Week 18 Streaming: Attack Quality Games, Fade Two-Game Traps

Week 18 looks simple on the surface, but the schedule is sneaky.

Week 18 looks simple on the surface, but the schedule is sneaky. You get a bunch of playable days, two clog days, and some teams that are quietly awful for fantasy volume. This is exactly where smart streaming and ruthless cuts matter.

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The Weekly Schedule At A Glance

This week starts on February 23 and the game flow looks like this:

• Monday: 3 games

• Tuesday: 11 games

• Wednesday: 6 games

• Thursday: 10 games

• Friday: 5 games

• Saturday: 5 games

• Sunday: 11 games

For most daily leagues with standard lineups:

• Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday are streamable.

• Tuesday and Sunday, with 11 games, are effectively non-streaming days because most lineups are already full.

So even though it is a full seven day week, you really have five true quality streaming days to work with.

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Team Game Counts And Who’s Behind

This week is balanced in total games but not in opportunity. Here is the breakdown:

Four-game teams (14)

• Boston

• Brooklyn

• Cleveland

• Dallas

• Detroit

• Houston

• The Lakers

• Memphis

• Milwaukee

• New Orleans

• Oklahoma City

• Portland

• Sacramento

• San Antonio

Three-game teams (14)

• Atlanta

• Charlotte

• Chicago

• Denver

• Golden State

• Indiana

• Miami

• Minnesota

• New York

• Orlando

• Philadelphia

• Toronto

• Utah

• Washington

Two-game teams (2)

• The Clippers

• Phoenix

The two-game teams are at a clear disadvantage, especially when you factor in which days those games land on.

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Quality Games: Who Actually Helps You

Quality games are the nights when your lineup is not jam packed and a streamer can realistically get into your active roster. For this week:

• Tuesday (11 games) and Sunday (11 games) are not quality days.

• Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday are.

Now look at how teams line up across those days.

Houston

• Plays four games and avoids both Tuesday and Sunday.

• That gives them four quality games. They are the only team with a true 4-for-4 quality schedule this week.

Utah

• Plays three games, and all three fall on quality days.

• In practice they function like a four-game team for streaming, because every game is usable.

Several four-game teams only give you two quality games because they land on Tuesday and Sunday:

• Boston

• Brooklyn

• Cleveland

• Dallas

• The Lakers

• Milwaukee

• New Orleans

• Oklahoma City

• Portland

For those teams, a fringe streamer is only realistically helping you twice, even though the team plays four times. A fringe Jazz player or Rocket has more functional value than a fringe piece off those schedules.

There are also nine teams that only have one quality game this week, because their games are clustered on the 11-game days:

• Atlanta

• Chicago

• Indiana

• Minnesota

• New York

• Orlando

• Philadelphia

• The Clippers

• Phoenix

If you are holding back-end players from those teams, you are basically getting one usable game from that slot this week.

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Streaming Blueprint: One Game Into Five

With that structure, here is what you can do.

If you have a player who only gives you one quality game this week (for example a fringe guy from Atlanta, Chicago, Indiana, Minnesota, New York, Orlando, Philadelphia, the Clippers or Phoenix) you can turn that spot into five games using only three moves, four if you want to squeeze it.

Core pattern:

1. Monday plus Wednesday “pseudo back-to-back”

   • Tuesday is a dead 11-game day, so you ignore it.

   • Target a team that plays both Monday and Wednesday:

     • Detroit

     • Houston

     • Memphis

     • Sacramento

     • San Antonio

   • One move gives you two quality games, Monday and Wednesday.

2. End-of-week chain
   Then you have three quality days left: Thursday, Friday, Saturday. You can either:

   • Use a Thursday–Friday back-to-back (Brooklyn or Dallas) plus a single Saturday stream, or

   • Hit Thursday, Friday and Saturday as three separate one-day streams.

Both routes give you three more quality games from that slot.

So from one streaming spot, dropping a one-quality-game player, you can realistically get:

• Monday

• Wednesday

• Thursday

• Friday

• Saturday

Five games from one roster slot.

If your league gives you seven moves (like many ESPN setups), you can apply a version of this to two roster spots and turn two total quality games into ten. That kind of game gap in the playoffs is a real edge.

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Who To Cut In Head-To-Head

This is playoff time for a lot of leagues. That means:

• You stop thinking “but he just had a big week” and start thinking “how many usable games does this spot give me right now.”

• Two-game teams are almost always on the chopping block for non-stars.

Examples of the types of players you move off without hesitation:

• Clippers or Suns role players who only have two games and just one quality day. You do not hold fringe Phoenix or Clippers pieces “because someone is out” when you can stream that spot into five games.

• Back-end options from Atlanta, Chicago, Indiana, Minnesota, New York, Orlando or Philadelphia who only appear on one quality night.

It does not matter that someone played 34 minutes last week if they only help you once this week and you are fighting for your season. Volume wins.

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Robbin Marx

NBA Fantasy Analyst

Experience: NBC Sports - Rotoworld, HashTag Basketball, Bleav Network