The punt blocks build isn’t nearly as well-known or as popular as builds like punt FG% or punt FT%. It’s a championship-winning strategy when implemented properly, but it’s usually not the first choice of many fantasy managers. Expect that to change over the next decade. Victor Wembanyama is going to make this a strategy that all category league players will need to consider. He’s not lapping the field just yet, but that could change soon. The 21-year-old version of Wembanyama is already very scary to go up against. When he hits his prime in a few years, we will have a major problem on our hands. There is almost certainly going to be an extended stretch where the Frenchman’s dominance will define category leagues, especially those of the eight-category variety. To take down the Wembanyama squad in our leagues, we are going to have to get creative, and that is where punting blocks comes in. When we punt blocks, we won’t completely neutralize the future bane of fantasy leagues, but it can put teams that weren’t fortunate enough to land a top-three pick in their draft on equal footing with the Wembanyama-led squad. To give you an idea of how effective punting blocks is at taking the 2023 first-overall pick down a notch, let’s take a look at Wembanyama’s 2024-2025 final per-game rankings with and without blocks.
Nine-category: 3
Eight-category: 2
Nine-category without blocks: 11
Eight-category without blocks: 9
Wembanyama will still be a first-round-level asset when blocks are ignored, but he won’t be some unstoppable force. Without blocks, he is essentially Karl-Anthony Towns with more threes and less FG% impact. If you punt blocks, Wembanyama goes from being arguably the scariest player in fantasy to just another early-round player. The center having so much value tied up in one category is a weakness we can exploit with smart team building.
Punting blocks is not just about neutralizing Wembanyama. This is a classic build that has become even more effective as the NBA has transitioned to a more perimeter-oriented league. With very few teams running double-big lineups these days, finding quality sources of swats has become more difficult than ever. The numbers bear that out. In 2014-2015, 20 players averaged 1.5 blocks or more. Last season, only nine players hit that mark, and three of those nine players played fewer than 50 games. If you are working with a different build that is aiming to win blocks consistently, you will be competing with every other team in your league for a very small group of players that usually don’t produce a ton of value outside of swats. Not only will you often have to reach for these rare, strong sources of blocks, you will usually be weakening yourself in a handful of categories by doing so.
Punt blocks can be especially lethal in eight-category leagues. Turnovers not counting means that five of the eight remaining categories are categories that guards and wings tend to excel in. That unbalanced setup strengthens all small-ball builds. While punt FG% tends to be the go-to of most fantasy players looking to build a small-ball team in eight-category leagues, you shouldn’t commit to that strategy without first sitting down and figuring out whether a punt blocks setup would be a better approach. There are strong arguments on both sides of that debate. Punt FG% has a higher ceiling because it increases the value of guards more than the punt blocks strategy does. However, it is also a harder strategy to pull off and comes with a lower floor. That lower floor is due to the popularity of punt FG% and the lack of obvious big man targets for the build. In most competitive 12-team leagues, there will be three or four punt FG% teams competing for the same small group of bigs. Wembanyama is a dream fit for that build and all of the guards likely to go towards the end of the first are obvious starting points for the strategy. All it will take is one unfortunately-timed big man run to put you in a very tough spot. When you punt blocks, missing out on bigs is less of a worry. It’s rare for a draft to contain more than one or two punt blocks teams, so you should be able to get your top big man targets around their ADP.
Even if you don’t plan on utilizing this strategy, you should familiarize yourself with it. It is a strategy that works very nicely as a mid-draft pivot. The early rounds don’t always go your way, so it’s important to have a backup strategy (or six) going into your draft. Punt blocks tends to be one of the easier builds to switch to after the first few rounds because there are not a lot of early-round options that make a switch to the strategy inadvisable. It pairs nicely with most of the first-round guards and is only a no-go zone if you come away from the first two rounds with one or more of Wembanyama, Anthony Davis, Evan Mobley, Jaren Jackson Jr, or Chet Holmgren on your roster.
For access to the full guides, follow these links:
2025-2026 Punt Blocks Guide (Yahoo)
2025-2026 Punt Blocks Guide (ESPN)
For access to all of this year’s punting guides, projections, rankings, pairing guides, sleepers and busts, and much, much more, subscribe here: