[10/21 – Final Update!  Complete with all of Slim’s stat projections, a few final tweaks, and hopefully a list that’s 95% accurate!  I’m going to try my best to keep our ranking’s post active throughout the whole regular season so commenters can give me some love for the calls that went right, or slam me where it went all Wiggins-ish.  Good luck this year, Razzball Hoops Nation!]

Oh.  My.  God.  It’s here!!!

Not too be all Sapper (I love Millsap!), but this post is the pinnacle of everything I’ve worked for through the years at Razzball.  Taking over hoops in 2013 and building a community with you awesome commenters has been unreal.  And is anything more important in fantasy hoops than ranks?!  As Zoolander would say when clowned for having one look, “I DON’T THINK SO!”

Enough melodrama, this is where it all comes together!  Our one-stop rankings page where we will be continually updating the top 200 until opening night, complete with Yahoo position eligibility (where we’ll be playing in 16-17 RCLs – sign up now!), my short-form blurb (you can read further on everyone in the rankings posts linked below), Slim’s ranks projection (if a rank looks wildly wrong compared to Slim’s projection – it’s a player we wildly disagree on!), and the comments section below that I dare say was the best in fantasy basketball last year.  In 15-16’s ranks, we got to 1,572 comments complete with rankings disagreements, breaking news, draft strategy, draft reviews, and general Razzball hijinks that can’t be topped.  Let’s go for 2,000 this year!

Here’s our 2016-17 Razzball Fantasy Basketball Rankings:

I know, I know, we’re a little behind the 8-ball here.  YOU CAN’T RUSH MATH!  I think that’s something Russell Crowe yelled in A Beautiful Mind.  I actually just watched some of that the other day, and I swear his douchiness was the inspiration behind Sheldon in The Big Bang Theory.  Speaking of nerds, here’s a fully functional spreadsheet, sortable by Slim’s projection for the upcoming season!  They’re still sorted by my ranks, so obviously the projections have a little give-and-take with Slim’s thoughts vs. mine.  All you gotta do is click the category you want to sort by, and whizzbang!  Stats sorted by each cat are at your fingertips.  Including by age!  We all know how age-ist Slim is…  Big shout out to Rudy for helping us get these together!  Here’s our 2016-17 Razzball Top 200 Projections for the upcoming Fantasy Basketball Season

Ahhhhh, the love and hate of auctions! You love them the first 20 picks for all the bickering and bidding wars, then you hate them at the end when it takes forever, because the last moneybags owner keeps cycling the clock down until 2 seconds are left, then $2 cockblocking the remaining owners. Make your bids quicker, people! And if this paints a bad picture of auctions, then be sure to come and join us in an RCL League! 100% free to join fan leagues, SNAKE drafts, with prizes, an immortalized name in the Hall of Fame, and general awesomeness!

If you read that last paragraph, you’re either thinking I’m jaded in auction leagues, or just continuing to whore myself out for more RCL leagues. It’s the latter! Just take advantage of me selling off my sweet, sweet body, why don’t ya?! But I love the RCLs, and it ends up being hella fun the final few weeks and through the playoffs.

Any the who, auction leagues are dope as shit too! I especially love the REL, which combines auction pricing with a dynasty aspect. With a league of extraordinary fantasy foes, doing redrafts in the form of an auction is probably the purest test of fantasy acumen. But it’s also the purest test of stamina, as redraft auctions are longgggggg. So more power to you if you’re prepping for a redraft auction – hit that coffee, hit that Monster, hit that Red Bull… and hit the floor apparently of a heart attack, but you get the picture!

This year is wildly different from the auction values I’ve put together in previous seasons. There’s no clear stud, no clear “pair at the top”, but a concrete top 4 and a concrete #5 in Towns. With that said, in a standard 9-category league, I’m deflating my top end values like never before. I have Curry ranked #1 and Durant #4, but are they really $10 different? Even $5?! Hell, it’s all so close at the top! So I’ll take the cheapest value of the top 4, might even just save for Towns, and go from there. And one final reminder – these are guidelines based off my ranks, not explicit $ guesses. I like Parsons more than most – it doesn’t mean I’m expecting to have to quite spend $26 -but it reflects what I would pay in a draft with 11 other JBs. Girls have dreams about what to do with 12 JBs!

