NBA teams
Tom Carpenter, ESPN Staff Writer 8y

Curry jumps to No. 1 in end-of-season ranks

NBA, Fantasy, Fantasy NBA

Every other week I will publish my top-130 fantasy basketball rankings for the remainder of the season.

These rankings are based on season-long rotisserie formats. That means that players who excel in one or two categories will be ranked higher and those who fail miserably in percentages will be ranked lower than they would be in a points system.

So a 3-point specialist like Kyle Korver gets a bump, while a young star like Andre Drummond, who misses a ton of free throws, sinks. You will want to adjust accordingly based on your league's scoring system.

These rankings are forward-looking. If you want to know where players stand based on what they have done thus far this season, check out the ESPN Player Rater.

My goal here is to give you an idea of how much I value each player for the rest of the 2015-16 campaign. In its most basic sense, I am asking myself if I would rather have Player X over Player Y through April. If so, I rank him higher.

As always, I value your feedback, so feel free to hit me up @AtomicHarpua.

Atop the rankings, you'll notice that I bumped Stephen Curry up over Anthony Davis. What can I say? Curry is playing on some sort of superhuman level and appears locked in for the long haul. I think it's fair to wonder whether he will be scaled back later in the season to be full speed for the playoffs, but that argument against Curry is countered by the obvious health concerns we must admit to when it comes to the Brow.

A side effect of Curry's playing so well is that I ended up dropping Klay Thompson from No. 15 to No. 41. With Curry running wild and Draymond Green taking over as the Warriors' No. 2 option on offense, Thompson doesn't have the volume workload that a high-end 3-point specialist requires in fantasy. He doesn't do enough elsewhere to earn that high of a ranking, and it's a legitimate concern for his fantasy value going forward.

No one took a bigger leap in the rankings than Karl-Anthony Towns, who was at No. 44 and now is all the way up to No. 19. I pushed him all through the preseason -- and landed him for the foreseeable future in a keeper league -- because I expected great percentages, scoring, rebounding and blocks, but he has even exceeded my high expectations early on. I was convinced he would be a top-10 player within a season or two, but he may be there in a matter of weeks.

Meanwhile, Eric Bledsoe leapt from No. 28 to No. 18. I wrote during the preseason that I hoped this would be the season when Bledsoe finally stayed healthy and put it all together for a huge fantasy campaign. So far he has dominated box scores, but the fact that he missed Monday's game with a sore knee still makes me nervous about his long-term health. The longer he stays out of the infirmary, the higher he will rise in my rankings this season.

I also moved Kyrie Irving up from No. 43 to No. 21, as his return appears to be on the horizon. He should be back on the hardwood within the next month or so, and once back to full speed will be a top-10 fantasy option. It's a great time to target him in trades before his return appears imminent and his value rises.

I have received more questions lately about Ty Lawson and Rajon Rondo than anyone else. Lawson has been a flop of epic proportions thus far, while Rondo has looked like an All-Star. I'll admit, I totally misread both of these situations. I thought Lawson would get his life in order off the court and excel next to James Harden, and I thought Darren Collison wouldn't let Rondo take over the lead point guard duties for the Sacramento Kings.

Well, here we are a month in and it's clear that Lawson arguably isn't worth owning in standard leagues. In fact, I'd recommend dropping him for any halfway decent waiver-wire flier. However, I still have him at No. 118 because these are rest-of-season rankings, and there still is a decent shot he wakes up at some point.

As for Rondo, I have him at No. 63, but I easily could have put him much higher. I try to not overreact in these rankings, so I'm factoring in serious concerns that Rondo, George Karl and the Kings may implode at any point. If he keeps this up over the next two weeks, though, expect him to appear in the top 25.

Finally, I love how obsessive our readers are. When my last rankings came out, the most questions I received about a player didn't concern Curry and Davis at the top or any of the other big-name stars. The most questions concerned the whereabouts of Marcin Gortat, who didn't make the top-130 cut. Love the support for the big fella, who doesn't get enough respect in general.

The good news is that he made the cut this time, slipping in at No. 126. However, he just doesn't do enough for me to carry him on my rosters over upside players like rookies or those coming back from injuries, so he likely will be on and off this list throughout the season -- and I'll expect his supporters to give me an earful the next time he comes up short.

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