Fantasy Basketball Draft Guide 2025: Yahoo & ESPN Points League Sleepers

  • I did the Points League Busts for 2024-25 but not the Sleepers. I will give you a brief review of my bust picks, but I won’t review last season’s sleepers since they weren’t my thoughts.

    This article is important because fantasy platforms tend to have some skewed rankings, notably underrating potential breakout candidates or overly-punishing players who struggled in the previous season but could bounce back.

    I am going to look at the names who pop up as sleepers on both Yahoo on ESPN, then the names specific to each of those individual platforms and potential fliers who may be buried in your draft room.

    Remember, Yahoo and ESPN have different scoring systems, so values may be slightly different for certain players. That means I might view a player as a sleeper on one platform, but not on the other, even if they might be going in a similar range on both.

    This article will not cover the new “High Score” format, but I wrote about the basics of the format, then gave you a ton of information on how to value players and I reviewed a real draft as well.

    Click here for my article on the “High Score” Format. 

    Now, I thought long and hard about about the best way to find the Sleepers on both platforms. ESPN actually provides different rankings in the draft room for their Points Leagues, but the ADP data is no longer separated. They used to give us the ADPs for all league types, but I cannot find that anymore. So, for ESPN, I am going to look at the rankings I can see in the draft room.

    For Yahoo, they provide rankings and ADPs that are an amalgamation of all league types. They also have the convoluted normal rank and expert rank stuff going on, so the easiest thing to analyze on Yahoo is the ADP, since that is influenced by the expert rank that you see in your draft room.

    Sleepers on Yahoo and ESPN

    Immanuel Quickley (Yahoo, 78.7) & (ESPN, 101)

    Quickley is seemingly being punished for a season in which he struggled. First, he had never missed such a huge chunk of games before in his career, and the positive is that Quickley did not have any chronic recurring issue that was a red flag; instead, he dealt with a bunch of random injuries and then some rest/tank shenanigans from March onward. When Quickley was healthier in March, his output improved. Through his first 22 games, he averaged 16.8 points, 2.5 triples, 3.8 rebounds, 5.2 assists and 0.4 steals in 28.5 MPG. In his final 11 games, that became 18.1 points, 3.0 triples, 4.3 rebounds, 6.3 assists and 1.1 steals in 26.4 MPG. That’s right, his averages went up in fewer MPG. Balance out the potential loss in usage with the introduction of Brandon Ingram in 2025-26 and (hopefully) a healthier lineup with an increase in minutes and consistency of performance.

    Quickley should have top-60 upside, but you do not have to draft him there. On ESPN, you can reach by a round or two. On Yahoo, you could reach a little and still have room to spare. The only concerns are either the Raptors being a disaster or Quickley perhaps having all his early-career minutes catching up to him injury-wise; however, I’m not so concerned about the injuries being an issue.

    This was just one of many draft-day steals! Want to see more of the Points League Sleepers falling down draft boards? You’ll need to have an Ethos 360, All-Sport or NBA FantasyPass membership. Click here to learn more and sign up! Premium Access Required  


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