Howard Smith- USA TODAY Sports
With center Al Horford out, it’s easy for fantasy basketball owners to completely forget about the Atlanta Hawks. There aren’t a lot of notable names on their roster, but it would be a mistake for those who may need to add depth to their fantasy roster to ignore the rest of the team.
DeMarre Carroll set a career-high with 24 points (4-for-8 on three-pointers) against the New York Knicks on Saturday night, and he also had six rebounds and two steals in the game. He missed three games recently with a left hamstring issue, and did not have a great game in his first game back Friday night, but Carroll is still averaging 14.8 points, 5.2 rebounds, 2.0 assists and 1.5 steals per game over his last 13 games while making over 47 percent of his three-pointers in that span.
Carroll has started all 48 games he’s played in this season, averaging 10.6 points, 5.5 rebounds, 1.8 assists and 1.4 steals per game. Horford went down in late December, and since the calendar flipped to 2014 Carroll is averaging 13.3 points, 5.4 rebounds, 2.1 assists and 1.7 steals in 18 games as his playing time (33 minutes per game) and shot attempts (9.8 per game) have risen to slightly above his overall season averages as well.
Carroll is not likely to put up 20-plus point games on par with Saturday on a regular basis, but he has sustained a solid level of production in four categories for a long enough stretch now that fantasy owners should have him on their radar. He is not quite a high priority addition right now, outside of very deep leagues where potential difference makers can be impossible to find on the waiver wire at this stage of the season, but I expect to see Carroll’s ownership percentage in Yahoo! leagues (35 percent) rise fairly soon.
Brad Berreman is a Senior Writer at Rant Sports.com. Follow him on Twitter @bradberreman24 or connect with him on Google +
