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, team outlook, ceiling, floor, and category scarcity.
1) Nikola Jokic (C) – The three-time MVP and one-time Finals MVP remains the king of category leagues. Jokic is coming off yet another season in which he finished atop both the eight- and nine-category league per-game rankings. He finished comfortably ahead of both Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Victor Wembanyama in both setups and hasn’t finished outside of the top three in either setting since his breakout 2020-2021 campaign. The Nuggets finally bringing in a competent backup center should lead to a minutes dip and some slight per-game regression in 2025-2026, but the Serbian remains the clear favorite to finish the year as fantasy basketball’s most valuable asset. Jokic is preferable to SGA and Wembanyama at the top spot for different reasons. What gives the Nugget a slight edge over the Thunder’s lead guard is his position. Centers that produce elite numbers in points, assists, and steals—three of the four categories that dry up the quickest—are going to be more valuable than guards who do the same because it is going to be much easier to final a guard later in the draft who can produce top-end numbers in those categories than it will be to find a big man who can. 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 steals. Jokic’s edge over Wembanyama is more significant. For now, Jokic has a clear durability advantage. Wembanyama shouldn’t be considered a major injury risk just yet, as his blood clot issue is not expected to be a long-term problem, but from a durability standpoint, he remains unproven. Jokic, on the other hand, remains one of the league’s sturdiest stars. Since entering the league a decade ago, Jokic has missed an average of just 5.6 games per season. To give you an idea of how great that number is, the average top-50 fantasy asset missed 19 games last season. Jokic not having nearly as much value tied up in a single category also makes the gap between the centers larger than it appears on paper. In 2024-2025, Jokic was about 2.6 standard deviations above the league average in both rebounds and FG%, while Wembanyama’s all-time block rate was almost six standard deviations above the league average. 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.
Big Honey provides you with plenty of team-building flexibility, as he’ll be a top-three per-game asset in every punting build. However, punt threes should be the build of choice for most Jokic squads. It is an elite strategy that will boost Jokic’s value if he doesn’t shoot a ridiculous 44.0 percent on his non-heave three-point attempts this season. A well-built punt threes team with Jokic as its centerpiece has the potential to finish the draft with no notable flaws. The Nugget’s strengths line up perfectly with the build’s natural weaknesses. 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 Jokic. He is elite in the first three categories (29.6 PPG, 10.2 APG, 1.8 SPG) and a well-above-average contributor for his position in the fourth (80.0 FT% on 6.4 FTA). 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 Jokic. 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 that low-3PG players receive in punt threes is usually larger than the boost that 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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