Last Updated on January 27, 2026 12:36 pm by Aaron Bruski | Published: January 27, 2026

We are starting to close in on the halfway point of the fantasy basketball season and the Bruski 150 Waiver Wire plays for Week 14 are here!

Every week outside of the paywall, I give you FIVE PLAYERS from my TOP TEN WAIVER WIRE pickups and then NBA FantasyPass subscribers get the rest (25 TOTAL PICKUPS)

I also rank stashes, provide streamers and also list out players that I’m staying away from, plucking this data from the high stakes leagues that I compete in as well as SportsEthos leagues.

*Waiver Wire Rank in Parenthesis

Cam Spencer

SG, Memphis Grizzlies

(1) I’m graduating Spencer out of this list this week but there was so much noise about him being a drop candidate or not a must-roster player that I have to keep him in here one more week.

As mentioned in however many weekly columns over the last month and change, he is a top 120 player on the season in 23.9 MPG on a per-game basis and if those metrics can’t work for you it’s probably time to find a bigger or tougher league because just by being here you’re ready for it!

If you simply rolled with this at the beginning of this ride and didn’t listen to any of the reactionary advice out there you’re the recipient of top 85 value on the season by totals and a lot of that upwards of that range when he was producing as a top 50 guy for a sizable stretch.

The easy thing here was that there was no conceivable way he was going to be playing less than 24 MPG with or without Ja Morant. He is too impactful for what they are trying to accomplish and other players would be on the chopping block before him. And this will be true if Ty Jerome and Scotty Pippen come back playing well every night.

He’s not without flaws – he can get bottled up against good defenders and often gets lost in a facilitation-only role that can leave the scoring numbers down and take away his pop. Overall, he’s a great shooter hitting 48% of his shots on the season and 92% from the foul line that could easily take on more minutes in the 26 to 30 range, or even more if they truly give him the ball and get out of the way.

It’s not enough to wait until a guy has proven it for over a month to shove all the chips in the middle. This was a classic example of a reactive market having no idea what to do with good metrics.

Justin Champagnie

SG, Washington Wizards

(2) Champagnie finally had the big game over the weekend to really hammer in the results for us as industry-leading Champagnie experts. He is now easily a late round value over the last two months and inside of the top 100 over the last month, top 75 over the last two weeks and an early round week.

He’s still going to be up and down until his role is truly given an incremental bump or two because he’s happy to perform in a limited role. If they start looking to him more on cuts and in the screen game he could start threatening the early rounds on a more consistent basis. Regardless, hopefully ya’ll stayed the course.

Sandro Mamukelashvili

PF, Toronto Raptors

(5) Mamukelashvili had another killer week and even if Toronto lands a big man that cuts into his minutes, Mamu has had such a great season that Toronto probably isn’t working all that hard to replace his minutes.

Of course, they are trying to move Jakob Poeltl and the other rumor is that they might look at a low-end big man to step into those minutes. However those tea leaves may boil, he has basically been a late-round guy in 25 MPG this month and profiled that way all season. The idea that he can keep that many minutes, building off the mid-round flurries we have seen out of him, is a live wire.

Moussa Cisse

C, Dallas Mavericks

(7) Because we haven’t seen Cisse since his massive line and all of the hype from yours truly, I’m going to leave you with my analysis from last week here in a bit.

Since then, we’ve gotten more stories about Anthony Davis possibly wanting to or ending up staying in Dallas and Daniel Gafford has gotten back on the floor (he is also in trade rumors). Davis also did a little work out for the cameras in which he was more spry than any time I have watched him this season. For his part, Cisse has been missing games due to illness and then had a game postponed.

I’ll put it to you guys this way – there’s risk inherent within a pickup like this. The weeks before the trade deadline were always going to be squirrely and Dwight Powell has always seemed like a logical bridge to Cisse. This add is about being there for a pivot point and I spent another weekend adding Cisse. Let’s see what happens next.

From last week:

I spent a nice little chunk of Sunday afternoon for my high-stakes FAAB runs deep diving on the value of Cisse. Basically, it looks like this – he is a blocks monster in the waiting, and sported a block rate in college that got as high as 11% and was 9.8% in his final season at Memphis. He’s not bad with the steals either and of course the field goal percentage is there for the big man.

