Fantasy Notebook: It’s Cavs/Wizards Week!

The NBA and your fantasy team are ready to kick off Week Four with a particularly fun fantasy/reality wrinkle for Cavs fans. The 5-3 Cavaliers visit the 7-2 (as of now) Wizards with some early season bragging rights on the line.

For the Wiz: On Saturday, Beal announced that he would begin practicing with the Wizards this week and was eyeing Friday’s game against the visiting Cleveland Cavaliers to make his return. Wizards coach Randy Wittman hasn’t confirmed Beal’s return date, but the third year shooting guard is expected to practice on Monday for the first time since suffering a non-displaced fracture to his left (non-shooting) wrist back in October. In Beal’s absence, Wittman has been starting Garrett Temple, who had become a fantasy darling with a torrid stretch of minutes/points/rebounds. Temple has, not surprisingly, come back to earth recently, scoring just over four points a game over his last four. Expect Temple’s reintroduction to gravity to continue as Beal begins to work himself back into the Wizards lineup.

Last season, Beal averaged 17.1 points and connected on 1.9 three pointers a game which he shot at a 40% clip. He’s not likely to help out in your FG% category, though, as he shot just 41.9% from the field. It will be interesting to see how well Beal meshes with off-season addition Paul Pierce, specifically whether Pierce’s presence will take away from the shots Beal needs (nearly 16 a game last season) to reach his expected level of production. Pierce is shooting just over 10 times a game this season… and he ain’t doin’ it so well, going just 34.4% from the field and 25% from three.

[Pause, as the writer, who has Pierce in his other fantasy league hurriedly drops him for Miami’s Shawne Williams or… hell, I don’t know… anyone.]

Last year, though, Beal was able to find his shots playing beside Trevor Ariza, who attempted roughly as many shots per game (11.1), though he hit them at a much better rate.

For the Cavs: Well, you’re reading a Cavs blog, so you probably have noticed that LeBron James has come out of his early season shell of inefficiency to get back to putting up numbers that Cavs fans and fantasy owners alike have come to expect from Number 23. In three games last week, all Cavs wins, James averaged 35 points, 7.7 assists, and seven boards, while shooting a jaw-dropping 59.4% from the floor. The team seemed to be doing a much better job spacing the floor and opening up lanes for James to drive one-on-one (where he tends to win).

James and the Cavs are heating up at just the right time with a tough week ahead. After what should be an easy game at home against the struggling Nuggets (see last week’s column for how I feel about that dumpster fire of a team), the Cavs have games at home against the defending champion San Antonio Spurs and and then back-to-backs over the weekend at the aforementioned Wizards and home against the 8-2 Raptors of Toronto. James is going to be facing bigger, better defenses, as well as much better individual defenders this week, so it would be a surprise to see him keep pouring it on at last week’s pace. Again, though, you’re reading a Cavs blog… so, let’s just say he does, huh?

Joe Harris has also emerged as a darkhorse fantasy option going forward. Harris has been seeing his minutes stay around 20 all week — including crunch time minutes with the starters in Friday night’s comeback win against the Celtics in Boston — and, while he’s averaging just 7.6 points per game right now, Harris scored a career high 12 points against the Hawks and is on a two-game stretch where he’s shooting nearly 59% from the floor and 75% from three.

Look for Harris to be a possible fantasy pickup if he gets moved into the starting lineup.

Notes:

•Congratulations to Cavs: The Fantasy League’s Week Three winner Evil Genius! Ole EG took CtB’s own Mallory Factor to school, sat with him during after school, bought him a Happy Meal at McDonalds afterward and then sang Mallory to sleep to the tune of an 11-2 win. Nice win, Genius.

•On a selfish note, my own team, the Waiters Invaders (who, yes, strangely are missing Mssr. Waiters from their roster), broke out of an early season slump (that may or may not have coincided with LeBron’s own… You decide) to cool off David Wood and the previously red hot Alex Dirk.

Enjoy your week, fantasy ballers…