Fantasy basketball: Category and roto league draft tiers

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  André SnellingsOct 2, 2025, 06:51 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.

The fantasy basketball rankings are based upon my seasonlong projections from the almost 400 potential rotation players in the NBA for the upcoming season. Category-based fantasy hoops rankings are different than points-based, with less emphasis on pure volume, more benefit to specialized counting categories such as blocks, steals and 3-pointers, and more punishment for inefficient shooting from either the field or the line.

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The value of a contribution in a given category is going to differ based on the scarcity of the contribution. For example, there are far fewer steals than there are assists, so the weighting of each steal a player averages will contribute more to their category rankings than each assist.

Make sense?

The category with the most volume is points, so each individual point scored counts least toward these rankings. And the category with the least volume is blocked shots, so each blocked shot is worth quite a bit of weight in the rankings.

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You’ll see that phenomenon played out in both the Top 150 category rankings, as well as here in the category tiers. It’s easy to see that shot blockers as a whole rank significantly better in the category tiers than in the points-based tiers.

And, generally speaking, you’ll notice that defensive specialists or 3-point shooters will fare relatively better and players that generate volume in points, rebounds and/or assists fare relatively worse in category rankings than in points-based.

The following is my breakdown of players into tiers, by position, based upon my preseason projections.

It’s worthwhile for you to see how I break things down, but ultimately you’ll get the most benefit out of taking a few minutes for yourself and breaking down the players into your own tiers based upon your own valuation. You would be shocked how much a little exercise like that can do to prepare you for your draft, and how much this 20-minute exercise could set you apart from the other team managers in your league.

Point guard

Thoughts on PGs:

• The top two tiers have by-far more point guards than any other position. In fact, there are as many point guards in those two tiers as all the other positions combined. This is likely due to two of the three rare categories, steals and 3-pointers, being dominated by the point guards.

• Most of the point guards in those top two tiers are franchise players for their teams, but we already see one more specialized player like Derrick White whose excellent in 3-pointers, steals and even blocks for a guard.

• Another specialist, reigning steals champion Dyson Daniels, is in Tier 3 with All Stars De’Aaron Fox and Jamal Murray. Each of Tiers 3 – 5 have three point guards, but by Tiers 6 and 7 we’re back up to five. One takeaway is that you can get a high-caliber point guard at almost any point in the draft, something that certainly isn’t true for the other positions.

Shooting guard

Thoughts on SGs:

• Anthony Edwards is the only shooting guard in Tier 1 after a season that saw him make the leap to the highest-volume 3-point shooter in the league.

• Amen Thompson and Devin Booker make up Tier 2; Thompson highlights his all-around breakout with excellent defensive categories while Booker is a strong combination of offensive volume on great efficiency.

• Tier 3 is the only high-level tier where there are more shooting guards than any other position, and it suggests that if you go other positions in the first two rounds you’d have a good chance to snag a strong shooting guard in rounds 3 or 4.

• Tiers 4-6 have two to three players in each, but Tiers 7-9 are again full of more shooting guards than any other position. One implication of this breakdown is that the most likely time in your draft to find good value at shooting guard is either in rounds 3-5, or in the later rounds.

Small forward

Thoughts on SFs:

• There are no small forwards in Tier 1. LeBron James is hurt by his free throw percentage, which dropped him to Tier 2.

• Jalen Williams and rookie Cooper Flagg comprise Tier 3. For Flagg in particular, the scarcity at small forward plus his well-deserved hype will likely cause him to get drafted even earlier than the rankings suggest.

• Tiers 4-6 contain more small forwards than any other position, with a wide variety of different specializations that could fit fantasy teams with different makeups.

• The position gets sparse again by the late tiers, particularly Tier 9. Based on this analysis, the most likely time in fantasy drafts to get value at small forward are the middle rounds.

Power forward

Thoughts on PFs:

• Giannis Antetokounmpo is the only name in Tier 1. The fact that he made it despite his struggles at the free throw line shows just how dominant he is in the other categories.

• Anthony Davis is in Tier 2, and the availability risk due to his injury history is the only reason he isn’t also in Tier 1.

• There are at least three players whose default position is power forward in each of Tiers 3-6, making power forward the only position besides point guard where this is true.

• Power forward is the sparsest position from Tiers 7-9. Now, some of this scarcity is mitigated by dual-eligible players, but the general implication is that if you don’t get one of the very few elite options at power forward in the first round or two, you definitely want to draft one in the middle rounds because it is hard to find power forward value late in drafts.

Center

Thoughts on Cs:

• Value among centers is dominated by shot blocking. Shot blocking is why, in the category rankings, Victor Wembanyama beats out even triple-double-averaging Nikola Jokic for the top spot.

• And those that can both block shots and make 3-pointers are even more valuable, which is why Myles Turner is in Tier 3 and Alex Sarr is in Tier 4.

• Walker Kessler is in the same Tier 5 with enigmatic past MVP but major injury risk Joel Embiid.

• There are two players in Tiers 1 and 2, and three players in Tiers 3 and 4. Tier 6 is the first one with four options, then Tiers 8-9 have seven total players, including several shot-blockers. The implication is that if you miss out on one of the super-elite options early, you are likely to be able to fill your center position later in the draft with shot-blocking role player types.

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