Fantasy Basketball Forward Risers and Sleepers for 2023
The forward pool in Yahoo Fantasy’s High Score game has been flipped on its head.
LeBron James is gone from Los Angeles. Giannis Antetokounmpo has changed coasts. Rotations have been torn up, rebuilt and handed to a new wave of frontcourt options who suddenly find themselves staring at minutes, touches and responsibility they simply didn’t have a year ago.
That chaos is exactly where fantasy value hides.
Below are the forwards whose roles just exploded, and the sleepers the market is still dozing on. Every one of them has a clean, realistic path to more floor time than their draft slot suggests — and several have the statistical profile to crash the top 75 in nine-category formats.
Forward Risers
Naz Reid, Charlotte Hornets
Naz Reid has been waiting for this.
He earned his payday in Minnesota, but with Rudy Gobert anchoring the paint and Julius Randle joining the frontcourt, Reid stayed stuck as the luxury bench big. He has never cleared 28 minutes per game in any season, topping out at 26 last year despite delivering 13.6 points, 6.2 rebounds and 2.2 assists in that limited run.
Charlotte changes everything.
The Hornets went hunting for size in the offseason. They also watched Miles Bridges walk, leaving a pile of shots and possessions on the table. Reid walks into a depth chart that begs for a 30-plus-minute starter, not a 22-minute spark plug, and his history when he does get the nod is exactly what fantasy managers want to see.
Across 77 career starts, Reid has averaged 15.5 points, 7.1 rebounds, 2.0 assists, 1.8 threes, 1.1 steals and 1.2 blocks. In High Score terms, that’s roughly 33.5 points per game before you even bake in the possibility of a bigger role and more usage in Charlotte. The steals-and-blocks combination is gold in this format, and Reid’s stretch-big ceiling nights can comfortably push into the 40s.
At an ADP of 65 on Yahoo, he isn’t a secret. He’s just still a bit too cheap for what his new situation can unlock.
Julius Randle, Brooklyn Nets
Minnesota didn’t just move Reid. They moved a former All-Star.
Julius Randle lands in Brooklyn, where the Nets are reshaping the roster around Michael Porter Jr. and ushering in the next wave with rookie guard Mikel Brown Jr. It’s a team in need of a primary engine, and Randle has worn that label before.
Five of the last six seasons, he’s averaged at least 20 points per game. His 2022-23 campaign with the Knicks — 25.1 points, 10 rebounds and 4.1 assists on a 29.5% usage rate — is the blueprint. In Minnesota, he never climbed above 26.5% usage, a subtle but important cap on his fantasy ceiling.
Run that 2022-23 line through the High Score lens and you get roughly 43 points per night before steals and blocks even enter the conversation. That’s the profile that breaks weeks in a format where only your single best game counts. One 30-15-6 eruption, and he’s essentially a one-man matchup swing.
Brooklyn can give him that central role again. Fantasy managers willing to pay for the volume may find they’re actually getting a discount on his High Score upside.
Andrew Wiggins, Miami Heat
Miami tore up its playbook by landing Antetokounmpo from Milwaukee. Tyler Herro and a chunk of the Heat’s young depth went the other way, leaving a roster that will lean hard on Giannis and Bam Adebayo. Davion Mitchell brings structure with his passing and defense, while Tim Hardaway Jr. and Klay Thompson stretch the floor.
That leaves a very clear lane for Andrew Wiggins.
He steps in as the third scorer, and the numbers from last season suggest he’s ready to do more. Even on a modest 19.4% usage rate, Wiggins produced 15.4 points, 4.8 rebounds, 2.7 assists, 1.1 steals and 1.0 blocks — about 32 High Score points per game. Before that dip, he’d cleared 20.9% usage in every season, and at 24.5% two years ago he averaged 18 points.
The scoring will grab attention, but it’s the quiet work that matters here. Those 1.1 steals and 1.0 blocks are tailor-made for this format, padding his line on nights when the jumper isn’t falling. If Miami nudges his usage back toward that 22–24% window as the clear third option, Wiggins has room to smash his ADP of 110.
Forward Sleepers
Jaime Jaquez Jr., Milwaukee Bucks
Jaime Jaquez Jr. has already ridden the NBA roller coaster once.
He flashed as a rookie, faded in a quieter sophomore season, then surged again last year with 15.4 points, 5.0 rebounds and 4.7 assists in 28 minutes per game. The efficiency popped too — 50.7% from the field, up from 46.1% — and that all-around game made him a centerpiece in Milwaukee’s return package for Giannis.
Now the Bucks reset around Tyler Herro as their leading scorer, with Ryan Rollins next to him in the backcourt and a supporting cast that includes Kevin Porter Jr., Kyle Kuzma and Myles Turner. Young pieces Brayden Burries and Nate Ament add intrigue, but Jaquez is the one who looks built to steady the whole thing.
His 4.7 assists alone are worth 9.4 High Score points, and this format doesn’t punish his modest three-point volume. He can live in the mid-range, cut, post smaller defenders and still pile up fantasy value through passing, rebounding and efficient scoring.
Minutes? They’re there for the taking. Don’t be surprised if he walks out of this season with career-highs in points, boards and assists, all while quietly becoming one of the most reliable forwards outside the early rounds.
Collin Murray-Boyles, Toronto Raptors
On paper, the door is closed.
Jakob Poeltl is locked in through 2029-30 on more than $27.3 million annually. That kind of contract usually guarantees a starting job, and he’ll almost certainly open the year ahead of Collin Murray-Boyles.
But Poeltl’s availability tells a different story. He played only 46 games last season and has failed to top 57 appearances in each of his three full seasons in Toronto. Murray-Boyles stepped into that void and didn’t blink. Across 22 starts, he averaged 9.1 points, 5.7 rebounds, 2.7 assists, 1.1 steals and 1.2 blocks.
For a rookie, that’s a serious fantasy signal. In High Score, it translates to roughly 27 points per game, with about a quarter of that haul coming purely from steals and blocks. That defensive activity is exactly what this format rewards.
There’s also a quiet bump coming from the rotation shuffle. Sandro Mamukelashvili’s 22 minutes per game are now in Los Angeles, freeing up more frontcourt time to redistribute. If Murray-Boyles nudges his way into a larger, more permanent role, his ADP of 122 will look like a miss by several rounds.
Sandro Mamukelashvili, Los Angeles Lakers
Sandro Mamukelashvili spent years as a footnote.
Before last season, he had never averaged more than 15.3 minutes per game. Toronto finally handed him a real role — 22 minutes a night across 80 games — and he rewarded the trust with 11.2 points and 4.9 rebounds on 52.3% shooting overall and 38.9% from three.
The Lakers noticed.
Needing size and shooting in a post-LeBron landscape, they committed four years and $52 million to Mamukelashvili. With James gone, power forward minutes are sitting there alongside Jake LaRavia, and another career high in playing time is firmly on the table.
There is one important High Score wrinkle: three-point makes don’t carry their own category. His value in this format won’t come from the percentage or volume from deep, but from the rebounds, points and any defensive stats that come packaged with the extra run.
At an ADP of 114, he’s the kind of late-round ticket you buy on opportunity. The Lakers have a frontcourt vacuum. Mamukelashvili has already shown what he can do when a team finally lets him breathe.
