Here’s a look at his shot chart in his last 16 games (top) compared to his first 29 games (bottom):

The huge difference was his production at the rim. LeBron was ridiculous at the rim last season, making 79.6 percent of his attempts. That explained why he was by far the best player in fantasy for field goal percentage thanks to taking 24.5 shots per game. For whatever reason, LeBron couldn’t score at the rim before his rest, but it’s pretty clear he’s got that part figured out and I think we can dismiss that slow start there.

So can he get the rest of his scoring figured out? Last season, he made a very respectable 41.9 percent of his non-restricted area two-pointers. This season, he’s at 40.1 on those, which isn’t bad and clearly isn’t the problem. He hasn’t struggled with a particular type of shot either.

The main problem with LeBron is his 3-point shooting. He’s only at 33.3 percent from deep this season, which is down from 37.9 percent last season. Looking at some specific aspects, the biggest dip is on catch-and-shoot treys. He made 45.5 percent of those last season, but it dropped all the way down to 35.4 percent. He should be better based on how his frequencies are basically the same with no-dribbles and dribbles before his shots.

Pretty much everything suggests LeBron is set for a big second half as a scorer. Although, he’s not filling the stat sheet like he has been except with way more turnovers. The problem ahead is that his schedule isn’t great due to a lack of games down the stretch and the Cavs are much more inclined to rest him on occasion. If we drafted today, I still wouldn’t take him in the top five. If you could deal him in a week or so, that probably makes the most sense.

Cody Zeller - He was expected to see a bigger role with Kemba Walker (knee) out due to an injury, but he’s only posted a usage rate of just 11.2 in his five February games. What’s more, his minutes have only been at 25.8 per game this month, which is actually down from January.

Not surprisingly, the offensive plays to him have severely dropped due to his awful efficiency. In his five games, he made just 26.1 percent from the field. Zeller has somehow made just 1-of-13 from beyond three feet in that span and is holding the offense back. He did have his best month of his season in January with a 49.5 field goal percentage, but the regression is coming back to the 42.6 percent from his rookie season. After all, Zeller isn’t a great jump shooter, so he’s not a great fit for the offensive style of coach Steve Clifford. I think we can probably rule him out as a guy who can score the ball with a field goal percentage in the upper 40s.

So is there a chance for his usage to rise? Well, Al Jefferson is being leaned on a ton, posting a 29.2 usage this month in his 31 minutes per game. Gerald Henderson has also seen a major bump in usage rate, posting a 23.3 in his 35 minutes per game. The only other player to log at least 20 minutes and post a usage rate higher than 20 is Lance Stephenson, who could be traded. It’s pretty clear there is at least an opportunity for him here.

The addition of Mo Williams isn’t going to help his usage, so Zeller is going to need to count on non-scoring stats to produce stats. He hasn’t been great there and I wouldn’t be too optimistic about him. If you own him, I still wouldn't cut him for a lottery ticket or someone without solid fantasy value.

Rudy Gobert - As mentioned, the Jazz are likely going to trade Enes Kanter, which is exactly what Rudy Gobert’s owners want to hear. There is a very good chance he leads the NBA in blocks per game at the end of the season. Currently, he has 2.2 blocks per game, which ranks fourth in the NBA and is within shouting distance of Anthony Davis’ top-ranked 2.7 per game.

Gobert has a block percentage of 7.9 this season. There are only 17 players in NBA history to post a block percentage that high while qualifying for the blocks per game lead. Of course, we all knew that Gobert is going to dominate in that category. What about the others, though?

His usage is up a tick in his last 15 games, playing 24.8 minutes per game with a usage rate of 15.0. Before that, he was at just 13.0 usage in his 20.8 minutes per game. Although, his efficiency has dropped about three percent. That’s certainly not enough to suggest he’ll fall off there. He should be over 60 percent from the field and might be closer to 65.

Another intriguing aspect here is how Gobert has a whopping 69.6 shooting percentage in his 336 minutes next to Derrick Favors. His usage is also a shade higher with Favors on the court this season. That should also help his output because of Kanter taking so many shots.

Breaking down Gobert’s play types, he has a whopping 30.9 percent of his offensive plays (108) come off putbacks — Andre Drummond is the only player with a higher frequency with at least 65 putback attempts. The second-year big man really showed off his rebounding in summer league and it's translating very well. He’s also been much better on pick-and-roll with those accounting for 18.6 percent of his play types. Gobert still needs to work on his post-up game, but we probably won’t see that as a positive this season — only 5.7 percent of his play types.

We could see Gobert be a double-double guy with 3.0 blocks per game.

Jason Smith - There is still no official news of Carmelo Anthony shutting it down, but we can probably assume it’s going to happen soon. Plus, Amare is no longer a Knick. Obviously, things are going to be different.

In the last 12 games, no Knick has logged more minutes than Jason Smith, who averaged 31.9 minutes per game in that span. That’s led to Smith being a top-75 player in the past month for standard fantasy leagues.

Of course, Smith’s output is really based on volume. He has a so-so usage rate of 16.9 in his last dozen games to go with a 15.4 defensive rebound rate. Although, his numbers have really jumped up in his last three, posting a usage rate of 19.1 and a defensive rebounding rate of 24.4. Those numbers seem unsustainable, but that’s OK. I’m not buying him as a complete stud and he does have his fair share of injuries, but he should be owned in standard leagues.

One of the biggest questions on the minds of fantasy owners is who is going to step up on the wing from the Melo shutdown? You’d think it’d be an easy, important answer considering Melo is the only player in the NBA this season to play in at least 40 games with more than 20.0 shots per game, but it looks like a lost cause.

Tim Hardaway Jr. can’t score off the dribble like he did in summer league and he doesn’t really add much to his inefficient point total. Langston Galloway had a disastrous finish to his unofficial first half, making just 28.9 percent from the field in his last seven. It’s a mess. In fact, the mess can be explained by the lineups used on Wednesday in the last game before the break:

Coach Derek Fisher used 19 lineups and only one of them was used for more than five minutes. That’s wild considering the Knicks played a close game in a loss to the Magic. At this point, I’d rather just own Cleanthony Early over Hardaway Jr. or Galloway. Jose Calderon should also be owned in standard leagues because he has to run the offense more. He has gone on runs of being an early-round guy before, so maybe he gets hot. For DFS, Hardaway might be the most appealing guy on the win right now because he's probably going to lead the wings in scoring the second half.