Without any further ado (or RCL whoring), here’s our 2016-17 Razzball Auction Values:

[RCLers!  A new league was opened that is drafting quick – tomorrow/Wednesday at 8:30 PM EST – and it’s Step Brothers themed!  Join the league through this link here, and check out all the other RCL openings in our signup post.  Can’t wait for this ish to start!]

Fight the powah!  Although to keep going with the theme of that intro, I really need some hip hop help…  I grew up in the suburbs, the son of  two classical musicians!  True story…  Then I rebelled and became a metal head…  Anyway, I need Grey over from baseball or Dan A to make this work!

Like our heavy doses of position eligibility at the wings, PF has guys all over the place, with the most players within my top-200.  Wait, why isn’t Giannis a PF, he could technically play PF if he needed to!  Dude is 7’0!  He really should have the PG, SG, SF, PF, C eligibility…  Hah!  Luckily PF is still a very malleable enough position to do a few things with in your drafts, and it’s not until we get to C that it really starts locking up.  Here’s the top PF for the 2016-17 fantasy basketball season, in tiers:

Is that a small forward, or are you just happy to see me?! If it’s Kelly Oubre, then I’m very happy! Although I didn’t even rank Oubre… Love me some Oubre in dyno though! Let’s get Otto Porter out of here! Man, I’m distracted by shiny objects – aka young basketball players.

As we move along with the tiers, and not to dissuade you from reading through this article (cough, cough), I think SF is the least meaningful position in Yahoo. So many wings have the SG/SF, so many stretch 4s have the SF/PF, that I can’t seem to ever remember being in a bind to fill up my three hole. Wow, that sounds weird… Like something someone would say on that new Wyatt Cenac show about alien abductions. That looks like it could be really funny or really stupid. Pretty much the same 50/50 criteria I have on all of my articles! Here’s the top SF for the 2016-17 fantasy basketball season, in tiers:

The ol’ 2 guard!  Man things have changed since I started, because I remember in 13-14 when SG was a travesty.  Curry had the combo eligibility, then it was a minefield.  I should note and remind everyone that these positionsal breakdowns are based on Yahoo position-eligibility.  Why Yahoo?!  Because it’s RCL time baby!  And we need more leagues!  We’re still in the “just under a month out, so I’m not a straggler for making an RCL league this late” tier!

Due to Yahoo whoring out their position eligibility, SG is no longer an issue, but this was still an interesting tiering system to put together as it pertains to PTS/3s/AST/STL needs as you move along in your draft.  But never forget that ThrAGNOF!  Here’s the top SG for the 2016-17 fantasy basketball season, in tiers:

It’s time for everyone’s favorite rankings compartmentalization – tiers!  In all honesty, I used to kinda shrug off the practice of putting players in tiers.  Maybe it’s because I play on Yahoo for the most part and they give virtually every player two positions, or maybe it’s because it’s already a subconscious thing I’m doing with my ranks/draft day strategy.  Either way, it ends up being a pretty interesting post to put together!  My favorite part is naming the tiers…  I feel like when you’re drafting and you see the tier of your upcoming need’s position get dried out, you start to panic.  And it’s always with PG!  In RCL drafts, PG always becomes a panic button for me.  People sniping Elfrid Payton from me, like a bunch of morons!  Here’s the top PG for the 2016-17 fantasy basketball season, in tiers:

[Final update as of October 26th!  I hope all of your drafts went swimmingly, and we have two more Razzball Basketball Commenter Leagues drafting tonight!   If you’re feeling light on your teams this year, or want one more shot at a great draft, sign up and join one of those leagues today!]

We’re back with the Razzball Hoops’ all-in-one, frequently updated, hopefully mostly right, let’s do this Rubio!, is this a run on sentence?, fantasy basketball ranks!

Below is our official Razzball Basketball top 200, which we’ll be updating all through the offseason, training camp, preseason, and up until the final night before 2015-16 tips off.  With each player, I give a small blurb on my thoughts, list Yahoo position eligibility (since this is where we’ll be playing our RCL leagues), and Slim gives his 9-cat projection along with projected minutes played.  Alas, Slim and I don’t agree on everything!  So if you see a projection that seems out-of-whack with where a player is ranked, we’ve probably argued the point on the Podcast…  But we also love all of your questions/comments/disbelief at ranks.  We answer any and all of your comments, so if you play in different formats, have keeper questions, salary cap quandaries, or want to be the one to break a piece of news, the comment thread on this running post will be our hub for all fantasy hoops thoughts!