Where we run into the biggest issue is with the foul shooting as he could easily get up into the 3-4 attempt range, and it’s not clear whether he can clear the 50% mark. I’ll cut to the chase and say that if you cut loose for 25 minutes or more per game he has top 50-125 probable production and at swing comes back to how many foul shots he truly takes and also whether or not you care about foul shooting.

Basically, he might be this season’s Adem Bona.

The next big issue is that he has run through 36 of his 50 games on his two-way deal, and currently Dallas doesn’t have a roster spot for him. That said, his teammates Anthony Davis and maybe even Daniel Gafford are available for a trade. While Dallas has a long history with Dwight Powell, they could also decide to cut him and move on.

The bottom line with this is that Dallas can both develop a player who is showing incredible promise in a league that covets bigs who can move both laterally and vertically on defense – and also lose games because he’s extremely raw on offense. His teammates that might steal his minutes, including Powell and possibly even 10-day signee Jeremiah Robinson Earl, are more shooter and connector than defensive presence so he has his own distinct lane. Gafford might have a chronic ankle issue that could theoretically end his career at this point since we are well beyond reasonable return schedules.

Dallas will need to make a move to get rid of Anthony Davis and/or add a roster slot to make this work but after that everything lines up for a breakout.

Dylan Cardwell

C, Sacramento Kings

(9) I saw Cardwell in the preseason and first few weeks and had the same reaction that I’ve had to other elite athletes.

It’s a sort of pop in the eyes when you see the size/speed combination and for Cardwell it’s his ability to get that massive frame up in the air so explosively. I can guarantee you nobody on the floor wants to fight that guy and that’s probably why he gets away with shoving people on the ground.

That, and because he’s smiling while he’s doing it in a good-natured way that you might see a football player down at your local 24 hour fitness hooping and everybody knows that this player has zero control over what they’re doing. This is the NBA version of that and to be 100% clear he’s pretty savvy defensively and on the glass as this is his calling card in the NBA.

And he’s also doing the WWE thing where he riles the crowd up on virtually every play so of course Doug Christie loves him. Domantas Sabonis is back to crowd the rotation and Keegan Murray will be back shortly but there is an increasing sense around Sacramento that Cardwell will get his 20 minutes per-game just to keep his intangibles, rebounding and defense in the collective bloodstream. And in that many minutes the season he is producing top 150-175 value (9/8 cat).

Over the last two weeks we’ve seen an uptick to 23 MPG with top 30-40 value as he has averaged six points, nine rebounds, to assist, one steal, two blocks and 73% shooting from the field.

What happens if they let him roam around out there for 25 or 26 MPG while the team tanks down the stretch? For what it’s worth, they still need to sign him to a rest of season deal but without making any phone calls this seems almost like a formality at this point. This isn’t without risk but this has silly season fun written all over it.

Must Roster Graduates from Past Columns: Kevin Porter, Collin Gillespie (Not a Waiver Wire POY Candidate b/c SportsEthos members drafted him), Derrick Queen, Peyton Watson, Jay Huff, Jaylen Tyson (if he was somehow dropped he’s a run don’t walk in 125 player or greater formats and that might also be true for 100 player very shallow formats), Aaron Gordon, Ajay Mitchell, Grayson Allen, Russell Westbrook

NOW, THE TOP REMAINING BRUSKI 150 WAIVER WIRE PICKUPS ARE …

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• About the Author
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Aaron Bruski

I’m a father, husband and friend. Also, a high stakes fantasy basketball player and I’ve been working in fantasy sports since the turn of the century. Before founding SportsEthos, I spent nearly a decade at Rotoworld building their NBA operation, where we won the FSGA award for Best News and Analysis Site regularly. I cut my teeth in the reporting world at ProBasketballTalk.com on the Kings relocation story, developing sources in Sacramento and throughout the NBA. I’ve won two FSWA Basketball Writer of the Year awards and been nominated four times. I started SportsEthos to help this industry evolve so content producers can have some long-term security and customers can get a better product.

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