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Bruski 150SportsEthos 2026 Fantasy Basketball Draft Guide
Fantasy Basketball Draft Guide 2026: Contract-Year RFAs & Options
Last Updated on October 14, 2026 3:37 pm by Keston Paul | Published: October 14, 2026
If you’ve read our impending 2026 UFAs article, you know that there’s negativity in the air regarding that group of players peaking fantasy-wise in their contract year. In that group of players, the best strategy is to pick your spots, and that’s exactly how we concluded the article. Fortunately, the contract-year RFAs, player options and team options are more encouraging.
Last season, we got glimpses of that positivity from Jalen Duren, Peyton Watson and Austin Reaves. The first two had the best season of their career in a restricted contract year, and Reaves turned his player option into a four-year, almost $185 million contract. There’s a pattern there that we’ll analyze shortly!
Now, we’ll go through history and the players who are headed to restricted free agency or have a player or team option!
Contract-Year RFAs, Player and Team Options History
This looks at the player’s 9-cat rank in their RFA or Option season, compared to their best rank in the past three seasons and their rank “last season,” that is, before their RFA or Option season. The color key below is meant to highlight whether or not the RFA or Option season ranked first, second or third among those criteria. The players analyzed were present in our 2024-25 NBA Draft Guide: Contract Year RFAs and Options article.
Player Notes:
Green = UFA season rank > Last 3 years best rank and Last season rank
Yellow = Last 3 years best rank > UFA season rank > Last season rank
Red = Last 3 years best rank and Last season rank > UFA season rank
Look at that beauty! Out of 11 RFAs analyzed, eight had their best fantasy season in a contract year. Unlike the UFAs, most of the contract-year RFAs are young players at the end of their rookie contracts. And that’s the difference. We described the contract-year UFAs as aging veterans, players on prove-it deals, young players who are still adapting in the league and big expiring contracts. Alperen Sengun, Jalen Johnson, Josh Giddey and Trey Murphy are not that, they’re the “new shiny cars” term that we’ve seen discussed here at SportsEthos. The 73% hit-rate, as in 73% of the analyzed RFAs had their best fantasy season in their contract-year, highlights just that.
And the magic ends there. The players with a contract option are much more similar to the impending UFAs than to the RFAs. The list is comprised of elite veterans, big expiring contracts and some prove-it deals. On top of that, as was previously outlined in the 2024-25 article, most impending team options are mere formalities, apart from a few young players. If we bundle both options together, 38% of players had their three-year peak in the contract year and 62% improved on the previous year’s rank. But for the fantasy stars –- Jimmy Butler, James Harden and Kyrie Irving, the games played matter as much as their fantasy rank. Interestingly enough, the under-30 players with a contract option all improved on their previous year’s performance.
The impending 2027 RFAs are only players from the 2023 Draft who haven’t signed their rookie extension. All the RFAs present in our graph are 2021 draftees, and we’ve already discussed their 73% hit rate. And that’s why this article is so upbeat. The stalwarts of that draft class –- Victor Wembanyama, the Thompson twins and Keyonte George –- have all inked their extensions. But this draft class, similarly to 2021, is extremely deep and guard-filled, the position that notoriously takes more time to develop into meaningful fantasy contributors.
Let’s keep this pattern of information in our back pocket and look at the contract-year players!
Restricted Free Agents
Brandon Miller, Charlotte Hornets
Miller is the exact type of player our contract-year articles are here to hype. His first three fantasy seasons were a steady climb through the 9-cat per-game ranks, from 116th to 75th to 56th. Next season, similarly to what happened with Jalen Johnson, Josh Giddey and Trey Murphy, Miller will have more offensive responsibility on top of his growing game.
The LaMelo Ball trade signals that the Hornets trust Miller and Kon Knueppel to be the future of the franchise and to orchestrate their offense. Ball’s elite passing and spacing are gone, which means that Miller could see a decrease in efficiency and increase in turnovers. Despite this, Charlotte should continue to be atop of the league in made threes next season and Miller’s FG% was already a fantasy negative. With the added usage, Miller should have a max contract waiting for him next offseason and a top-30 fantasy season is a reasonable outcome. Just make sure your team build factors in the insurmountable number of threes the Hornets will be taking and the toll it will take on your FG%.
Scoot Henderson, Portland Trail Blazers
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