Fantasy Basketball Rankings 2021-2022: Top 250 Players To Draft & Auction Bids

Kev Mahserejian reveals his 2021-2022 fantasy basketball rankings, which feature the top 250 fantasy NBA players to draft and their corresponding auction bids. Kev also shares his position previews for guard, forward, and center, as well as his tips and observations for your 2021-2022 fantasy basketball drafts.

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Fantasy Basketball Rankings 2021-2022: League Settings

• $200 salary cap for auction prices
• Scoring System: H2H 9-CAT (Points, Threes, Rebounds, Assists, FG%, FT%, Blocks, Steals, and Turnovers)

Viewing these 2021 fantasy basketball preseason rankings on mobile? Swipe left when viewing the table to see:

• 2021 Fantasy Basketball Auction bid values (Bid$) for everyone in the Top 250 Rankings

Fantasy Basketball Rankings 2021-2022

Fantasy Basketball Rankings 2021-2022: Tips & Observations

The 2021-22 Fantasy Basketball season is on the horizon and this might be the most difficult season of all time.

Why, you may ask? Well, we have the ~fun~ task of figuring out who is vaccinated or not along with how that will affect their playing status week in and week out!

There are already reports of teams like the Houston Rockets who’ve reached 100%, which doesn’t necessarily make their players more appealing but allows for less of a sweat when on the clock.

Nevertheless, on the actual basketball side of things, the usual suspects can be found throughout the top of this board with a few new faces. LaMelo Ball is the biggest riser of all as he has cracked the high end of the draft while some future Hall of Fame locks have fallen due to age.

My board is based on H2H leagues that utilize the standard 9 categories: Points, Threes, Rebounds, Assists, FG%, FT%, Blocks, Steals, and Turnovers.

The rankings may seem way off from consensus in certain spots, but rest assured, this is not my first rodeo.

Most of my process is giving a massive ding to players coming into the season already injured or coming off of surgery. I’m also dinging less prominent players that have come into career years by playing on bad teams and being allotted massive usage/minutes.

There’s a method to the madness and hopefully, it helps you win a league or three.

Fantasy Basketball Rankings 2021-2022: Guards Outlook

Guards are tricky because they are littered throughout a draft.

By no means are you ever going to be left struggling at Guard at any point in a season, but the trouble is finding one that “does it all" and allows you to not punt. Guards are high-usage creatures by nature and can often harm you in stats like TO and most painfully, FG%.

Finding those that have a balance of their percentages, high-octane scoring, and providing stocks are special. Some obvious early-round players include James Harden, Stephen Curry Damian Lillard, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and Zach LaVine.

It’s incredibly difficult to not punt FG% if you draft a high-volume guard with a weak percentage early. This approach will often drag down the category more than a later pick can improve it, unless you build the rest of your team with extremely high FG% to balance things out.

The problem with that strategy is that you may find yourself straying from BPA (best player available) too early.

As the draft goes on we have plenty of great guards, but now you are sacrificing one category or more to acquire them. Lonzo Ball is great but he doesn’t score a lot, his FG% and FT% hurt, plus he turns it over plenty. Russell Westbrook can score a ton, but he kills your percentages while turning it over at an even higher rate than Ball, without the solid floor of threes.

The deeper we delve, the more each guard sacrifices, thus creating liabilities for your roster. Once you’re past pick 100, you basically have to choose your battles wisely based on your roster construction.

This is applicable to every position, but especially guards, who are absolute killers in categories where other positions aren’t really a factor.

Brooklyn Nets forward Kevin Durant headlines a tricky position in 2021 fantasy basketball drafts. (Image: USA TODAY Sports)

Fantasy Basketball Rankings 2021-2022: Forwards Outlook

Forwards are tricky in fantasy basketball.

Early on they are great assets if they are of the “do-it-all" variety, a la Jayson Tatum or Kevin Durant, who provide assists without hurting you in any category. However, the middle of the draft is full of forwards who come up empty in one category or another.

Forwards, unlike guards or centers, won’t hurt you in any one particular category, but they are typically lower-usage players who may not score, rebound, or assist much at all.

The one asset forwards do provide due to their low usage is being low-turnover players. This may entice you with their typically favorable rankings, but in a tournament-style league with an overall prize or one where you are already punting the category, their value dips dramatically due to the lack of upside.

Kyle Anderson and Draymond Green are great examples of low-upside forwards, as they will consistently provide stocks, assists, and rebounds while scoring just every other game. When they do score you’ll get some threes, but that is neither here nor there.

Later in the draft, forwards get weird. Some provide scoring and no stocks but also hurt you in one of the percentage categories, or sometimes both (Kyle Kuzma). Others don’t score and don’t provide assists but you get stocks and rebounds at a good rate (Patrick Williams, Jae’Sean Tate).

Your best bet if you miss out on a strong forward early is to just wait and grab the later ones who provide a few sets of stats. Just make sure they’re complementary of each other or at least follow your category punting strategy.

Fantasy Basketball Rankings 2021-2022: Centers Outlook

Big men have transformed throughout the past decade thanks to the three-point revolution. For the sake of fantasy, no longer is every center a back-to-basket player who scores solely in the paint and from mid-range while racking up rebounds and killing your FT%.

Centers are shooting threes at a higher rate than ever while some (Nikola Jokić, Karl-Anthony Towns, Nikola Vučević) do it at such a high level that they can even carry you in the category while not hurting you anywhere. Unfortunately, you are only likely to score one of those three and will have to settle with the abilities — or lack thereof — that other centers provide.

Centers’ impact on FT% is the biggest bugaboo of this position, but the important thing is finding those that can provide the stats you need while not shooting free throws at a high volume (unless your strategy is to go full punt). Someone like Jarrett Allen may not seem like a FT% killer shooting 70% from the charity stripe, but given that he shot nearly five free throws per game last season, there is cause for concern.

Meanwhile, Mitchell Robinson‘s career mark of 57% may seem daunting until you see his two attempts per game, which won’t really hurt you.

The deeper we go into the center position, the more hits come to each category. It’s likely the only centers you’ll find late are those that can help you with blocks or rebounds. Their FG% is mostly fugazi given their low volume and won’t really help your fantasy team. These are your Jakob Poetl types who are picked up and dropped throughout the season.

Center is best to target early so you won’t have to compromise your roster with tanks and mostly useless bigs.