Top Ten NBA Fantasy Sleepers

Since my football season is already over, it's time to turn my attention to pro hoop, mostly to drive the football only readers of the blog to distraction. And since NBA leagues are just starting to form (still room in mine!), let's get right to the meat of what you want: sleepers!

10) Jrue Holliday, PG, Sixers. Leagues are won with hidden value, and you don't get much more hidden than last year's #1 pick and the youngest player in the Association. Last year he bumped his numbers to 11.9 / 3.5 / 5.5 after the All-Star Break on just under 33 minutes a game, with a steal and a half a game. He passes the eye test of being a potential lockdown defensive player, and finishing in transition allowed him to shoot 49% from the floor. He's probably still too young for stardom, and the team needs him to be great, which usually leads to disaster... but there's just more upside and fun in having him on your club than, say, Jason Terry.

9) John Salmons, SG/SF, Bucks. After the trade to the Bucks, Salmons posted 19.9/3.2/3.3 in 37 minutes a game, with very nice percentages (46.7% / 86.7%), and even 1.1 steals. There's no way he'll shoot that well from the floor again, but the real question is how his usage will change with a healthy Andrew Bogut. He might come cheap because he's in no way sexy or young, and if he's your last starter, you're likely to be very happy at the end of the year.

8) Antwan Jamison, SF/PF, Cavs. Another veteran that won't impress anyone in the draft room, but with the departrue of He Who Must Not Be Named, his numbers should look much more like the DC guy (20/9/2) than the Cleveland guy (16/8/1). There's mild worry here, in that he's 34 going on 40 with the minutes, but it's not as if he doesn't have experience filling up the box score for a going nowhere team. But if you do go here, count on bad free throw percentages (he's down to 72.8% for his career, and somehow shot 50.6% last year as a Cav).

7) Kevin Love, PF/C, Wolves. One of the reasons why I love fantasy hoop is that there are many ways to construct your team. Love is the rare PF/C option that can help you with threes and assists (35 for 2009 in just 60 games for the threes, 136 dimes in the same amount of time), and he might come cheap due to the injury concerns. He also does good work from the line, and with Al Jefferson gone and a gold FIBA medal on his neck, should be seeing a nice jump up to the 35 minute range. You'll need a blocked shot hammer, but this is the kind of good number / bad team / big minutes guy that shows up on championship teams.

6) Marc Gasol, C, Grizzlies. Some nice rising motion here from the Lesser Gasol; he went from 11.9/7.4/1.7 in 2008-09 to 14.6/9.3/2.4 last year, and saw five more minutes a game of floor time. Normally that would make for an overvalued property, but since Gasol II missed 13 games to injury, his season totals aren't going to look that impressive. Finally, there's this: there are, in fact, no Grizzly fans in existence. So you don't have to worry about some Memphis homer pushing up his value.

5) Robin Lopez, C, Suns. Shocking but true: many NBA fans do not pay enough attention to the playoffs. So they missed Lopez's stirring return from injury to help put a major scare into the world champion Lakers in round three, or the fact that his minutes went up from December to the end of the year, until he got hurt. What everyone will notice, of course, is that Amar'e Stoudamire is no longer around to take advantage of Steve Nash, and that Lopez is actually a plus defensive player. Phoenix is going to win 50+ games this year and play up-tempo; you are going to want to have the beneficiaries of that. Lopez might not be an every-week starter, but for weeks when the Suns play many games, you'll like the high percantages and strong overall numbers.

4) JJ Hickson, PF/C, Cavs. I'm in love with this guy's talent, and if the Cavs had simply given him floor time and gone up-tempo in their series against the Celtics, they might have had a much better ending to the He Who Must Not Be Named Era. This year, I think he gets major minutes as the Cav management try to sell the idea that the future doesn't have to be unspeakably bleak. With 30 minutes a game, you could be looking at 15/8/1 as the floor, with strong energy producing positive defensive numbers.

3) Darren Collison, PG, Pacers. Last year's late-round first round pick for the Hornets got nice time covering for the injured Chris Paul, and now he gets the keys to a Pacer team that loses at speed. Your very late pick might get you 15/4/8 with a very welcome 47% from the floor, and 85% from the line. He might not give you elite threes or steals, and he could somehow lose minutes to T.J. Ford -- OK, forget that, there's no chance of that -- but there's a reasonable shot of getting a thoroughly serviceable starting point here for peanuts.

2) Serge Ibaka, C, Thunder. He might be a borderline pick in a shallow league, but I'll always make room for young guys that increase their floor time every month, produce major block numbers without necessarily killing you at the line (he was 52% before the All Star Break, 72% after). If he gets the 30 minutes a game that he deserves in 2010 (what, you'd rather play Nick Collison or Nenad Krstic?), he'll produce 13/9/3, with the 3 being blocks. Better yet, you might pay next to nothing for it.

1) Mike Miller, SG/SF, Heat. Last year in Washington, as part of a team of guys that would not have looked out of place in the D-League, Miller posted 10.9/6.2/3.9 while shooting 50% from the floor and 82% from the line. This year in Miami? Well, I suspect he doesn't take a contested three all year, and that he makes 200 of them with high percentages. The only real problem will be that if the club wins as much as they should in the regular season, you won't get much out of him in the playoffs, and the minutes per game will fade in the stretch. So draft him and enjoy, then move him at the All-Star Break. He's going to have a lot of fans this year.