On October 3rd, I participated in an industry auction mock. This mock was for 12-team, nine-category H2H leagues. The participants were myself, D Mac from NBA Fantasy Bible, Papi Roi from the Fantasy Basketball PH Podcast, Erik Ong from Hashtag Basketball, Kirien Sprecher from Rotowire, bigpictureonly from Breakout, Matt from League Winner, and a few other analysts who are connected to Adam King. King hosted the draft, but did not participate in the auction. I do mock drafts with about half of this group fairly regularly. The other half, I don’t think I’ve ever drafted with. That made this year’s auction a little trickier than usual. The mock lacked the flashier names of prior-year auction mocks, but that doesn’t mean it was an easier draft. When you mock the same group of analysts over and over again, you pick up on their tendencies pretty quickly. In prior years’ auction mocks, I was able to use that to my advantage. When you know who everyone likes and wants to target, it’s easier to plan out your strategy, and the draft becomes much more predictable.
Below are some notes I made during the draft. They are meant to give you an idea of my strategy and mindset throughout the auction. I’ve included screenshots of the different parts of the draft, so you know what I was reacting to. I opted for a slightly different strategy than I have in past industry mock drafts. This year, I decided to go after Nikola Jokic. I did that for two reasons. The first is that I’m very comfortable with grabbing Jokic at his usual 80-ish dollar price. He was worth slightly more than that last year, and his overall dominance gives you plenty of flexibility later in the draft. Grabbing Big Honey takes a big bite out of your budget, but he doesn’t take too many players or team-building strategies off the table. The second reason is that I don’t want to put the same type of auction draft diary every year. There are multiple approaches that can lead to very strong teams. Last season, I opted to pass on the elite options in favor of some additional depth. That is generally the path I take in auction leagues. I still ended up with a very balanced team here, but built around one of the top options, instead of an end-of-the-first-round type like I did last year. To read about last year’s mock and the strategy I used during that draft, follow the link below. In that draft, I ended up with a core of Donovan Mitchell, Karl-Anthony Towns, Kawhi Leonard, Bam Adebayo, Desmond Bane, Onyeka Okongwu, Naz Reid, Donte DiVincenzo, Norman Powell, and Ivica Zubac. I likely would have walked to the championship if we had played that league out.
25/26 Industry Auction Mock Analysis
I’ve also included the projected standings based on Elite Fantasy Basketball’s projections. I have included both per-game projections and totals projections, so that teams built around injury-prone players do not end up looking stronger than they actually are.
During the auction, I used EFB’s projections, Team Building Tool, and Draft Tracker as guides. I used the Team Building Tool to test out different combinations on the fly. I used the Draft Tracker to keep track of who is available and how much they are worth in my punting build of choice. I set the number of $1 players in the Draft Tracker to 24. Usually, there ends up being slightly more $1 players than that. In this draft, there ended up being 29 $1 players. I prefer to use a slightly lower number, as it makes me less likely to overpay for players.
One quick note before we get into the analysis. If you haven’t tried an auction draft before, change that. It is an extremely fun format. Having every player in the association available to you allows for so much creative freedom. It’s a more difficult drafting format that many strong fantasy players struggle with, but once you understand the strategy behind auction drafts, it becomes very rewarding.
26/27 Industry Auction Mock Draft Analysis
For access to all of this year’s punting guides, projections, rankings, pairing guides, sleepers and busts, and much, much more, subscribe here: