Road to Fantasy Basketball Draft Part 2

07 Oct, 2026

Being successful in fantasy basketball involves finding players at the end of the draft that can perform at a high level but not on anyone's radar. In an auction draft, if no one bids on the player, then that player can be picked up for a small price. It's easy to pick a star player or well known player and get into a bidding match with the other managers in the league, but finding someone that's low on everyone else's draft boards but can still produce is important. Basically, players that I would only need to spend $1 or $2 on because no one else wants them, knows about them, or expects much from them.

Predicting whether or not a player will play well is not the easiest task though. So when looking for some sleeper picks, what I'm looking for is if scoring and minutes will increase in the upcoming season from the previous season. Minutes would increase due to a bigger role within the system because of injury or the departure of another player. And with increase in minutes, comes increase in opportunity, comes increase in scoring. Let's look at players picked last season for $2 or $1 that also had a nice bump in PPG and how their minutes per game differed.

Outside of Russell Westbrook and Donte DiVincenzo at the bottom, the rest of the players listed have less experience and are fairly young.

Nickeil Alexander-Walker is the outlier here but in his case, he moved from the Timberwolves to the Hawks in the off season and was given a larger role that he fully took advantage of. His 11.4 PPG increase is the 3rd highest increase from one season to the next in the last 25 years of the NBA according to an NBA press release.

Reed Sheppard is a case of a young player who was given the starting position after the veteran starter was injured. For Sheppard, Fred VanVleet injured his ACL during the offseason, paving the way for Sheppard to take advantage and become the starting point guard and retain that position.

So predicting which players will make a jump next season is not easy as there are many factors between personal growth, and playing time opportunities. But I did find some numbers that may be of value.

In the NBA, as the season nears its end, players start hitting their strides, lineups change to give way for younger players to flourish, and minutes distribution will be completely different than in the beginning of the season. I looked at player's PPG starting in March of 2025 to the end of the season in April 2025 and compared it to their 2025 overall PPG to see if there's a difference in how they ended the regular season. I also only wanted to look at the younger players with 4 or less years of experience because those are the players I am expecting the most growth in as well as the ones most likely to only cost $2 or $1 in the draft. And lastly I wanted players who played 10 or more games in March and April of 2025.

Here's a list of those players.

Notice some familiar names here with Reed Sheppard and Brandin Podziemski. Also notice how for all the players listed, they all have some type of minutes increase in the last 2 months of the season compared to their overall minutes per game.

So how does that translate to how they improved in 2026? Well we already know from Reed Sheppard and Podziemski that there is some correlation here. Let's look at the rest of this list of players. With Reed Sheppard, his play at the end of the 2025 season probably made it easier to adjust in 2026 when given more minutes.

For all these players, they all had a nice increase year over year. Reed Sheppard gained the most minutes due to getting the starting nod as mentioned. Isaiah Collier's minutes stayed relatively the same but he was able to increase his PPG by 3 points year over year. A rookie getting better in his second year is not unheard of and it's also the type of stats we want to see.

With Quentin Grimes, he is the counter example to this theory due to his PPG going down despite minutes going up. He was traded to the Sixers mid season and ended up playing a lot of minutes due to injuries to key players such as Embiid, Paul George, and Tyrese Maxey. In 2026, once those players came back, his role regressed back despite the March surge. He was playing close to 35 minutes a game at the end of the 2025 season. In 2026, his minutes decreased to 29.4 from his 2025 March and April numbers. So even though his overall minutes per game increased year to year, the rest of the team returning from injury took away his touches so his PPG slightly went down. This shows how this analysis does have its limitations as there are many factors to it.

Before we take a look at the 2026 season, we should also check how many younger players in general get a PPG increase from the previous 2025 season to get a baseline. I also looked into their PPG difference if they had more minutes year over year or less minutes year over year. I chose players with experience between years 1 and 5 because that would mean they were somewhere between a rookie to year 4 in 2025, which is the group I was looking at above in my 2025 analysis.

At least 41 games played each season.

Players who play more minutes, score more points, pretty obvious. Can easily figure that out by using a per 36 table. On average, this group of players between 1 and 5 years played another minute or 2 per game, and on average, they scored another point or 2 per game. But players' minutes fluctuate throughout the season and not every player plays 36 minutes. Of the 125 players on this list, 47 of them had their minutes increased by at least 3 minutes year over year. The number of younger players whose PPG went up by 3 or more points was more than I expected at 36.

Based on this calculation, the important thing we want to look for is if their minutes go up year over year. It is not that easy to predict that but when looking at the multiple tables above, the players who played well in March of 2025 generally had a minutes increase in the 2026 season or at the very least, stayed almost the same. On average, my 2025 March group had an average minutes increase of 4.04 minutes per game, compared to the average of the whole baseline group at 1.4 minutes increase. Even if I remove Reed Sheppard's inflated minutes, the minutes increase of the 2025 March risers is still at 2.98 minutes per game more per year. That's basically 3 minutes per game more than their 2025 MPG! So the prediction is that players whose play improved at the end of 2026 season for whatever reason should have a nice MPG increase in this upcoming 2027 season.

