24/25 Fast Starts Guides – Part 1
If you are short on time this draft season, this is the guide for you. Below are 40 six-man combinations that will send you into the seventh round in good shape. I wouldn’t recommend taking this approach, but if you did no other draft preparation and simply copied one of the below combinations, you would likely finish your draft in a very good spot. The six-man combinations are broken down by first-round pick and punting build. This guide provides combinations for teams led by Victor Wembanyama, Nikola Jokic, Luka Doncic, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Part 2 and Part 3 of this set of guides will focus on building teams around the rest of the first-round options.
When putting together these teams, I wasn’t trying to make the team as strong as possible after round six. That wouldn’t make sense. Our drafts are not six rounds long. I put these teams together with the goal of helping you finish your draft in the strongest position possible. That means that in most cases, I focused heavily on category scarcity. You’ll notice that a bunch of these combinations are a little light on bigs. That’s intentional since the guard categories dry up much quicker than the big man categories. We can make a comeback late in blocks and FG%, but we can’t make a comeback late in assists and FT%. I tried to be as realistic as possible when coming up with these recommendations. I tried to avoid making too many reaches. That means you may be able to do better than a lot of these combinations, especially if you play on ESPN, or in a league with an auction draft. If you play on ESPN or in an auction draft league, use these combinations as starting points. Study them and then see if you can tweak them to make them even stronger.
*All six-man combinations were created using Yahoo’s rankings and with 12-team H2H leagues in mind. However, many of these combinations work very well in Roto as well. Punting one category in Roto can be a very viable strategy.
Victor Wembanyama (Pick 1-2)
Punt FG%
Wembanyama/Brunson/VanVleet/Murray/Vucevic/Russell – This is an excellent start from a category scarcity standpoint. Points, assists, steals, and FT% impact are difficult to find during the second half of the draft. This group is average in points and very strong in the other three categories. This group also sends you into the second half of the draft in an average position in turnovers. That is a difficult feat to pull off when punting FG% with Wembanyama. Rebounds are this combination’s lone weakness. You are not in trouble in the category but you are below average.
2024-2025 Fast Starts Guide – Part 1
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