Statistically speaking, there are few decisions you could make that are worse than buying a lottery ticket. But when the Powerball approaches half a billion dollars (as it is this week), people can be forgiven for saying “screw the math, the payoff is huge enough to justify a shot.”
Statistically speaking, the odds of your last round draft picks remaining on your roster until the end of the season are higher than the odds of winning the Powerball. But, I’m sorry to inform you, dear reader, that the math in this case makes minimal operational difference: you don’t win the Powerball, and you’re going to fall. at least two of your last three picks before the All-Star break. That is the unfortunate reality.
Let that reality free you to chase the fantasy lottery.
Because the strikeout rate on late round picks is so low, it often makes sense to forget about players’ floors and focus instead on their upsides. In a typical 14-round draft, I like to load up on underrated safeties (aka old vets) in rounds 10 and 11 before abandoning caution entirely to chase ceilings in rounds 12-14.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of my favorite late round lottery picks.
Within each section, players are listed in order of how I would prioritize drafting them.
The market is missing something
Cameron Johnson
Networks
Stop me if this sounds familiar: the fantasy market is getting excited about the ball-hoggy-shooting first young guard on a tanking team, and some even consider the guard a dark horse candidate for the league’s scoring title. Meanwhile, a more established 28-year veteran stepping up into a bigger role is largely ignored and has an ADP essentially double that of his younger counterpart. The parallels between 2023-24 Jordan Poole/Kyle Kuzma and 2024-25 Cam Thomas/Cameron Johnson aren’t perfect, but it’s helpful to illustrate our collective overconfidence in the roles of good players on bad teams (and all four players involved are exactly that – good, not great, not bad, good.).
Johnson is easily the Nets’ best floor spacer, which should help keep his minutes elevated. Every set of projections I’ve seen (including RotoWire and Yahoo) has him around 28 minutes per game, and I think that’s just too low. His primary fantasy value is as a non-offensive three-point specialist, but I think the market is overlooking the possibility of him taking on significantly more offensive responsibilities after the departure of Mikal Bridges.
Good players who will (hopefully) force their way into more minutes
Ausar Thompson
Pistons
Thompson is really good. He hasn’t made a free throw since the third grade, and the Pistons are deeper than you might have realized. But Thompson is really good. Detroit finally got some shooters, and it would be scientifically impossible for their coaching situation to get any worse. hopefully, that means Thompson will participate in some thoughtfully constructed rotations that make basketball sense and allow him and other talented young Pistons to develop. If you (reasonably) paid less attention to Detroit basketball than I did last year, you’d understand how radical a change I just described. He averaged 1.1 steals and 0.9 blocks in just 25.1 minutes as a 20-year-old rookie on the worst-managed* NBA team in recent memory. He should help in at least four categories (steals, blocks, FG%, rebounds) right away, and I think he will steadily earn more minutes and improve as a player.
*Excluding the Jim Boylen Bulls, which were the kind of one-off malfunction I’ll tell my grandkids about.
Keyonte George
Jazz
George is an excellent passer who begins the season as the full-time starting point guard. Whenever a non-lottery pick rookie wins a starting job over a healthy incumbent, we pay attention, and that’s exactly what the 20-year-old George did last February. Although he averaged “only” 5.2 assists per game (a solid haul for someone at his ADP) as a starter, he flashed the ability to get far more assists than that for multiple games at a time before the coaches asked him to shoot more. . If George continues to improve, or if the coaching staff asks him to go re-emphasize ball distribution, he could shoot up the fantasy ranks.
Tari Eason & Reed Sheppard
rockets
On shallower real-life rosters, Eason and Sheppard would be popular choices. Both seem set for long NBA careers. Eason has a particularly fantasy-friendly skill set, although his path to minutes is more difficult than Sheppard’s. If anyone was guaranteed 27 minutes a night, they would easily be a top 120 pick. Instead, we’re taking them late flyers in deeper leagues, hoping that the combination of injuries, trades, and good fashion earning more minutes gets them enough court time for their skills to make an impact in the box. scores.
