When we took our first look at breakout candidates more than a month ago, I took a look at 15 potential options split up among three different categories of breakout types: Starters turned stars, reserves turned starters and bounce-back candidates.
This time around, we'll just look for players drafted outside of the top-50 on average who have a chance to outperform their draft stock. It doesn't matter how a player gets there; with less than a week until the season starts, all Fantasy players care about is who can provide surplus value in the draft. These nine players, drafted on average between No. 51 overall and 118, all have a chance to beat their projections this season.
Your first few picks set the floor for your team, but the later picks are where championships are won or lost. If you can find a few players who can beat their value by two or three rounds, your path to a title looks a lot clearer.
If all Reggie Jackson does is replicate his post-trade run, this draft position will be far too low. Jackson averaged 17.6 points, 9.2 assists and 4.7 rebounds per game in 27 appearances with the Pistons, good for 38.0 Fantasy points per game; that ranked ninth in the NBA. Jackson's jump shot comes and goes and he has never done it for a fulls season before, but it's still hard to make sense of this low ranking. The Pistons are going to build their offense around Jackson and Andre Drummond pick and rolls, and there's a very high chance we're looking at Jackson as a top-20 player early this season. I'm targeting him in most of my leagues.
Tyreke Evans wasn't far behind Jackson in Fantasy scoring in the second half last season, and he was doing it by racking up huge assists totals and scoring efficiently. With Jrue Holiday working under a minute limit until at least January, Evans is going to play the point yet again for the Pelicans, and this time he'll be playing in what should be a vastly improved offense under new head coach Alvin Gentry. You won't get much 3-point shooting from Evans, and his free-throw marks leave much to be desired from a guard, but Evans showed he still knows how to fill up the box score last season, and his draft position right now underrates him.
Nicolas Batum might be my favorite bounce-back candidate for this season, coming off a miserable final season in Portland. After years of at-least -- and often better than -- league average 3-point shooting, Batum made a career-worst 32.4 percent of his long-range tries. That season-long shooting slump brought his whole campaign down, as Batum posted his lowest scoring average since he was a rookie as well. Somewhat worryingly, Batum has shot just 22.2 percent on 3-pointers in his first five preseason games, but you can probably chalk that up to small-sample flukiness, as he has attempted just 18 of them so far. If Batum fixes his shooting issues, he has a chance to get back to the levels that made him a top-30 type of player in Portland.
The perception around Jonas Valanciunas is that he hasn't progressed as much as we might have hoped since he was a No. 4 overall pick. His per-game numbers over the previous two seasons are pretty much identical, and his production tends to come and go on a game-by-game, week-by-week or month-by-month basis. However, Valanciunas actually took a pretty sizeable step forward last season, increasing his efficiency and usage, while increasing his per-minute production nearly across the board. Coach Dwane Casey still doesn't trust him to play 30 minutes per game on a consistent basis, but he might average a double-double and close to 1.5 blocks per game is Casey loosens the reigns this season. Valanciunas won't turn 24 until the regular season ends, so there's still plenty more room to grow here.
Ricky Rubio played just 22 games last season, but he gave Fantasy players reasons to be optimistic about him -- as long as you can look past his ongoing shooting woes. That's a glaring fault, to be certain, but he also has a good chance to finish in the top five in assists and steals, and doesn't turn the ball over as much as some other ball-dominant point guards. Rubio is mostly just a specialist, but he helps you in two of the harder categories to fill out, and he does so at a better rate than a similar player like Elfrid Payton (ADP: 80).
Offseason stories about players getting into better shape are a dime a dozen, so you should always be wary of pinning your Fantasy hopes to them. However, coming off a season ruined by injuries, I'm looking for reasons to buy into Joakim Noah, and CBSSports.com's James Herbert provided some in an in-depth look at Noah's offseason training regimen. Noah played just 67 games last season and was often on a minutes limit, however he was coming off knee surgery that never really allowed him to get to full speed. The Bulls' frontcourt depth means Noah likely won't play huge minutes, but there's no reason he can't still be a nightly double-double threat with best-at-position assist numbers despite playing below 30 minutes per game. It's easy to forget that Noah played at a top-five level at the season in 2013-14, but that is the kind of upside he still has.
When it comes to the threat of a shooter, perception doesn't have to match reality. And with Nikola Mirotic, it doesn't. He shot just 31.6 percent from 3-point range last season, but opposing defenses reacted to him like he was Larry Bird in his prime, closing like madmen on his spot-up and pick-and-pop opportunities. The mere threat of Mirotic shooting opened up so much for the rookie, who developed a wonderfully effective pump-fake game that allowed him to post one of the highest free-throw rates in the league last season. He was able to score efficiently despite shooting just 40.5 percent from the field, and the next step in his development is going to come when he can convert more of those shots in addition to getting to the free-throw line. The Bulls' frontcourt is still crowded, but Mirotic brings offensive skills nobody else can come close to matching, and he should be a perfect fit for Fred Hoiberg's offense. Mirotic is a potential star in the making, and it wouldn't be a total surprise if he was Chicago's third option offensively before long.
Ryan Anderson has had a tough few years, missing 81 of a possible 164 games, including 21 last season. When he is on the floor, few players can match his shooting and scoring from the power forward position, but that has been an issue for him, even when healthy; his minutes were down to a four-year low of 27.5 per game last season. With Omer Asik and Alexis Ajinca hurt to start the season, Anderson has a good opportunity to get the season started on the right foot, and he and Anthony Davis have made such a terrifying pairing over the last three years that it might be hard for Alvin Gentry to split them up even when everyone is healthy.
Roy Hibbert's stock has taken a bit hit over the last few seasons, and the Pacers essentially deemed him expendable this offseason in their attempt to follow the league's small ball trend. That isn't a bad thing for Hibbert's Fantasy value, because I like him a lot more on this Lakers team than I did in Indiana. For one thing, rebounds should be a lot easier to come by on this team, which might be starting three shooting guards and essentially a rookie power forward. Hibbert's rebounding numbers took a huge hit two years ago, but he rebounded to 10.1 per-36 minutes, a perfectly fine number, especially when added to his 15.0 points and 2.3 blocks per-36. The Lakers really don't have any other reasonable options at center, and with the state of the rest of the roster, Hibbert's rim protection is going to be vital if they want to compete. Minutes shouldn't be an issue for Hibbert anymore, and I like him to return to potentially No. 1 center status in Rotisserie leagues.
