Fantasy Basketball: Week 24 Planner

Rankings: Top 150 for Week 24 | Season

This is it; the last week of the season. Week 24 (April 4-10) is your last chance to win a championship, and it is going to be one of the toughest to pin down for a number of reasons.

For one thing, the last few weeks of the season are always kind of a disaster for Fantasy. Teams are either gearing up for the playoffs and jockeying for position, or they are readying themselves to rebuild in the offseason. For most of the league, there is little incentive to play through the kind of nagging injuries you might battle through in January, which tends to lead to a lot more unexpected absences than usual.

And then there's rest, of course. Teams either want to avoid unnecessary injuries as they head into the playoffs or get an extended look at young guys, which means you might not have your best players available for the last few games. This is a good argument against letting your season extend through the end of the NBA season, but that's an argument for another time and place. Losing your star for the last week can be a killer, though you also have to keep in mind how much value this can create -- anyone who played the Clippers in DFS Thursday knows exactly what I mean.

Another reason Week 24 is tough to figure out is the schedule itself. With the NCAA Championship game set for Monday night, the NBA schedule clears out entirely that evening. Nobody plays. What this means is your available number of games shrinks; only eight teams play more than three times in Week 24.

If you're looking for streaming options, target players from the following teams:

Hornets: Marvin Williams, Courtney Lee, Jeremy Lin, Cody Zeller
Warriors: Harrison Barnes, Shaun Livingston
Clippers: Jamal Crawford, Jeff Green; Cole Aldrich, Austin Rivers (If they rest the starters again)
Lakers: Lou Williams, Larry Nance, Marcelo Huertas
Heat: Josh Richardson, Justise Winslow
Pelicans: Toney Douglas, Tim Frazier, Luke Babbitt, Omer Asik, Alexis Ajinca, Jordan Hamilton, Dante Cunningham
Spurs: Danny Green, Manu Ginobili, Tony Parker, David West, Boris Diaw
Raptors: Cory Joseph, Terrence Ross, Bismack Biyombo

Those aren't exactly the most enticing options, obviously, but you might have to get desperate. That extra game can be key, and especially if you have some stars facing back-to-backs. Look at the Cavaliers; three games on the schedule, and two are on consecutive nights. Kyrie Irving, LeBron James and Kevin Love are all at risk of playing just two games this week. That might be enough to justify starting them, but it wouldn't be totally insane to start Toney Douglas (25.8 Fantasy points per game over his last five) over Irving (28.8 over his last five. No, really.

Like I said: You really should be ending your seasons earlier.

Of course, Week 24 isn't all that's left. There are still three days beyond next Sunday to account for, and if your league combines them into one extra-long week, you need to account for that as well.

The key thing here is the three teams who play just four games over the next 10 days: the Knicks, Nuggets and Trail Blazers. You aren't benching Damian Lillard, and you probably still want to ride with C.J. McCollum as well, with the Blazers fighting for their playoff lives.

The Nuggets and Knicks, however, don't have anything to play for down the stretch, and might be in line to rest starters. Luckily, they don't have any back-to-back sets, however, it wouldn't be a total shock to see Carmelo Anthony sitting out -- Knicks coach Kurt Rambis has already said he will be playing the young players more in the last handful of games. Anthony is an extremely tough call, but he is probably a borderline starter for the rest of the season -- Robin Lopez won't even make the cut.

If you're playing all the way to next Wednesday's 14-game slate, that could be the most impossible day to predict. The Pistons, Grizzlies, Pacers, 76ers, Clippers, Raptors, Heat and Spurs are all playing on the second night of a back-to-back, so it wouldn't be a surprise if they all rested significant parts of their rotations. Dwyane Wade, for instance, may not be a surefire starter, especially with two back-to-backs left.

The key takeaway here is that the guys you rode to this point in the season may not be there for you this week. If you're playing with daily lineup locks, that isn't such a big deal, but it really could swing things if you have to decide your lineup by Monday. The schedule is going to be your opponent as much as anything else.

Good luck.