The 2013-14 NBA season is upon us and with it brings the excitement and disappointment that is Fantasy Draft Day. For those who struggled last year and likely endured ridicule and shame from their co-general managers, this is your time for revenge. Forget last season, embrace your previous failures and learn from them. This is a new season and with it brings new opportunity.
The Southeast division is our last stop in the Eastern Conference so if you missed them check out our Central and Atlantic division sleeper picks as well. The Southeast has a clear-cut winner for the division title and that is of course the Miami Heat. While they don’t offer much in the way of sleeper value picks they do have the biggest fantasy stud of them all of course in LeBron James.
Let’s say you missed out on James, or even if you did get him and you need to either make up some ground or just want to bury your fantasy opponent; you will need some quality late-rounds picks to help you do that. Check out these sleeper fantasy options for your late-round consideration, you won’t be disappointed.
The team that is wanting to make their playoff push this season is the Atlanta Hawks and in hopes of accomplishing that goal they have loaded their roster with veterans. The Hawks don’t have any solid young players who are likely going to step in and have an impact. Their rosters seems fairly set and the minutes for young players and those less established are going to be few and far between. Baring injury to anyone, I don’t like any potential sleepers from the Hawks this season.
The Charlotte Bobcats on the other hand do have plenty of young players, some less established NBA folks who are ready to prove themselves in the Associations and some NBA veterans with something left to prove. It is truly a mixed bag in Charlotte this season, but in that bag there are some fantasy gems. Let’s start with shooting-guard Gerald Henderson who figures to be in the starting lineup and will be responsible for spacing the floor and knocking down jump shots. Downside to Henderson is that he won’t contribute in areas other than scoring. If he can start throwing up some rebound numbers, Henderson would be a very solid mid-round pick. As it stand now he is a late-round or waiver wire pickup with some decent upside.
Also on the Bobcats roster is the duo of Ben Gordon and Ramon Sessions. Both of these guys provide excellent backup minutes to Kemba Walker and in some sets the Bobcats will run with a duo point-guard backcourt. Gordon and Sessions each got over 20 minutes a night, with Sessions playing near starter minutes of 27 per game. Given those minutes Session produced nicely with a stat line of 14.4 ppg, 3.8 rpg and 2.8 apg. Given those numbers Sessions is the bigger steal out of the two and he could easily be had as a last-round pickup.
Over in Washington, the Wizards are hoping that a healthy John Wall and front-court pairing of Nene and Emeka Okafor will be enough to procure them a playoff spot. While the trio might be able to do it, throw in Bradley Beal and Al Harrington and all of a sudden the roster is multi-dimensional and deep with talent.
Beal can’t really be considered a sleeper pick given his performance last season; however, he is still being undervalued in many leagues. Beal has shown his ability to score and with an improved jump shot that low field-goal percentage from last season will come up. Harrington is also a very undervalued fantasy player. If we take last season and toss it out as an anomaly then the 15-year forward can still contribute nicely. I see Harrington playing a big part for the Wizards this season and should he be there with your last pick, I would take a chance on him.
Lastly we move onto Orlando where the Magic are content to be patient and let their young players mature and grow into their potential. Nikola Vucevic isn’t going to sneak up on anyone this year and we can go ahead and officially remove the sleeper pick title from his name.
This year the Magic sleeper pick is Tobias Harris who has shown steady improvement over his two seasons thus far. Harris seems poised for a true break through season and with the plethora of options available at forward in the Eastern Conference, Harris’s name will slide down the draft boards. This would be a tremendous late-round pick up for your roster as Harris had a quiet season in which he averaged 11 ppg, 1.2 apg and 5.3 rpg over a mere 23.6 minutes per game.