Fantasy Basketball Draft Guide 2025: Reviewing Yahoo’s New “High Score” Format & Doing a Draft

Last Updated on August 24, 2026 12:32 pm by André Lemos | Published: October 6, 2025

The Basics (via Yahoo)

Roster Spots

Six Starters
Two Guards – any player with PG or SG eligibility
Three Frontcourt – any player with SF, PF or C eligibility.
One Utility/Flex – any player

Four Bench spots.

The High Score default is a 10-team league with 10 players on each roster, meaning that 100 players are rostered and 60 players are started each week.

Scoring

Points = 1 point each
Rebounds = 1 point each
Assists = 2 points each
Steals = 3 points each
Blocks = 3 points each

How “High Score” Works

Not everyone may have played Sleeper’s Lock-In Mode or tried their hand at Best Ball, but this format blends the best of both worlds in some ways. If you are familiar with those formats, then you are already 90 percent of the way toward understanding High Score. I won’t delve deeper into those formats, but those familiar with them should see the similarities and differences.

High Score: The single-highest score for each player in your starting lineup is automatically counted toward your final total each week.

There is a caveat, however. If a game was already played and you take that player out of your lineup, that performance is no longer eligible for the weekly “High Score.”

If you are busy or have a lot of fantasy leagues, this is beneficial because it is “low maintenance,” but you still have the ability to fiddle around with your lineups or your roster via the waiver wire to stay engaged.

It can also help you to deal with load management on paper, as if you have a player who is likely to miss one or two games every so often, you can still succeed if they have one great weekly performance.

Initial Strategic Takeaways

Per-Game Upside is King, but Find a Balance

As I said above, you only need one monster performance per week. Actual load management (players sitting out a game on a back-to-back) should not be a concern. It does take away one opportunity for a big game, but that should not matter too often for the top fantasy producers. However, you can’t have too many injury-prone players. If you happen to have five players injured at the same time, you don’t have an IL spot to compensate and will have to drop someone. Keep that in mind. I would consider getting one or two high-floor players to balance out any high-risk swings. However, you don’t want to sacrifice upside for floor too much in this format, so you will have to find the optimal balance.

The Bench is Mainly for Stashing Players

Your bench will hypothetically never play unless one of your starters is sidelined for the week. In reality of course, there is additional context like your preferred starter being in a slump or perhaps your bench players having explosive upside even if they don’t have the same baseline floor as your starters. The default league setup does not offer IL spots either, so your bench will have to be good enough to cover those absences.

Positional Flexibility is Helpful

These are very small rosters. In theory, you have more bench spots than in the typical 12-team, 13-player-roster league, but you would still have more options to fill across positions in that scenario since the overall roster is larger. Grabbing at least one or two players who can fill in for multiple areas (that is, as both a guard and frontcourt player) should go a long way toward ensuring you are always able to utilize your best starting six.

Impact on Player Values

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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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