That doesn't mean there will be a higher PPG increase though, as Quentin Grimes proves. The average PPG increase of the 2025 March group was only 3.26 in 2026, roughly the same as the average PPG increase of my baseline group of players whose minutes went up in 2026. But more minutes equals more opportunity and that is pretty valuable in the sports world.

So let's take a look at players whose PPG increased after March of 2026 compared to the rest of their 2026 season.

Same criteria as above as only looking at players with 4 or less years of experience and played 10 or more games since 3-1-2026. A lot more rookies in this group of players as well as a lot less team diversity here as 7 of the players are from 3 teams. Looking at this past season, there was a push for teams to tank because of the highly viewed draft class. So understandably, we can see why the Jazz, Grizzlies, and Kings decided to put in their younger players to get them more minutes at the end of the season. It helps with player development as well as not having the pressure to win games for the better lottery odds. Looking forward to this upcoming fantasy basketball draft, how many of these players were drafted last season in our league? None. Originally, Ace Bailey was on this list, the highly touted rookie on the Jazz. He was drafted for $9 last season and will most likely be drafted highly again this season so I decided to remove him from this group as he wouldn't be a flyer pick at the end.

How many players ended up on a roster by the end of the season?

All but 4, Rayan Rupert, Will Riley, Cody Williams, and Leonard Miller. So everyone else in this group cannot really be considered under the radar and there may be interest to draft them from other managers.

The exception would be Maxime Raynaud, a rookie big man for the Kings who I picked up towards the end of last season. The Kings look to be a rebuilding team, waiving DeMar DeRozan over the summer, so their veteran star big man, Domantas Sabonis, may be on the trading block as well. This would give Raynaud ample opportunity as starting big man who can score and rebound while having high FG% and low turnovers. Here's his stats from last season, as well as his points and rebounding numbers at the end of the season to show what he is capable of when given the minutes.

I highly doubt he'll be scoring 17.8 ppg this season due to the addition of new rookie Darius Acuff Jr. who is set to be the main ballhandler and focal point of the offense. The Kings don't seem close to competing yet so if my prediction on Sabonis rings true, his March numbers should still hold up for the upcoming season as he would probably be given more minutes as the Kings core big man. But even if he just grabs 7+ rebounds per game while scoring over 12 PPG, he will be a fine addition to my lineup. And because I was the one to pick him up, not sure if he'll be on the radar of any other managers in the fantasy basketball league.

So if I am set on trying to draft Maxime Raynaud, how about the 4 remaining players in my findings that didn't get picked up by a team. Let's do a quick team analysis for each.

Rayan Rupert - Signed a two way contract on the loaded Sixers team. Will definitely not be seeing any playing time and probably spend more time in the G League.

Cody Williams - Traded to the Timberwolves in the offseason and looks to come off the bench. When looking at the Wolves depth chart, Cody Williams seems to be pretty far back and it doesn't seem like he'll get enough minutes to warrant a rotation spot unless major injuries occur.

Will Riley - The Wizards have entered into competing mode after drafting AJ Dybantsa. With Trae Young and Anthony Davis healthy, along with veterans like Khris Middleton and DeAndre Ayton, Will Riley will also probably be seeing the end of the bench this season. He doesn't seem like he'll be ready for a draft spot.

Leonard Miller - Currently on the Chicago Bulls and also a victim of roster moves that the team made to strengthen their roster. The Bulls drafted Caleb Wilson who would most likely be the starting power forward, as well as acquired Nic Claxton, another big man who will be starting. The rest of the Bulls bigs rotation looks to be set as well with Leonard Miller as the odd one out.

With the other 5 players from my list I haven't mentioned, they will continue to be monitored during preseason to try to get a hint of their playing time potential. Each of their respective teams have added a prominent rookie who will most likely be starting and when looking at the projected depth charts on the ESPN website, most of these players have been pushed back to 3rd string. Gui Santos on the Warriors might be the only one worth monitoring as Warriors are getting ready for their post Curry era and developing younger players right now will be part of their plans.

As 2025 was a season marred with injuries, 2026 would be remembered as one where tanking got so bad that the NBA decided to change the draft lottery rules. Most of the younger players I identified didn't seem to have good numbers because they were good players, but because their team did not prioritize winning and did not play their best players. So today's analysis was not fruitful in finding more hidden gems but it helped confirm one of the players I already had in mind to draft, plus it gave me a starting point for where else to look. There's still time before the draft and plenty of numbers to go through so stay tuned.