Fantasy Basketball: Top 10 Small Forwards in 2014

Share

Tweet

Share

Share

Email

Comments

2014 has come to an end and we at Baller Mind Frame took a quick look at the top fantasy basketball players by position. How did we determine who the top players are? We used our Player Rater, filtered by position and set to “cumulative wins,” then checked to see which players had the best WARP scores.

For those of you who are new to the site and are using our Player Rater for the first time, WARP stands for “wins above replacement player” and is a measure of the number of wins better (or worse) a player is compared to the average replacement—or waiver wire—player in head-to-head fantasy leagues. By setting the filter to “cumulative wins” we can see the total wins contributed by the players we’re ranking, and not just based on their per-game averages. This allows us to see their impact for the period set, which in this case is year-to-date, and excludes players who may have played a couple of good games and then disappeared.

Here are the top 10 small forwards in 2014:

1. LeBron James (7.03)
2. Rudy Gay (5.71)
3. Carmelo Anthony (4.93)
4. Kyle Korver (4.61)
5. Chandler Parsons (4.08)
6. Kawhi Leonard (4.01)
7. Trevor Ariza (3.80)
8. Nicolas Batum (2.95)
9. Wilson Chandler (2.83)
10. Luol Deng (2.78)

Notable Inclusions

Kyle Korver is a fantasy stud. He’s been underrated as hell for a couple of seasons now and it is time people took notice. He’s not just a three-point specialist and actually brings a pretty well-rounded game.

Trevor Ariza started off really hot this season and has since cooled off a bit. His missed shots are catching up to him and his 36.3 field-goal percentage is dragging down his value. That said, he’s still a solid source of treys, steals, and rebounds from his position.

Wilson Chandler has emerged from the ashes of his awful 2013-14 season and has done quite well in the wake of Danilo Gallinari‘s failed return. Chandler needs to keep knocking down those threes and crashing the boards if he’s going to stay on this list in 2015.

Notably Absent

For obvious reasons, Kevin Durant (1.86) did not make the cut. If he can make a full and complete recovery from his recent foot injury, Durant should easily make this list, if not top it altogether by season’s end.

Even though he’s in the top 10, Wesley Johnson (2.06) is sitting in 12th place with his solid production so far. He eventually emerged as a solid sleeper, contributing a little bit of everything, after enduring a slow start. Wes will likely won’t crack the list in 2015, but his cumulative WARP score for 2014-15 was worth an honorable mention.