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72 days

Welcome To Basketball Monster 2025/26

August 14, 2025 by Josh Lloyd View Comments (214)

Welcome to a new season at Basketball Monster

Ken, Kyle, Matt, and I are pumped to bring you another fun, successful season through our tools, comments, and interactions.

As you jump back into the site, a few things are worth highlighting.

Start here: If you want to see players for the coming season, go to PROJECTIONS, not RANKINGS (Rankings reflect last season).
Before you do that, open SETTINGS and set up your league:

  • Choose category or points.

  • Link your provider for automatic roster syncing.

  • Set your auction budget, roster configuration, etc.

If you skip this, the tools won't be tailored to your league.

How to read the projections

  • We don't hand-rank players. We project every player's stats and then sort them based on a formula (or projected fantasy points). You can manipulate that order by changing how you display the data.

  • Per-game vs. totals matters. “How can you have Joel Embiid in the top six if he's going to be injured?” If you're on Per Game, high-performers who might miss time will sit higher. Switch to Totals to factor in games played.

  • Games played is chaos. Predicting GP is basically impossible and the most volatile year-to-year variable. I create the GP projections—and I personally don't draft off Totals. There's nuance in balancing risk and timing your picks.

  • In category leagues, don't draft by the top name showing. The gap between, say, 40 and 60 might be 0.1 steals and 1% FG%. Draft for stat set and team build, not an overall number.

  • Use DURANT (or DURANT H2H) for category leagues. Standard 9-cat ranks can throw up oddities (e.g., Trae Young in the 30s, Onyeka Okongwu over Giannis Antetokounmpo, Amen Thompson in the top seven). DURANT adjusts for scarcity and variance and relaxes strict z-score assumptions—NBA stats aren't normally distributed—so values line up better with how H2H is actually played.

  • Projections have error ranges—and minutes are intentionally “over.” We project to the best of our ability, but they're not hard caps. Team minutes will sum above 240 because we project season-long totals and add a 5–10% overage for injuries and unknowns. Bench players' listed minutes/stats may look a little rich relative to a fully healthy nightly rotation.

These are the most common questions and misconceptions I see around projections. When you're looking and querying (and please do—questions are welcome), keep these points in mind.

Jump in, enjoy, and leave comments here or on player pages. We'll discuss and explain our rationale.