SportsEthos 2026 Fantasy Basketball Draft Guide

Fantasy Basketball Draft Guide 2026: FT% Killers

By Keston Paul Published October 11, 2026 3 min read

Free-throw percentage (FT%) influence in fantasy is a tricky combination of the volume of attempts and the actual percentage. A 90.0% free-throw shooter taking two attempts per game is not going to push the envelope as much as a 87.5% free-throw shooter taking seven or eight attempts per game. That volume provides insulation against any poor free-throw shooters on your roster who may only be taking a handful of attempts per game themselves.

Think of it this way, if you put a 1-of-3 performance at the line next to someone who shot 2-of-2, that would be a 3-of-5 performance for your team or 60.0%. If you put that 1-of-3 player next to a 7-of-8 free-throw performance instead, it becomes 8-of-11 or 72.7% for your team. We are aiming for much higher than 72.7% to be a good free-throw percentage (FT%) team for fantasy, but hopefully that demonstrates the idea. If you add 5-of-5 to that 8-of-11 because you have another good free-throw shooter, it becomes 13-of-16 or 81.3%. Another player shooting 6-of-7 at the line turns your team’s volume into 19-of-23 or 82.6%.

Now flip that. You have a 4-of-5 performance from the charity stripe (80.0%) and you add a 4-of-7 performance to take your team’s volume up to 8-of-12 or 66.7%. You might be able to get back closer to average with a couple of good free-throw shooters, but then a 3-of-5 performer topples you further to 11-of-17 or 64.7%. With some FT% killers, you can likely still turn out fine in the category, but with other individuals, or perhaps multiple of them on one team, you might be pushed toward a FT% punt.

The is the article layout you can look forward to:

  • Biggest Negatives – 12 players in descending order of who negatively impacts your FT% the most.
  • Late-Round Killers – You can’t influence percentages as easily at this point in the draft, but there may still be some landmines hanging around at the end of your draft.
  • Deep-League Villains – Again, you aren’t likely to find high-volume options beyond the scope of a typical 12-team draft, but these players can have a negative influence that could impact you on the margins.

The B150 powers the projections mentioned in this article.
Note that I am rounding off to the nearest decimal place.

You can find all of the B150 projections here.

Use our ADP Tracker for all-encompassing updates across multiple platforms.

Biggest Negatives

Looking back at the data from 2025-26, these are the observations:

Top-100 9-cat players averaged 80.9% from the free-throw line and 4.2 free-throw attempts per game.
Top-100 8-cat players averaged 81.2% from the free-throw line and 4.5 free-throw attempts per game.

That should give you a solid baseline understanding of free-throw volume, as players above the average attempts will off more influence, which you don’t want in the case of a FT% killer. Players above the average FT% will help your fantasy team, while players below it will be a negative.

#1: Giannis Antetokounmpo

Giannis Antetokounmpo
PF, Miami Heat
SeasonTeamGPGSMPG FGMFGAFG% FTMFTAFT% 3PTM3PTA3PT% PTSREBAST STLBLKTO
25-26 MIL 36 36 28.9 10.4 16.6 62.4 6.4 9.9 65.0 0.4 1.3 33.3 27.6 9.8 5.4 0.9 0.7 3.2
24-25 MIL 67 67 34.2 11.8 19.7 60.1 6.5 10.6 61.7 0.2 0.9 22.2 30.4 11.9 6.5 0.9 1.2 3.1

Current ADP: 6.8/5.7/8.4 (Yahoo/ESPN/Fantrax)
2026-27 FT% Projection: 62.5% (6.0/9.5)

Are you surprised? Hopefully not. The issue with Antetokounmpo isn’t that he is the worst free-throw shooter in the NBA by percentage — because he is not — but the fact that he is among the league leaders in free-throw attempts per game every year. That means he has more chances to miss and drag down your FT%.

While Antetokounmpo had a down year in 2025-26, he was still No. 7 per game if you punted FT%.

The points, rebounds and high-end FG% are a given, while his assists could tick up on a better team and maybe he recovers some more impact in defensive stats in a more competitive environment too. Antetokounmpo does have knee and minor injury issues that seem to be adding up, but the Heat should allow him to push through those more than the Bucks did last season.

#2: Rudy Gobert

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About the Author

SportsEthos Contributor

Keston Paul

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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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