Fantasy Basketball Draft Guide 2025: Best Ball & Weekly Trends

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  • By Keston Paul

    Last Updated on August 14, 2025 9:01 pm by Keston Paul | Published: August 14, 2025

    While the main target audience of this is NBA Best Ball players, any fantasy GM should be able to learn something as we look at the weekly performance data of players from last season. If you also play in weekly leagues or a format like Sleeper, then this data should also be useful on some level.

    Let’s dig in.

    TABLE LAYOUT

    Player Name
    Just as indicated, it is the name of each player (shocking!).
    These may be adjusted slightly to match the source the statistical data is taken from, instead of the name on certain Best Ball platforms.
    For example: Jeenathan Williams and Nate Williams (same player) might be the most extreme example.
    Other changes may just be whether or not a “Jr.” is included. 

    Best Ball Position
    Underdog Best Ball uses the following positions:
    Guard (usually PGs + SGs, but some SG/SF players sneak in)
    Wing (Usually SFs + PFs but some SG/SF players qualify and some PF/C players also qualify). I would call this a forward, not a wing, but this is what Underdog uses.
    Big (Almost always Cs, but may have some PF/C exceptions)

    Note: These are utilizing this season’s positions despite the data coming from last season’s performances. Consider this using past data to help us look forward. 

    Season Per-Game FPTs
    Average Fantasy Points on a game-to-game basis using the Yahoo Points League/Best Ball scoring system (they are the same).

    Season Total FPTs
    All Fantasy Points scored by a player (Average x Games Played).

    Best Ball Starter-Level Weeks
    Typical Best Ball has 16-man rosters, which include 10 bench spots and starting spots of 2xGuard, 2xWing, 1xBig and 1xUTIL for six total spots across 12 teams.
    This equates to 6×12 = 72 starting slots from a 192-player pool.

    If players are equally distributed across all teams, then the top-72 performers each would be the starters. This is unlikely, but it gives us more of a “guaranteed to be a starter” picture compared to trying to approximate which of the stragglers could sneak in.

    To be clear, I’m referring to one team having, let’s say eight of the top-72 and thus not having two of them in their lineup, which could allow the 73rd and 74th best players to start for another team. However, we aren’t accounting for that since we want to know the concrete, guaranteed starter-level players.

    Top-120 Weeks for H2H
    This is a little throw-in for our general H2H managers.
    Since a standard league is usually 12 teams with 10 starting spots, that equals 120 starters in a weekly setting.
    This is useful insight for Weekly Lineup leagues, but also gives us a look into the general variance of weekly performances for H2H, even if you play in the more common Daily Lineups league type.

    DNP Weeks (Did Not Play)
    All the weeks when a player failed to appear in a single game for any reason.
    This may be due to injuries or other circumstances.

    #1 Position Weeks
    The number of weeks when a player was the top total points producer within their specific Best Ball positions of Guard, Wing or Big.

    Weekly Groupings
    Week 1-25 Overall Rank: Individual Rank among all players that week. if a player did not play, they are given a rank of 600.
    Week 1-25 FPTs: Total Fantasy Points scored that week
    Week 1-25 Position Rank: Individual Rank in a particular week for specific Best Ball positions of Guard, Wing or Big.

    Note: Many fastasy basketball platforms combine both sides of the All-Star Break into one week. 

    NAVIGATION TIPS

    Use FILTER BY POSITION or FIND PLAYER by typing into the rectangular box next to it. If you type Guard then only players with the Guard position will be shown.
    If you type Wembanyama, only Victor Wembanyama’s data will be shown, allowing you to easily find any player you are looking for or performances you may be interested in.

    SORT by using the little triangles/arrows on the header of the table which are labeled the same as the table layout explored in the previous section.

    PREVIEW NOTES

    569 players appeared in a game last season
    271 players had at least one Starter-Level Best Ball (Top-72) Week
    356 players had at least one Top-120 Week
    476 players had at least one DNP Week
    That means 93 players played at least once in every week of the season
    32 players had a #1 Position Week

    2024-25 Season
    Weekly Best Ball Weekly Data

    Want to get access to the table and analysis of Best Ball & Weekly Fantasy Trends? You’ll need to have an NBA FantasyPass membership or purchase the Draft Guide. Click here to learn more and sign up!

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    August 14, 2025, 9:01 pm