Victor Oladipo suffered a devastating knee injury Wednesday night, and according to Adrian Wojnarowski, the Indiana Pacers believe it will end the 26-year-old guard’s season. He will get an MRI on Thursday, but fantasy basketball owners need to plan to be without Oladipo for the remainder of the 2018-19 campaign.
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Who Steps Up While Victor Oladipo Is Out?
When injuries strike, we must always look toward the waiver wire for potential benefactors. In this case, Darren Collison, Bojan Bogdanovic, Tyreke Evans, and Cory Joseph are the players to be targeting.
Collison is available in 19 percent of Fantrax leagues and needs to be owned in 100 percent. His scoring doesn’t change much when Oladipo is out, but per Statmuse, his assists jump from 5.0 per game to 8.0 per game. Assists are regularly the most sought after stat on the waiver wire.
Next up in the waiver wire pecking order would be Bojan Bogdanovic. BojBog has been one of the more underrated fantasy players in the league this year, putting up career highs in points (16.0), rebounds (4.1), assists (1.7), steals (0.9), three-pointers (1.9) and field goal percentage (49.2). He’s available in 13 percent of Fantrax leagues and 26 percent of Yahoo! leagues. Per Statmuse, Bogdanovic has averaged an even better 19.4 points on 53.1-percent shooting in 11 games he’s played without Oladipo.
Tyreke Evans has been vastly disappointing his first season in Indianapolis. The former Rookie of the Year is scoring just 10.9 points with 2.3 assists in a mere 20.4 minutes per game. However, Evans started the 2nd half for the Pacers tonight and ended up playing 27 minutes, a threshold he’s topped just three other times this season. Expect his minutes to rise, and if he can stick in the starting unit he’ll have even more value. Evans is available in 34 percent of Fantrax leagues.
If you’re in much deeper leagues — think, 14 teams and up — Cory Joseph and Aaron Holiday should be on your radar, with the former being the higher waiver priority. Joseph could pick up a handful of assists as the main ball-handler in the second unit, and Holiday moves up a rung on the depth chart.