The TOP 25 Players In Fantasy Basketball [Cats & Points]

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Josh Lloyd (1:06)

This is the definitive top 25 players for fantasy basketball, Michael Bolton.

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Thanks, Josh. It's Michael Bolton here. And it's time for another episode of the Locked On Fantasy Basketball Podcast.

Let's get to it.

Josh Lloyd (1:24)

Let's get to it indeed.

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Josh Lloyd (1:38)

Hello and welcome to the Locked On Fantasy Basketball Podcast brought to you by Basketball Monster. My name is Josh Lloyd and I am the former fourth member of NSYNC. We are talking about the top 25 players for Basketball Monster, and I want to show that I know many of you will watch and listen to and use or debate or argue or do whatever. I get that. What I do want to just be very clear about, this is being recorded on September the 16th, 2026, 30 days or so before the beginning of the NBA season. How many days is it actually? It's getting pretty, we're getting pretty close. It's about 34 days, I think. 35 days before the start of the NBA season.

There will be changes. We will get information in pre-season, training camp, media day, that has some impacts here.

Also, the differences between a lot of these players is marginal. At one and two, do whatever you want. Like honestly, three and four, pretty close. Five, six, seven, they're not that far apart. The plethora of guys between 11 and 19, I could change my mind one day over the next. There's a lot of guys that's based on potential availability problems, which we might hear about. Some information heading into training camp, which changes my mind.

There's gonna be some of you go, well, you shouldn't have him here, you should have him. I go, fine, but like, either way, man, it's not back breaking stuff for a lot of the case. Most of the time, when you're picking in round one, you just make your pick, right? It's not the thing that wins or loses. Unexpected injuries, that'll lose your league. Taking Nikola Vujchevic inside the top 20, good luck, you're done, you're cooked.

But if you're just taking the guys who sort of are in that range, or you pass on a guy that everyone thinks is 11th, and then you only have him 16th, it doesn't matter. These things are so close, it's a razor's edge. It might be a projection difference or a real life end of season difference of 0.2 steals, 4 assists, 8 points, 46 down to 45 on your field goals. That's it. These are tiny things. So don't get caught up in it. There's nothing definitive about the numbers I'm going to present to you, the numbers that you have in your head, or the numbers that you see somewhere else. They're not absolute, they're not definitive. I said they were definitive, they're not. They're not definitive.

And most of the time, it's like, okay, that's fine, do that, that's all right. When I start to have like, oh, that's too early, if I see six, seven players that I think might be better suited than that player in that area, then I go, that's maybe the wrong pick or that guy slid too far. But otherwise, it is all narrow, narrow margins. So in saying that, let's talk about it. Let's talk about the top 25 in Fantasy Basketball. And I will start by doing my top 25 for Yahoo Points League scoring. We're gonna do ESPN Points League, we're gonna do nine category, we're gonna do Roto, eight category as well. I don't think there's much surprise at the top. Just a quick aside on this, this guy is number, or is he? Is Nikola Jokić number one in every format? You'll see in a sec. Jokić was number one in my Yahoo! points here, he was number one in Durant last season, he was number one for Fantasy Points last season. I've still got him projected over 30 usage. Last season he played 35 minutes and 31 usage. He had the knee injury, all that stuff. Like it's Jokić, we know who he is. He's awesome. Picking but one is hardly gonna cause any consternation. There again, don't need to go too much into that. At number two, I do have Victor Wembanyama. I know there's gonna be somebody, there'll be at least one person. Can't trust him, he's always hurt. I mean, fine, he has played 65 games in two of the three seasons. And one of them was a blood clot. The injuries are not ideal and the fact that his minutes are low is not... It's not perfect. I wish he played a little bit more. But...