SportsEthos 2026 Fantasy Basketball Draft Guide

Fantasy Basketball Draft Guide 2025: Second-Year Players

By goncaloteiga33 Published September 21, 2025 Updated August 24, 2026 2 min read

Last Updated on August 24, 2026 12:29 pm by André Lemos | Published: September 21, 2025

In 2024-25 we had a myriad of second-year players jumping into fantasy stardom. Victor Wembanyama, Chet Holmgrem and Amen Thompson come to mind, but the 2024 NBA Draft gave us plenty of players to bolster the end of our fantasy squads. What can we expect from the second-year players in this exciting fantasy basketball season?

The 2024 rookie class gave us two players ranked inside the top-150 in 9-cat rankings, tied for the lowest since 2014. Moreover, it was the only rookie class in the past 10 years that didn’t boast any players ranked inside the top-100 in 9-cat. While this may serve to moderate our expectations, there are plenty of avenues for these young studs to improve their fantasy contribution, be it because of changes in teams’ dynamics or a sophomore leap.

Second-year players could make or break your fantasy squad, as their value can fluctuate as they navigate new roles, changes in usage and integrate new teammates. In order to make the analysis easy to go through, we’ll categorize second-year players into three groups: those strongly worth drafting in standard-league drafts, those worth a late-round flier in standard leagues and those suited for deep leagues. Please note that the “Current ADP” section reflects the available Yahoo data at the time of writing, and it’s subject to change as the NBA season gets closer.

Standard-League Radar

Alexandre Sarr

PF, Washington Wizards

Season	Team	GP	GS	MPG	FGM	FGA	FG%	FTM	FTA	FT%	3PTM	3PTA	3PT%	PTS	REB	AST	STL	BLK	TO
25-26	WAS	48	48	27.2	6.6	13.7	48.2	2.1	3.0	69.2	1.0	3.1	33.3	16.3	7.4	2.7	0.8	2.0	1.7

Last year’s ADP: 132.13

Current ADP: 72.9

Alex Sarr entered the NBA with an offensive green light to develop his game, gathering a 24.3% usage rate in year one. With that offensive burden, Sarr’s efficiency suffered, and he became a big negative in field goal percentage. The new-look Wizards have a plethora of new creators, with veterans C.J. McCollum and Khris Middleton and rookie sensation Tre Johnson. If they’re able to unlock an efficient Sarr, the sky is the limit, but reasonable expectations points toward Sarr being a mid-round center option who is better suited for punt-field-goal percentage builds. In spite of this, the blocks and threes stat-set make him a high upside selection in his ADP range.