Fantasy Basketball Draft Guide 2025: Points League Strategy

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  • By Keston Paul

    Last Updated on August 15, 2025 2:10 pm by Keston Paul | Published: August 15, 2025

    When I first started playing fantasy basketball, it was a points league. While I prefer category leagues now, I still have love for points leagues because I love playing in different fantasy formats. I usually end up being in too many leagues as a result. Last season,  those included a 12-team, 16-team and 20-team points league, as well as many 12-team, 14-team, 16-team and 20-team category leagues (all redraft) and a couple of dynasty leagues too.

    All that is to say, I have experience and insight into points formats and I am not just going to wave you off and say, “Just get the guy who scores more fantasy points.”

    That is what you want to do, obviously, but there is some nuance and I am here to present that.

    The Basics

    Know Your Scoring System

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    A scoring system is essentially how several statistical categories are combined into one value referred to as “fantasy points.”

    Yahoo’s scoring system is the standard and will be the most commonly used across multiple platforms. One major note is that efficiency is not factored into this scoring system, so inefficient players will not be directly punished for missing shots. That means high-volume players are greatly rewarded.

    Points leagues are quite popular on ESPN’s platform, plus they do a better job of separating the ADPs and Rankings from category formats. It is more “acknowledged” as its own format. ESPN’s scoring system does have an actual punishment for inefficiency — in a roundabout way — since they minus points for FGA and FTA and then reward players if the attempt goes in. In fact, it could be said that they excessively reward efficiency with the extra fantasy point for a made field goal (-1 for FGA, +2 for FGM) and another fantasy point if it is a 3-pointer as well. So a player who hits a 3-pointer gets three fantasy points for the three real-life points, a fourth point for making a field goal, and a fifth point since it was a 3-pointer. ESPN also rewards players a bit more for defensive stats and they assign higher values to assists plus turnovers than the Yahoo standard scoring.

    Of course, a league commissioner can also tinker with scoring systems to create a customized points league. Always, always, always check your league settings. You do not want to be surprised during, or worse, after your draft. I have played in — and won, yes, I might be boasting here — a fantasy points league with a decimal-based scoring system that resulted in final weekly scores like 119.7 to 104.2 in an effort to “mirror” real-life game scores. So essentially, if your league does not follow a well-known scoring system, you should familiarize yourself with it to see if it benefits a certain type of player or statistical profile more. Maybe that commissioner thinks defensive stats should be worth six fantasy points each. Maybe one real-life point is only worth 0.5 fantasy points, reducing the impact of high-volume offensive engines.

    The CBS platform also has its own scoring system I believe, but it isn’t as popular as ESPN’s or Yahoo’s and it is one of the few that I have not tried, so I cannot get into deep commentary there.

    All of this leads directly into the next piece of advice.

    Comb Through Your League Settings


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    August 15, 2025, 2:10 pm