24/25 ESPN Sleepers
After putting out rankings that were surprisingly respectable last draft season, ESPN is back to posting nonsense. This year’s rankings are…something. To give you a taste of what is to come, Deandre Ayton is ranked 147th on ESPN this season. That is a whopping 109 spots behind Brook Lopez who is ranked 38th for some reason. I’m not sure what happened here. The rankings look like they were created by a poorly programmed AI. It’s hard to believe real human beings sat down and thought “Donovan Clingan should be ranked 77 spots higher than Ivica Zubac.” Because the rankings are such a mess, this Sleepers list will look different than prior-year sleepers lists. We will go through the obvious mistakes first and then get to the true sleepers. How much weight to place on the default ESPN rankings should come down to how competitive your league is. If you are playing with veterans, I would ignore the rankings and draft like you are drafting on Yahoo. I don’t think anyone who has played fantasy basketball before is going to take Lopez in the fourth or Clingan in the seventh. You may be able to get the odd deal in a competitive league, but you can’t go into your draft assuming that DeMar DeRozan is going to go just inside the top 100. In leagues with less experienced managers, these rankings could allow you to build a monster team. Default rankings tend to have a heavy influence on inexperienced players.
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