Should you trade for fantasy basketball's breakout surprise, Ty Jerome?

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  André SnellingsNov 6, 2026, 07:24 AM ET

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  Dr. André Snellings is a senior writer for men's and women's fantasy basketball and sports betting at ESPN. André has a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Michigan. He joined ESPN in 2017 after a 16-year career as a neural engineer, during which time he was also a writer and analyst for Rotowire.

Will the real Ty Jerome please stand up?

True story. In the months leading up to every NBA season, I project the stats for every rotation player in the league. As a quick behind the scenes, there are two broad steps included in this process for veteran players: I try to determine each player's production-per-minute based on previous seasons, then I anticipate what their playing time will look like in the upcoming season. There are some other steps as well, but at the end of the process I have a projected stat line, number of minutes and number of games for each rotation player. Once I have those, I can run the stats through the fantasy points scoring algorithm and sort by "most total points" to get an initial set of player rankings.

This season, when I finished the process and sent the rankings to my editor, I got a one-liner message about an hour later: "Ty Jerome is very high. That's the first thing I see. Do we want him that high?"

It turned out that, based on my initial projections, Jerome was coming out as a top-25 player. He's never been ranked anywhere near that high in his career, as an instant offense off the bench guy for the most part and never a full-time starter. When I dug into how he got that high, it was because his per-minute stats in recent seasons were incredible and it appeared that he was going to play starter minutes this season.

Last season, in an injury-shortened campaign, Jerome averaged 19.7 PPG and 5.7 APG in under 23 MPG. If you scale that production rate up to 30-plus minutes, it was easy to see how Jerome was projecting so high. But, in this type of situation, we have to consider other elements. How would Jerome do when, instead of coming off the bench as instant offense, he was instead the focal point of opposing defenses? And what about his durability -- he missed most of last season injured, and has only been a reserve in previous seasons -- so could I really project him to starter minutes for 70-plus games?

After some deliberation, we scaled back Jerome's estimated minutes and games played, and he moved down our preseason rankings into the 60s. Still a career-best projected ranking for him, but no longer a player projected for the top three rounds in fantasy drafts.

Then, the season began. And through the first week, Jerome led the entire NBA in scoring with averages of 34.7 PPG, 6.0 APG and 3.0 3PG. At the time of our first fantasy rankings update of the season, I told my editor I was undoing all of the limits I had included in Jerome's preseason projections. When I did so, using feedback from the current season, Jerome came out as a top-15 player in the fantasy rankings that week.

I felt good about it until later that night, when Jerome started his second week. In that second week, Jerome's numbers plummeted back to earth. In three games, he had one DNP (back), and in his two games averaged 12.5 PPG, 5.5 APG and 1.0 3PG in 27.0 MPG. And all of the questions I had about Jerome's durability and his ability to deal with star-level defensive attention came back. With more feedback from the current season, Jerome's rankings slid a bit, into the upper 30s in both points and category leagues.

Felt like the right thing to do ... until that night. The very night the rankings update went through with more conservative estimates, Jerome exploded for his second 40-point game of the season with five each of assists, rebounds and 3-pointers.

So, as we sit here a few weeks into the season, the question remains: who is the real Ty Jerome this season? Is he a player whose start is fluky, and you should consider trading him now while his value is high? Or is he a player producing exactly as expected, and if anything he should be either a hold or even a trade-for player while his reputation still doesn't fit his production level?

My answer is yes. All of the above. Read your league's situation, gauge his trade value, and make your decision accordingly. Let me explain.

When watching the Memphis Grizzlies play, Jerome has the ultimate green light in that offense. He is the lead guard while he's on the court, which means he has the ball in his hands often and he is creating his own shot off the dribble. And some of those shots can only be called "heat checks", shots that when I was playing would have gotten me taken from the game immediately if I ever attempted them.

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Ty Jerome's clutch bucket sends it to OT for Grizzlies

But the Grizzlies are fine with Jerome taking those shots, and that's the next aspect of Jerome's value: he is a very streaky shooter who, when he's hot, can shoot as much as he wants. This is how Jerome is able to put these 30- and 40-point games on the board. It's also how, when he's not hot, he can have 10- and 15-point relative clunkers, because when he's off, he's off.

But averages are all about large numbers of repetitions, and in an 82-game season I expect Jerome to settle into an average that is a step down from his peaks but well above his valleys. And ultimately, the exercise of looking at Jerome's per-minute value and then projecting that to more than 30 MPG was useful in identifying his likely value this season.

Currently, Jerome ranks 25th in the ESPN Fantasy Player Rater. In standard points leagues, Jerome ranks 16th in fantasy points per game and 30th in total fantasy points. For the entirety of the season, trying to account for production ups-and-downs as well as potential injury absences, a reasonable range of fantasy values for Jerome is somewhere in the 15th to 40th range.

So, when determining Jerome's trade value, I suggest making your decisions based upon those extremes. If Jerome is on your team, and you can trade him for 15th overall value, then you strongly consider making the move. But if you can only get 40th player value for him, then he is worth holding onto.

Likewise, if you don't have Jerome on your squad and the team that has him is asking top-15 value for him, you probably hold off. But if you can trade for him for No. 40-player value, then he could be a good investment with upside.

Through the first few weeks of the season, I've seen enough to say that Jerome as an impact fantasy player is real. The projections based on his history of per-minute production were legit, and as long as he is healthy he should remain a high-impact producer this season.

Betting side note: Per DraftKings, Jerome currently has the shortest odds in the league for Most Improved Player (+250). I typically want longer odds for season-long bets, but in this case I see solid value here. The biggest question is if Jerome plays the 65-game minimum, because he has surpassed that threshold only once in his seven previous NBA seasons. But if Jerome meets the games played threshold, it is unlikely that any other player will see a bigger jump from his previous career value than Jerome will. His career averages prior to this season were 8.9 PPG and 3.0 APG, and even from last season to this we're currently looking at a big jump from 19.7 PG to 27.4 PPG. If Jerome can meet the 65-game threshold, he would seem to be in the pole position to win MIP.