Every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, we pose a question to a rotating panel of ESPN fantasy basketball experts to gauge their thoughts on a hot topic. Today's contributors are ESPN NBA Insider Bradford Doolittle and ESPN Fantasy's Joe Kaiser and Kyle Soppe.
As fantasy owners tip off the new year with the midseason approaching, which player should they target in trades right now because his production should take flight in the second half of the season?
Bradford Doolittle: Jrue Holiday should be a valuable player the rest of the way now that the Pelicans have figured out how to play small and he's hitting his stride after missing the beginning of the season. His assists already have skyrocketed with him adopting more of a pass-first approach. His shooting has been below normal, but that could hopefully rise back to what he has done in recent seasons. Plus, New Orleans has been playing well with him in this heightened role. And, perhaps best of all, Holiday is in a contract year and needs to put up numbers over the rest of the season and prove he can stay in the lineup.
Joe Kaiser: One top-50 player who started very slowly is Nicolas Batum, and even after a hot couple of weeks, he still is shooting just 40.4 percent on the season -- well below his career mark of 43.9. A closer look reveals just how much Batum has picked up his production as of late; he's averaged 18.4 points, 7.3 rebounds, 7.1 assists and 1.9 steals and 1.5 threes in his last 10 games.
It might be a difficult time to pry Batum away from a fellow owner right now, but he's finally playing like the guy we expected him to be when the season started back in late October. Any owner who has him and isn't paying close attention to his recent rise is one you should approach about a trade.
Kyle Soppe: For me, this is a good time to go get yourself some D'Angelo Russell exposure. He's shooting a woeful 50.7 percent when within eight feet of the basket (for reference, Kyle Korver isn't exactly known for his close-range shooting, and even he is converting such attempts at a 60 percent clip this season), something I expect to turn in the positive direction and give him a nice scoring bump sooner rather than later.
The soon-to-be 21-year old is taking more free throws and more 3-pointers than he did a season ago and is converting both at a higher rate, another reason to think his current 15.1 PPG represents more of a floor. Russell owns the eighth-highest usage rate among points guards (ahead of Stephen Curry, Eric Bledsoe and Mike Conley to name a few), so the fact that the Lakers are playing at a top-10 pace and own the least-efficient defense in basketball should be viewed as positives, as it puts more offensive responsibilities on the plate of Russell. He currently sits at 73 on our per-game Player Rater, and I think he is a top-50 option the rest of the way.