Fantasy Basketball: More Stupid Injuries With LaMarcus Aldridge And Kobe Bryant
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Portland Trail Blazers forward LaMarcus Aldridge and Los Angeles Lakers guard Kobe Bryant are both on the shelf. Aldridge is expected to miss 6-8 weeks (18-24 games) and Bryant might be done for the season. Here, we’re going to concentrate on LMA.
The Blazers star tore a ligament in his non-shooting hand and needs surgery. Aldridge’s usage rate, which uses shots attempted, free throws and turnovers in the formula, sits at 29.5. That’s 11th highest in the league. It’s even more important when it comes to Aldridge because it’s almost all coming from the shots and free throws with no turnovers.
He takes 20 shots per game and 5.8 free throws in slightly under 36 minutes. Aldridge turns the ball over 1.8 times per game and has a TOV% of 7.6. There are all sorts of counting stats available for Portland during the next two months. The question is where does it go?
Here is a chart looking at the last two games without Aldridge versus the entire season in terms of minutes per game and shot attempts:
What’s transpired so far?
Lillard and Matthews have picked up 4.3 minutes and an additional 8.8 shots to this point. In a perfect world I’d bet head coach Terry Stotts isn’t a fan of this trend and would rather distribute the attempts and minutes out to others.
Chris Kaman and Nicolas Batum have seen slight upticks, but I still bank on the Central Michigan guy being the biggest beneficiary out of the secondary players. The other two role players who have seen their role increased the most are Dorell Wright and Thomas Robinson.
Head coach Terry Stotts is giving small ball lineups a longer look with the current predicament — Robin Lopez and Joel Freelend are currently out too.
Batum, Mathews and Wright have played 30 percent (29 minutes) of the last two games with each other, which is over half of the time the threesome has taken the court together this season.
Batum has been bad this season, but has put together one excellent game versus the Phoenix Suns and was a ghost opposite the Boston Celtics. He’s tough to rely on, but if you invested in him early you’ve been stuck playing him anyway. Even if he keeps playing poorly there’s the potential for his counting stats to go up.
I see Wright as an inconsistent source of threes and points. He’s an awful shooter from anywhere that’s not the three-point line and he almost never gets to the rim. His per 36 rebound and assist numbers are surprisingly decent for a wing — 6.1 rebounds and 2.5 assists for the career. Getting around 20-something minutes per night there’s value in 12-team leagues and definitely in anything higher.
With Robinson you will get some points and rebounds on a decent shooting percentage as long as the volume of minutes is there. His free throw shooting is 100 percent a pain to deal with and the turnovers can be an issue. I say yes in 12-team leagues and higher.
Sometime during next week I’ll dig into what’s going on with the Lakers and Kobe.