Kyle Lowry Fantasy Basketball: Why Raptors legend’s injury could make him a steal
Josh Lloyd is a Fantasy Basketball expert for Yahoo Sport based in Melbourne, Australia. His weekly articles will give you the edge on your opponents. Get in touch with questions for Josh on Twitter where he's always active.
The Toronto Raptors are the NBA Champions. But, in a departure from the norm, their squad for this season is a lot different to the one that knocked off the Golden State Warriors in June.
Their best player, Kawhi Leonard is in Los Angeles, as is Danny Green, so it’s up to Raptors legend Kyle Lowry to lead their title defence.
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Lowry was set to be a big part of Team USA’s FIBA World Cup campaign in August but suffered a thumb ligament injury that forced him to pull out. He had surgery on his thumb in July and still isn’t cleared for contact practice, and needs to get clearance from his surgeon in New York.
Raptors’ coach Nick Nurse thinks he will receive that clearance soon, meaning that Lowry’s availability for the beginning of the NBA season on October 22 shouldn’t be in doubt.
But, anytime a player enters a season with an injury, we need to be careful. Lowry played just 65 games last season.
But he was more robust in 17-18, seeing action in 78 of 82 games.
Often, when news like this comes out, it can be beneficial to managers in fantasy leagues as it can cause that player’s ADP to drop. As things currently stand, Lowry has an ADP of 55 on Yahoo, exactly in line with his initial X-Rank.
For a category league, that is entirely too low, but for a standard points league, anywhere in the fifth round of a 12 man league is the sweet spot.
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For a four year period between 2013 and 2017, Lowry was a top 25 fantasy player and also sported a usage rate of 24 per cent.
Last season, with Leonard in town, Lowry saw his usage plummet to 19 per cent and ended the year as the 40th ranked player. As is usual, Lowry slowed down post-All-Star and found himself outside the top 50 and that is always a concern when you draft the Raptors point guard.
This season, things are a lot murkier with Lowry.
Firstly, I expect his usage to jump back up as he takes on a much larger offensive role in a 1b role to Pascal Siakam’s 1a. That should see his scoring push back closer to 20 points per game than the 14 he averaged last season.
But, as a trade-off to that, Lowry’s career-high assist numbers for the championship run should drop. Lowry, who had never gotten to eight assists per game before, yielded 8.7 helpers per game.
But with him having to take on a more selfish offensive role, I can see that coming back down to his usual career numbers in the 6.5-7.5 range.
Is Lowry at risk of being traded?
The other concern with Lowry is the fact that he is in the final year of his contract. If the Raptors struggle and Lowry wants to compete for a title, Masai Ujiri could deal Lowry, along with Marc Gasol, and Serge Ibaka to other teams around the trade deadline.
I’m not overly worried about Lowry getting dealt, given what he means to Toronto. But the risk of Gasol and Ibaka going, both older guys who have expiring contracts, can impact Lowry.
If they go, it could mean players like Chris Boucher and Dewan Hernandez are pushed into larger roles, which further improves Lowry’s outlook as he would see a usage spike in that scenario, and perhaps be able to maintain a higher assist rate, given Gasol is an offensive fulcrum in Toronto with his elite passing skills.
Just because someone puts up more points than the year before, it doesn’t mean their rank increases. As the NBA increases pace across the league, and offensive outputs, rankings may remain static or drop, despite output increasing.
Lowry averaged 36.1 fantasy points per game last season, which was 40th. In 2015-16, that same total would’ve placed him 30th. So, while I do see his value per game increasing, it doesn’t mean he will finish higher than 40th.
Overall, I do expect Lowry to put up higher fantasy points on average than he did last season and he is perfect at the end of the fourth round and in the fifth round of your fantasy draft. But, you may find yourself in luck if your fellow managers begin panicking about the injury designation they see pop up in the draft room queue.
Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter and keep an eye out for the next mailbag tweet to gather your questions.
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