24/25 Fast Starts Guides – Part 2
If you are short on time this draft season, this is the guide for you. Below are 35 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 Giannis Antetokounmpo, Joel Embiid, Anthony Davis, and Tyrese Haliburton.
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 is a very viable strategy.
Giannis Antetokounmpo (Pick 5-6)
Punt FT%
Antetokounmpo/Ball/Maxey/Murray/Gobert/Russell – This is your standard punt FT% start. Grabbing four point guards and two elite punt FT% bigs over the first six rounds will almost always lead to a strong team. This group is average in points, steals, and FG% and strong in threes, rebounds, assists, and blocks. Its lone weakness is turnovers. However, you can still end up in a very good position in the category if you avoid taking any major hits late. That should be doable since you don’t need to take more than one or two more quality assist sources. Swapping Ball for De’Aaron Fox addresses this combination’s weakness in turnovers at the expense of some strength in threes and assists.
2024-2025 Fast Starts Guide – Part 2
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