Last Updated on October 5, 2025 11:49 pm by Aaron Bruski | Published: September 8, 2025

Why is the knowledge of out-of-position stats valuable?

There are two scenarios.

Scenario 1: If you are trying to build a balanced team, having players who contribute in the areas typically attributed to their position — in this case, big men are typically expected to provide FG%, rebounds and blocks — plus respectable-to-above-average (or even elite) value in one or two unusual areas, the overall strength of your team is broader. Even then, having a big man who is only “below average” in a guard-oriented stat is more manageable than someone who completely tanks that stat.

This is not me telling you not to draft a big man with a .500 FT%, as that weakness can be offset by a major strength in other categories like Walker Kessler with his blocks. It is difficult to find many other players who influence blocks like he does.

However, not every team will have a draft that can compensate for that.

Scenario 2: You are punting and looking for bigs who support the categories you want to dominate. Maybe you are punting FG% and you want to dominate threes, FT% and assists. Great. Myles Turner and Naz Reid are respectable free-throw shooters and they hit threes. Those big men complement your punt nicely.

Of course, if you are still looking to compete in rebounds and blocks, you might still need pick some bigs who don’t necessarily complement your punt as nicely as the aforementioned Turner and Reid. Turner isn’t known as a prolific rebounder and neither is Reid, while Reid also isn’t a shot blocker.

That is explored more in my Punt Strategy and Punt Builds Review pieces for our draft guide.

The aim here is to review the top out-of-position stat players last season. I included PF-eligible wings because those players are “cheat codes” that could fill your PF spot with options who literally play like wings. I will focus most of the analysis on the true frontcourt players, however. The inclusion of PF-eligible wings is for you to have the sample. Some of those players may or may not retain PF eligibility in the future.

Before we go into the analysis, I tabulated 2024-25 data to show you the averages of frontcourt players for Threes, Assists, Steals and Free-Throw Percentage (FT%). I also included the rank among frontcourt players for each of those stats and the table is sorted by their average rank among all four stats. I removed players who ranked outside of the top-355 on a per-game basis for 9-cat and I also removed a few names inside the top-355 who would not be considered true rotation players or are expected to play overseas next season. Jayson Tatum is included for future reference when he returns in 2026-27, but you can feel free to ignore him in the table and I am not going to focus on him at all in the analysis.

Click here to read the companion piece: Out-of-Position Stats for Guards/Wings!

2024-25
Out-of-Position
Stat Ranks for Bigs

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Keston Paul

Keston majored in Biology and minored in Literatures in English at the University of the West Indies (U.W.I.), St. Augustine. Hailing from Trinidad & Tobago, Kes grew up loving cricket, then football (soccer, not NFL) & never missed a Barça game in the 2010s. Later on, he grew obsessed with basketball/fantasy basketball & unfortunately claims to be a Sixers fan for some reason.

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