Fantasy Basketball Draft Guide 2026: Reviewing Last Year’s Busts

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  • By Mike Passador

    Last Updated on August 20, 2026 3:00 am by Keston Paul | Published: August 20, 2026

    Part of being a reasonable analyst is looking back on your past work and owning up to any mistakes. We’re fostering accountability here but more than that, we’re looking for why those errors were made. What about our old opinions blew up in our faces, and what happened to zig when our research zagged? 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.

    Ivica Zubac

    Results: Zubac took some steps back after a breakout and was a total non-factor after being traded to the tanking Pacers.

    Verdict: Win. Not how we expected it, necessarily, but a win.

    Reasons: We were skeptical that Zubac could come close to the highs he established in a breakout 2024-25 campaign between improved depth at his position (Brook Lopez vs. Drew Eubanks), a healthy Kawhi Leonard around to start the season and more talent on the roster overall (John Collins, Bradley Beal, Bogdan Bogdanovic and Chris Paul — though the last two ended up being irrelevant). It wasn’t necessarily that Zubac was going to collapse, but he was going to slide down the rankings a bit but was still being drafted to repeat his career year. Zubac was going to fall short of his ADP even before he disappeared in the second half of the season but his trade to Indiana just cinched this as a victory. He played in only five games after getting dealt and ended up 60 spots below his draft slot on a per-game basis.

    Jaylen Brown

    Results: Brown thrived as Boston’s go-to guy and maintained solid efficiency despite a big spike in volume; we’ll eat the L in a career year even if there’s technically a case in our favor.

    Verdict: We’ll give this one to Brown.

    Reasons: While Brown finished 29/69 in 8/9-cat on an ADP of 28.8/19.9 (Yahoo/ESPN), we’ll let him have the victory. Our big concerns with Brown were his free throw percentage dragging down his value and his field goal percentage suffering from that added volume in a Jayson Tatum-less world. Naturally, Brown delivered a new career-high in FT% on a nearly 50% increase in volume from his previous top mark and improved his FG% from .463 to .477 on an additional four shots per game. Brown’s turnovers did increase to the point that he lost a lot of steam in 9-cat but when the dust settled, he actually became more efficient on significant increases in shot volume. That’s tough for anyone to do, let alone a player who faces as much defensive attention as Brown without his top running mate. We will take a second to point out that Brown settled into more top-90 value in the middle of the season during a shooting lull, but that’s just sour grapes — he was excellent and made good on the crazy opportunity that fell into his lap.

    CJ McCollum

    Results: McCollum dodged a true disaster scenario but ended up short of his ADP.

    Verdict: A win for the buzzkills.

    Reasons: In charting McCollum’s course for the season, it felt like he was either going to play too well for Washington and get traded to a role with significantly lesser usage at the deadline, play a modest role for a young Wizards team and generate minimal fantasy value before getting traded to a similar spot, or not get traded at all and instead shut down for the last two months of the season. Coming off a closing stretch in 2024-25 where McCollum’s numbers suffered from having to do too much on a bad team, it felt like even the best-case scenario offered real danger.

    Want to see how we did with last year’s Busts? You’ll need to have an Ethos 360, All-Sport or NBA FantasyPass membership. Click here to learn more and sign up!(opens in new tab) Premium Access Required

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    August 20, 2026, 3:00 am