So without any further [James Michael Mc]Adoo, here’s our one stop shop for the 2015-16 Fantasy Basketball Rankings:

Razzball Hoops’ ultimate draft day tool is here!  Well, actually whoever sniped Myles Turner before I could get him in my first RCL draft is the ultimate draft day tool!  Slim’s projections in a sortable spreadsheet is back, and a huge thanks to Slim for all of his statistical Nostradamus-ing and Rudy for all of the… um… Excel-lent sort-ing…  See what I did there?!  These guys should’ve been the stars of CBS’s Numb3rs!  I actually have no clue what that show was about, but if it was about fantasy basketball I’ll sure feel dumb…  Rudy helped us get all of Slim’s projections in the Official Top 200 back into interactive mode, and he’s probably ready for a month off from math with baseball wrapping up.  I can’t wait to see his charcoal drawings from his month away in Amish country!  Anyway, here’s Slim’s 15-16 projections to utilize on draft day, and be sure to put them to test in the 2015-16 Razzball Basketball Commenter Leagues.  Plenty of leagues open with October drafts, so sign up today!

Auction drafts are chess, snake drafts are checkers!  Pretty sure Denzel in Training Day agrees!

Nothing beats a good auction draft.  Yes, they can be long, hard, and full of Kaman, but they also ensure you can get players you like as long as you’re willing to pony up the dough.  Luckily this year has more parity across the first round, and you can spread your bets accordingly.  Pre-Kevin Durant injury last year, it was back-to-back seasons of paying a ridiculous premium for the Slim Reaper since he was safe (ugh, I guess not really!) and so much better than the field.  Now there’s a case to be made for any of the big 3 as #1 overall, I’ve heard KD even enter the discussion that high, some like DeMarcus Cousins over some of the PG, some don’t like John Wall as a first-rounder, etc. etc. etc.  So while I do like the stars-and-scrubs philosophy, I don’t think I have to overpay too much unlike the past two seasons where I had KD in the high-$90s.  However, I will note there’s a steep dropoff for me outside the top-10.  And you’ll notice a bevy of guys at $1-$2.  I’ll go in hoping to get two elites, a few mids, and a lot of dollar guys where I see value.

A big luxury of auction drafts is it’s much easier to maintain a team strategy.  I don’t love punting in snakes, as guys that fit your build can be picked before you.  But in an auction, you can build more efficiently and accurately.  You can also punt positions – I would be all for getting two elite PG and having 3-4 $1-$2 high-upside bigs and hope I hit on one or two to flank some mid-range guys.

And one obligatory final note – I know I am high on Andrew Wiggins this year, so obviously if he hits $23 with only one team left bidding, don’t suddenly climb it with one bid from $23 to $39 willy-nilly!  These suggested auction values are a framework for my ranks, and the price I’d go if drafting with 11 other mes.  Ugh, horrifying, it’d be like having an auction draft in the “Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich!” scene!

Values are based on Yahoo standard line-ups (PG, SG, G, SF, PF, F, C, C, UTIL, UTIL, BN, BN, BN) and 12-team leagues (RCL size – and we need more leagues!  Commish one now!) with a $200 budget:

Bring the powah!  In one of the more shiftiest of positions in the NBA, we now embrace the stretch-4 as if small ball is the cure-all for everything in the NBA, and have thrown out the twin towers philosophy.  No more Monroe and Drummond and 800 pounds worth of NBA center clogging the paint!  The NBA is getting more versatile, and I think we’re seeing it more with all the ways a PF can help you in fantasy.  Dimes from LeBron, treys from like half of em, a lot of rainbow line threats…  It’s as variant as Johnny Depp’s characters in Tim Burton movies!  Oh wait, they’re all weird/bumbly/creepy, that’s completely wrong…  It’s as variant as nationalities in the NBA!  Love that FIBA had so many NBA players participating, so fun…  Anyway, the point is (if there ever was a point to this open), that PF can fit a lot of builds, and can band-aid some stats late, so it’s not a positional necessity.  I might have made up a completely new term there…  Here’s the top PF for the 2015-16 Fantasy Basketball season: