Punting assists is a strategy that almost every fantasy player should consider. It is a relatively straightforward strategy that comes with both a high floor and a high ceiling. If you are new to punting, this is a great strategy to start with. The theory behind punting assists is easy to understand and it is a build that is almost impossible to screw up. I don’t need to say much to the punting veterans reading this. You know how nasty a well-put-together punt dimes squad can be. Read the guide, practice your strategies in Team Building Tool, and then go crush your draft.
The theory behind punting assists is the same as the theory behind punting any other category. Unless you are playing in a league with beginners, it is not going to be possible to have a team that is above average in all nine categories. Even if we hit on every single pick, we are going to have a weakness somewhere. The host site’s draft room rankings and auction prices guarantee that. So why try? Why weaken our teams in eight categories by trying to be average in a ninth category we don’t need to win anyway? Instead, we want to strengthen our strengths. Give ourselves a better chance in the other eight categories and give ourselves some room for error. If you’re not punting in a H2H league, you are playing a very dangerous game. A team that is punting a category or two—and doing it correctly—is going to be tough for a balanced team to beat. A balanced team may begin the week with a category or two locked up, but they are also likely going to be weaker in almost all of the remaining categories. Taking a balanced approach also puts you at greater risk of having your championship hopes torpedoed by a bad pick or injuries. And let’s be honest, both are going to happen. This is fantasy basketball we’re talking about. We’ve all made godawful picks in our fantasy careers, and if one of our early-round picks’ knee or ankle goes, there’s not much we can do about it. If you drafted Joel Embiid or Victor Wembanyama last year, you are probably nodding your head right now. If your team is average across the board, playing down an early-round pick is going to make you below average everywhere. That’s not going to be the case when you punt. Punting a category or two allows you to be well above average in a handful of categories, so when that injury hits or that player busts, you can still be average or better in the categories you need to win consistently.
Punting assists is an effective and smart strategy for numerous reasons. All of which we will get into in this guide. The math behind the strategy is sound, it works with a lot of the first-round picks, and it takes advantage of the fantasy basketball community’s decades-long struggle to understand that assists is just one category that you don’t get bonus points for winning. If you’ve done a fantasy basketball draft before, you know that point guards and the assists they bring get reached for constantly. You will see some point guards go dozens of spots higher than they should for no reason other than that they put up big numbers in assists instead of one of the less flashy categories. Punting assists allows us to scoop up all the value that drops while our opponents are reaching for dimes. You’ll find that when you punt assists, you’ll often end up with an extremely strong group of bigs and wings and plenty of players that outperform their draft position.
There is one more advantage to punting assists that I want to mention before we jump into the math. When we punt assists, we are somewhat neutralizing Nikola Jokic. And that’s big. Very big. As entertaining as it has been to see Jokic turn into an all-time center, his ascension has not been good for fantasy basketball. It is a lot harder to have parity in fantasy leagues when a super-durable triple-double machine who shoots over 40 percent from deep and finishes among the league leaders in steals exists. If the Jokic manager knows what he or she is doing, then the rest of the league will be in huge trouble, especially with the Nuggets having a strong playoff schedule in most setups this season. By punting assists and making one of Jokic’s greatest weapons irrelevant, we close the gap a little bit. It will still be an uphill battle, but taking down the Jokic team won’t be quite as difficult when we punt assists as it will be when we punt one of his weaker categories or don’t punt at all. Punting assists also puts you at a huge advantage during weeks when you are matching up with one of the many point guards likely to be drafted towards the end of the first round this year. Most of those point guards turn into forgettable mid-round players when dimes don’t matter.
2025-2026 Punt Assists Guide (Yahoo)
2025-2026 Punt Assists Guide (ESPN)
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