24/25 Fast Starts Guides – Part 3
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 Jayson Tatum, Trae Young, James Harden, Stephen Curry, and Donovan Mitchell. While these are combinations that can lead to you winning your league, they will be weaker than the combinations suggested in Part 1 and 2 of this year’s Fast Starts guides. Unless you play in a league with a third-round reversal, it’s going to be tough to come out of round six in a dominant position due to how much less valuable the options at the end of the first are in comparison to the players drafted at the beginning of the first round.
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.
Jayson Tatum (Pick 7-12)
Punt Assists
Tatum/Edwards/Adebayo/Bane/Mikal Bridges/Ayton – This is a very nice per-game start for a team built around a player who may end up as just a top-15 per-game option. This group comes with no notable weaknesses outside of Ayton’s late-season availability. If you don’t feel comfortable rolling the dice on the Blazer, Mark Williams is a very solid alternative. You can also go small in round six and target one or two of the bigs that come off the board between rounds seven and nine. However, if you do this, you will likely need to eat at least a moderate-sized FT% hit. This group is average or better in every category except points and blocks. Both categories are just a touch below average.
2024-2025 Fast Starts Guide – Part 3
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