Time to continue this series, as I finish detailing my biggest risers and fallers of the 2024-2025 NBA Season! As a reminder, I just didn’t look at the largest raw changes in my rankings. Instead, I examined the largest percentage changes from a player’s initial dynasty ranking in August 2024 to their current March 2025 position. This may mean that some of the players don’t appear to have substantial dynasty changes, but even going from somewhere in the teens to a top-10 spot can have greater implications. Next to each player discussed, I have written their current ranking from their initial ranking. For instance, spoiler alert! Jordan Poole (to 54 from 125).

You probably have heard many of these players mentioned on various Punt Intended episodes over the season. However, I include further statistical depth that a podcast format does not allow, so you can truly appreciate the level of research and amount of work that I conduct in order to rank these players. If you want to read through Part 1 and some additional names, you can find that article here. Without further ado, let’s get into the list!

All stats listed below are for the 2024-25 Regular Season

Risers

Jordan Poole (to 54 from 125)

Using Poole as a blueprint, there is a general lesson that I learned. After last year’s disastrous season, I dropped Poole all the way to 125th in my August 2024 rankings due to a belief that we were seeing a new normal baseline from him. However, Poole would just be entering his age-25 season. Was it really fair of myself to confidently assert a player at this age suddenly got worse and treat that as the new baseline?

Poole mainly proved me wrong this season. The biggest gain we saw from him was in his pull-up deep-ball shooting. In Poole’s best fantasy season back in 2021-2022, he took 2.9 pull-up threes a game, hitting them at a 34.2% rate per NBA.com. From 2022-2024, his attempts on this shot type rose to 3.5 a game, but the percentage dropped to just 30%. We know players can struggle a bit more with an increase in volume. However with hindsight, that felt like a bit too much drop-off over a two-season sample to just chalk it up to “harder shot diet.” Good thing Poole reversed course this season! Poole not only upped his pull-up threes a game to 5.0 but also hit 38% of them, a part of why Poole nailed a career-best 3.5 threes a game. Now does that percentage feel a little high compared to his career averages? Yes it does. Does the increased volume present some optimism though of the threes holding close to these heights? Yes it does. With this additional element in Poole’s game, we can feel decently confident of this scoring level and triples.

What about the other elements of Poole’s fantasy game? He maintained an assist rate in the mid-20% while increasing his overall volume of shots. In fact, Poole’s assist:usage ratio from CleaningTheGlass was the highest of his career at 0.86. That may not be overly impressive relative to the league, but it does display some marginal growth in Poole’s playmaking. In addition, he’s slightly increased his defensive activity with a steal rate finally hitting that golden 2.0% mark we love seeing for fantasy. His deflections per 36 minutes haven’t changed all too much though, so maybe that aspect is a little bit of positive variance in his favor. Still, it’s a little something Poole added for fantasy managers.

Put it all together, and Poole looks like a much safer investment for dynasty managers. He is a reminder that players of his age typically do not fall off this quickly. Even if recent indicators tilted towards a decline in skill, veering towards the upper-end level that Poole previously displayed and remembering his highs would have yielded some positive returns if one was willing to take a chance on the dip. That is something I will remind myself heading into the off-season roster flurry across my multiple dynasty rosters.

Payton Pritchard (to 106 from 237)

The probable Sixth Man of the Year has improved himself quite considerably. Some may just cite the excellent offensive environment of the Celtics as the reason for Prtichard’s output, but a longer stay under the hood reveals some key developments that are Pritchard’s alone. The clearest rise came from Pritchard’s threes, where he increased his makes from 1.8 to 3.2 a game. This wasn’t just a case of Pritchard playing more minutes or hitting more of his threes, as his three-pointers attempted per 100 possessions rose from 10.3 to 13.8. That volume was eighth in the NBA, solidifying Pritchard as one of the true bombers in the NBA.

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