24/25 Nine-Category Top 150
All rankings and comments are for nine-category head-to-head leagues unless otherwise noted. All player positions are taken from Yahoo Fantasy Basketball. These rankings are not meant to predict the final nine-category league rankings. They are meant to predict how useful a player will be in a nine-category H2H league. When putting together these rankings, I considered overall value, value in the various punting strategies, durability, ceiling, floor, and category scarcity.
1) Nikola Jokic (C) – Jokic remains the king of nine-category leagues, although the gap between the three-time MVP and the rest of the field is smaller than it has been at any point since the Nugget ascended to the throne during his breakout 2020-2021 campaign. Victor Wembanyama is already a threat to take Jokic’s spot at the top and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is coming off a season in which he produced slightly stronger per-game numbers than the Serbian. While passing over the big man for Wembanyama or SGA is defensible, Jokic remains the safest option at one. Jokic’s durability and well-rounded line is what gives him a slight edge on Wembanyama in nine-category setups. While Wembanyama did play a very solid 71 games in his rookie campaign, he is not an established iron man like Jokic is. Jokic is coming off a 79-game campaign and has missed more than ten games in a season only once in his career. He is also on a team with championship aspirations and a thin bench which makes late-season sits unlikely. Unlike Wembanyama, Jokic doesn’t have a huge amount of value tied up in any category. His best categories in 2023-2024 were rebounds and FG%. Jokic was about 2.5 standard deviations above the league average in both categories. Wembanyama, on the other hand, was over five standard deviations above the league average in blocks. Players with that much value tied up in one category tend to be less valuable than their overall z-score average suggests since their dominance in their top category often leads to overkill in the category, something we always want to avoid. Blocks being Wembanyama’s best category is also less than ideal from a category scarcity standpoint. Swats come off the board much less quickly than assists do and are much easier to find during the second half of the draft. Jokic’s argument against SGA is slightly different. He does have a durability advantage on the Canadian, but last year’s runner-up for MVP comes with a line that is just as well-rounded and just as potent in the categories that come off the board the quickest. In addition to durability, what also gives Jokic a slight advantage over Gilgeous-Alexander is his position. It is much easier to find guards in the early-to-middle rounds who produce strong numbers in points, assists, and FT% impact than it is to find bigs who do the same. Jokic and a third- or fourth-round guard is usually going to end up as a stronger combination than SGA and a third- or fourth-round big man in points, assists, and possibly FT%.
Jokic’s all-around dominance makes him a viable starting point for almost every build. However, he is best paired with the punt threes strategy. No other build boosts the superstar’s value as much as punt threes does and Jokic’s strengths line up perfectly with the build’s potential troublesome areas. Due to the punt threes build being a big-heavy strategy, those ignoring triples often run into problems with points, assists, steals, and FT%. That is unlikely to end up being the case if you start your punt threes team with the Nugget. Jokic is elite in the first three categories and a well-above-average contributor for his position in the fourth. A punt threes team that does not struggle in the guard categories will be extremely hard to top. Punting blocks is another obvious strategy for teams fortunate enough to begin their draft with Big Honey. However, that strategy should be viewed as a backup to punt threes. Punt threes tends to be a stronger strategy than punt blocks because the boost low-3PM players receive in punt threes is usually larger than the boost low-BPG players receive in punt blocks. When punting threes, it will be easier to find players who can outplay their draft position by multiple rounds.
Best Builds: Punt Threes, Punt Blocks, Punt Points, Punt FT%
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2024-2025 Nine-Category Top 150
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