Staying healthy is technically possible
Jonathan Isaac
magic
For the first time since before the COVID-19 shutdowns, Isaac had a mostly healthy season in 2023-24. After missing two entire seasons, and then playing just 11 games in a third, Isaac finally returned to life as a regular NBA rotation player. ok He played under a severe minutes restriction with many scheduled days off. He missed five games with a normal ankle injury and 10 with a normal hamstring injury, and two games with a knee strain. So I’m being a bit liberal with “mostly healthy”. But he played 58 games! Over his last nine (including the playoffs), he averaged 7-6-1 with 2.2 shares and 1.3 threes in just 22.3 minutes. Even in limited minutes, he can function as a defensive specialist. And if he somehow stays healthy and can get closer to 25 minutes per game, he could break into the top 100 or higher.
Robert Williams
Trail Blazers
Williams is only an option in deeper leagues, both because of his crowded depth chart and his somehow–worse-than-Jonathan-Isaac injury history. But when Williams played, he was a monster. He finished as a top-100 player (per game) during seasons when he averaged just 19 and 24 minutes. He is a defensive powerhouse with excellent field goal efficiency and minimal free throw attempts. The only problem, and it’s a big problem, is that he may not play often enough for any of this to matter.
30 (or less) is too young to be washed, right?
Andrew Wiggins
Warriors
Wiggins has packed a lot of career into just 29 years on this planet. From one of the hottest rookies of his decade, to a glorified salary filler in what was then thought to be The D’Angelo Russell Trade, to the second best player during a championship run that included three Hall of Famers. Then his 2023-24 was an unmitigated disaster. It is possible that – after 10 seasons and more than 25,000 minutes – a player whose “drive” has always been questioned has entered the end of his career. Alternatively, Wiggins missed many games for then-undisclosed “personal reasons” over the last 18 months, before his father died in September at the age of 64. Perhaps playing under the cloud of his father’s failing health had an effect.
It’s possible Wiggins returns to the quality production he contributed in 2021-22 and early 2022-23 (or better, as modern NBA primes extend beyond age-29). Then, he averaged about 17-5-2 with more than two threes and almost two shares per game. He has a lot more competition for minutes now, but he goes so late in drafts that it was worth the risk.
Jeremy Grant
Trail Blazers
If you’re in a roto league, Grant is underrated. His ADP makes more sense in head-to-head leagues, but he’s a worthwhile risk. Grant missed the fantasy playoffs in each of the last four years due to a tragic case of seasonal tankette. Unfortunately, doctors expect the condition to continue for the duration of his current contract. However, despite the early starts on his summer vacation, he averaged essentially 20-4-3 with two-ish threes and 1.5-ish shares in all four seasons. That’s definitely a good fantasy production.
In a roto league where production time doesn’t matter, he should go at least two rounds earlier. In head-to-head leagues, he’s a great compliment for managers who risk currently injured guys like Kristaps Porzingis, Devin Vassell, Trey Murphy or with Trail Blazer Shaedon Sharpe. Grant’s early season strength should help you survive until those players are healthy enough to reach their potential. And perhaps most importantly, Grant’s current ADP basically ignores the possibility that either A) he’s traded to a decent team, or B) he’s not shut down in March.
Ben Simmons – do you even know what team he’s on without checking anymore?
Turns out he’s still on the Nets. His productive career is probably over. I actually don’t recommend drafting him. But maybe your connection is really deep and everyone else in this article has already left? Also, how can I have this section without mentioning the king of the offseason training quarterback social media?
Newcomers
Newbies are a mystery box. We are bad at predicting who will hit and who won’t. This class is, apparently justifiably, regarded as worse than usual. But it’s still likely that one or two will emerge as effective fantasy options. There are so many unknowns that I won’t break down each individual player, but here are my favorite late-round lottery picks. Because, sometimes, the mystery box might contain a boat.
Kel’el Ware
Heat
Matas Buzelis
bulls
Ryan Dunn
Suns
