Fantasy Basketball Draft Guide 2025: Reviewing Last Year’s Busts

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  • By Mike Passador

    Last Updated on August 14, 2025 12:00 pm by Mike Passador | Published: August 14, 2025

    Part of being a reasonable analyst is looking back on your past work and sorting out what worked and what didn’t. We’ve got to engender some accountability here, but more than that, we’re looking for why past mistakes were made. What about our old opinions and research blew up in our faces? Or better yet, what was dead-on correct?

    Given how hard it is for a player picked in most 12-team leagues to totally bottom out, most busts will have held value somewhere. We were not, and are rarely going to, try and call shots on insane degradation of play. Instead, we’re looking at these players to see whether they met their ADPs, or whether the difference between ADP and final value was still worth the time.

    With that in mind, let’s take a look back at last season’s predicted Busts to see where the hits and misses were. At the end we made a list — and it’s small — of all the guys who were outside the top-200 with ADPs that were a cut above flier territory. There weren’t many, which means that the consensus continues to get better at steering managers clear of the major land mines. That, in turn, means that dodging some major missteps is all the more valuable. Onto the fun.

    Brandon Ingram

    Results: Ingram only played in 18 games because of the world’s worst ankle sprain.

    Verdict: Win

    Reasons: We were worried about Ingram’s fit on the Pelicans while he was also gunning for a big new contract. The arrival of Dejounte Murray and a healthy CJ McCollum were big impediments given how Ingram’s past pops were fueled by surplus assists, to say nothing of Zion Williamson’s scoring game and place in the pecking order sliding everyone else down a rung. Injuries prevented all those things from really crashing down in Ingram — Murray got hurt on opening night — and he ended up being a reasonable 45th/86th by 8/9-cat scoring… when he did play.

    That’s the rub. For as much as Ingram was near his ADP, 18 games of action just won’t cut it. The Pelicans were never confronted with a decision on his contract as the Raptors put together a good-enough offer to trigger a trade. He was taking a career-high 4.6 3-pointers per game when his numbers stopped tolling and Ingram was hitting those at a respectable .374 clip, but there wasn’t much change in his stat line otherwise. Lack of availability made this a bust and the real shame is that we missed out on a full year of Ingram as a volume 3-point shooter over a full seasonl that would’ve made for great data. It’s a role he may have to take on (and has been publicly eager to take on) in Toronto with Scottie Barnes, Jakob Poeltl and RJ Barrett still on the roster, so we’ll see what happens.

    Jonas Valanciunas

    Results: Despite the potential benefits of just getting out of New Orleans, our fears were well-founded as Valanciunas became a bit part.

    Verdict: Another win

    Reasons: We highlighted Valanciunas as a guy who could be due for a usage increase going from a Pelicans team looking for more athleticism to a Wizards team desperate for anything, and that did come to pass — his usage went from 20.8 in his last year with the Pels to 23.8 in Washington. The problem was that Valanciunas didn’t start for the Wizards (just 12 in 49 games) and only saw 20.1 mpg, down from the 23.5 mpg he received the season prior. More usage but less playing time was a distinct possibility but that troublesome reality set in on opening night as opposed to January or February. Valanciunas was then traded to Sacramento to be the backup to Domantas Sabonis, sending him even further away from fantasy relevance. If anything, it’s remarkable that Valanciunas was just on the edge of top-150 given the cuts to his role.

    You can’t help but wonder what Valanciunas would’ve achieved if he came into the league 10 years earlier. He has a reliable game but it just isn’t what the NBA is looking for in a featured role. Valanciunas will be a hot commodity if Nikola Jokic ever gets hurt but that’s the extent of things going forward.

    Alperen Sengun

    Results: Sengun had moments of brilliance but the holes in his stat set were still there, resulting in a top-70/90 season despite a top-30 ADP.

    Verdict: A win for the buzzkills

    Reasons: In our Busts article, we wrote:


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    August 14, 2025, 12:00 pm