Last Updated on January 5, 2026 12:40 pm by Aaron Bruski | Published: January 5, 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 11 are here!

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)

*Waiver Wire Rank in Parenthesis

Quentin Grimes

SG, Philadelphia Sixers

(1) Playing in the shadow of Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe, Grimes has been consistent for all but the past week or two prior to this last week (he also suffered from illness). His season per-game numbers are top 90-110 (8/9) and he does this while fighting for usage so there are levels here. Altogether, playing in 31 games he has returned top 75-90 value on the season and is right in line with Bruski 150 preseason projections.

Aaron Gordon

PF, Denver Nuggets

(3) Check prior Bruski 150 weekly waiver wire reports for a sense of how fast this happened and the Nikola Jokic injury wasn’t even enough to get great visibility on injury reports, which was how we were able to beat everybody to the punch. Gordon was already toward the end of his timeline and as the team’s third point guard it simply made sense that he would come back sooner rather than later. As noted throughout the season, Gordon has truly started to flex as an offensive engine and that has been behind his top 60-75 run to start the year. His rust game was pretty loud with 20 points and six rebounds in 21 minutes.

There is some injury risk here and I prefer the floor for Quentin Grimes and his relative upside, but this next month might roll top-60 and out produce Grimes while Joel Embiid is still upright.

Grayson Allen

SF, Phoenix Suns

(4) I’ve been through it as much as anybody with Allen over the past two seasons. Watching his breakout the year before it was clear the talent and athleticism was there, and then whether it was due to the injuries or him getting yoked out, he simply couldn’t move or stay on the floor. A B150 win escaped us last season.

Now this season he looks like the player he was before and once again he can’t stay on the floor, bringing back top 60-70 value in his 18 games this season. It has been messy since he started missing games, but Phoenix likes him and this kind of value doesn’t grow on trees, and his numbers aren’t so crazy that we can arbitrarily slide his baseline from the mid-round value he has produced this season. If he slides lower than that into the late rounds, injury risk would obscure his value.

Let’s see if we can catch the add after everybody else went through the pain!

Aaron Nesmith

PF, Indiana Pacers

(7) We’ve been pitching Nesmith as a late-round guy with the mid-round upside and he answered the call with top-65 value over the last four games. He has posted 14 points, three triples, five boards, 3.5 assist, 2.1 combined defensive stats and the percentages aren’t too far out of bounds for the sample. It’s the scenario I’ve been wondering about, which is that he takes bigger shares of the team’s best player pie. There are certainly question marks regarding efficiency for a bad Indiana Pacers team, not to mention his own injury history, but the needle quickly moved toward mid-round and now he just needs to keep it up.

Justin Champagnie

SG, Washington Wizards

(8) Longtime followers know my affinity for Champagnie as his stat set and ability to fly up the ranks just are what they are. Of course, we were there to advise an add the minute we saw two games in the 20-24 minute range to start December (go check his preseason B150 rank for fun/LOLs).

Over the last two weeks, Champagnie has been a top 85-115 producer in 24 MPG with 11 points, eight rebounds, 3.0 combined threes/steal/blocks. He continues to put down winning film 75-85% of the time and it bodes well for the chances he can build upon this current base of minutes.

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

Must Roster Graduates from Past Columns: Kevin Porter, Collin Gillespie (Not a Waiver Wire POY Candidate b/c SportsEthos members drafted him), Derrick Queen, Jay Huff, Jaylen Tyson

Want full access to the Bruski 150 Waiver Wire Report? You’ll need to have an Ethos 360, All-Sport or NBA FantasyPass membership. Click here to learn more and sign up! Premium Access Required

  Join our Discord:  Click Here to Join!

• About the Author
• Latest Posts

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.

• Fantasy Basketball Bruski 150 Waiver Wire Report: Week 11
• Fantasy Basketball Bruski 150 Waiver Wire Report: Week 10
• Fantasy Basketball Bruski 150 Waiver Wire Report: Week 9