Fantasy basketball waiver wire pickups: Look to Jalen McDaniels

Working the waiver wire is pivotal to succeeding in fantasy basketball. With so many games, injuries and endless shifts in rotations throughout the marathon campaign, we’ll need to source stats from free agency to maximize imaginary rosters.

A willingness to entertain competition for the last few spots on your fantasy hoops roster can prove rewarding. When curating this fluid collective of statistical contributors, it helps to consider your end-of-bench players in direct competition with the talent floating in free agency.

The goal of this weekly series is to identify players at each position widely available in free agency in ESPN leagues. Some nominations are specialists capable of helping in one or two categories, while others deliver more diverse and important statistical offerings. In the breakdowns below, I’ve ordered players at each position with the priority of acquisition in mind, rather than roster percentage in ESPN leagues.

Point guard

Killian Hayes, Detroit Pistons (Rostered in 22.7% of ESPN leagues): With at least 17 points in four of the past six outings and with strong assist and steal rates fleshing out his profile, Hayes is among the most underrated guards in all of fantasy hoops.

Dennis Schroder, Los Angeles Lakers (28.2%): Playing heavy minutes atop a shallow Lakers’ backcourt rotation, Schroder has responded with 80 points across his last three games and seems to have earned an enduring role for a team in need of his scoring pop.

Immanuel Quickley, New York Knicks (19.4%): Speaking of playing time, Quickley is now in Tom Thibodeau’s inner circle, which often includes netting as many minutes as possible. The third-year guard has averaged a whopping 42.1 minutes since joining the starting lineup in place of an ailing RJ Barrett a few weeks…