How to Punt Categories in Fantasy Basketball

Welcome to fantasy draft season for the 2020-21 NBA season! It's so good to be back after we had to punt away the end of last year's fantasy season.

It's now time to start thinking about how you're going to win your league this year. RotoBaller will be here with rankings, sleepers, players to avoid, and much more! Before we dive too deep into individual players, though, let's take a step back and look at strategy. One of the best ways to win in head-to-head category leagues is by doing a little bit of losing.

Punting has become a household word in fantasy basketball circles, because it's such a potent strategy in these kind of leagues. But it's the type of strategy that can easily backfire. It's worth taking a step back to consider how and why punting works, and that's what this guide is intended to do. Let's get into it with my 6th annual updated overview on punting.

What is Punting?

First things first.

Punting is something that may seem obvious to experienced managers, but isn't so clear if you've never punted before.  Punting is the strategy of completely giving up on one or more categories in a head to head category league in order to select players who maximize your team's strengths in other categories.

For example, you could realistically draft Giannis Antetokounmpo and Ben Simmons at the top of the draft, then combine them with plenty of poor free throw shooting bigs to "punt" free throw percentage, while dominating in the other eight categories -- particularly in the categories that usually come with a bad free throw percentage, like field goal percentage, rebounds, and blocks.

Likewise, if you ignore field goal percentage, it's easier to crush a league in guard-friendly stats like points, assists, and threes with a team featuring Trae Young, Paul George, and Kristaps Porzingis as early round picks.

Can I punt if I'm not in a H2H category league?

In roto leagues you should almost never punt.  It's usually better to try to compete in every category.  Even if you're not great somewhere, getting 3 or 4 points instead of 1 point for a category is a big deal in the final standings.  I can see a scenario in an extremely strong league where a punting gambit could work.  But I'm talking a god-level expert league where everyone fights and scraps for points in the standings to the bitter end.

High-level roto punting strategies have been famously pulled off in baseball before, and it's fascinating to read about when they've worked, but such strategies absolutely require top-to-bottom active manager to work -- they will backfire spectacularly if just one or two managers get lazy about their teams allowing your domination everywhere else to be not-so-dominant over competitive managers.  It's best to ignore punting as a strategy in roto leagues.  If you REALLY do want to punt in roto, just make sure it's a counting stat like blocks or steals where you could sneak a "2" or "3" over teams that get lazy about setting their lineups, and not FT% where you'll lock yourself into a "1." And let me know how that works out for you.

As for point leagues, saying you're punting a category isn't really correct, because there are no categories to punt. Points leagues may seem like they have lots of "categories" because they use the same stats you see in category leagues (points, assists, steals, etc.) to figure out the scoring.  But really, they only have one category -- fantasy points.  It doesn't matter how you get them.

In a sense, you may still be ignoring certain stats the same way you would if you were punting them, because those stats have less value than they would in a category league. Defensive stats and percentages in particular are much less important in a points league.  It's just not called punting, because you're not sacrificing something of value to gain more value elsewhere.  You're just paying attention to your scoring system to know which players will score the most fantasy points.

For more about other types of scoring, check out my column from a few years ago, Why Your Fantasy Basketball Rankings are Wrong.

How many categories should I punt?

First, it depends on how many categories you have.  If you play in a 15-cat league, by all means, punt five categories -- you'll still have 10 to play with.  But for the purposes of this column, I'm going to assume the standard nine categories (points, rebounds, assists, steals, blocks, threes, field goal percentage, free throw percentage, and turnovers).

Many managers have had success punting three or four categories in a league, but you should really know what you're doing before trying to pull that off.  You aren't left with any margin for error if you don't crush it, so your league has to be perfect for it.  As a punting beginner, I'd suggest punting just one or two categories, while attempting to be extremely strong in five and competitive in the other two or three as fallback options.

How do I decide what categories to punt?

Let's say you are getting ready for your head-to-head category league draft this weekend and you want to try to employ a punting strategy.  First off, you should never decide what you're punting in advance of your draft.  Drafting with a certain punt in mind could lead to you losing value or being stuck in a strategy without the key players to make it effective.

If you're in an auction league, it will allow for stronger punt builds, because you can spend more of your draft equity on guys who have an extreme punt/non-punt split in value. Plus you have the option in a pinch to slightly overpay for critical players to round out your build. The trick with punting well in an auction draft is waiting and feeling out where you can get values early on, then building your draft from there. Sometimes, you can get a guy like Ben Simmons early on at or below his standard value.  That'll not only put you off on a good footing to punt something like points or free throw percentage, but it's also a strong hint no one else in your auction is strongly interested in going out of their way to punt those categories, so you probably won't get into a bidding war when you try to go after a guy like De'Aaron Fox or Jaylen Brown a little later on.

In snake draft, which we'll mainly focus on, you can't just decide you're going to punt free throw percentage then take Rudy Gobert with your 1st round pick.  Rudy may technically have have top 10 value to team punting free throw percentage, but it's a massive waste of draft capital to spend a 1st round pick on him.  In addition, the  main stats he brings -- blocks, rebounds, FG% -- are the stats that punting free throws will make it easier to get much later on in the draft from guys like Steven Adams and Marvin Bagley. The key at the top is finding value in the stats that don't get easier with your punt -- in the case of a FT% punt, that's typically points, assists, threes, and steals.

Even if you aim to punt categories, your goal in the draft is still to maximize the value of your picks by taking guys close to their overall value (within a round or so of their ADP), then getting surplus value based on how they fit into your punt strategy.  Your first round pick should still be a guy who's going in the first round.  That said, you can slightly adjust early rankings based how easy a guy is to punt with.  For example, it's perfectly reasonable to take Giannis Antetokounmpo ahead of Karl-Anthony Towns, regardless of what the default rankings might say.  Giannis has close enough to the same value as KAT that you can use The Greek Freak's "puntability" as a tiebreaker.

Your first round pick can narrow your punt but not decide it. It's your second and third picks that will start to commit you on a punt strategy. The key in making those picks is to find complementary pieces that fits a similar punt, while building up strengths and filling positions and stats that will be hard to come by later in the draft.  For example, let's say you select James Harden with an idea to possibly punt field goal percentage and turnovers. It then becomes critical to grab complementary bigs who will shore up rebounds and blocks without hurting your free throw percentage, because those guys will be hard to come by late, while guards with poor field goal percentage and turnover totals will be easier to find.

Let's consider a couple of first round picks, and some popular punt builds for those players.

James Harden or Trae Young

Punt field goal percentage and turnovers

If you end up with one of these super shot heavy guys, the idea is to set yourself up to collect high usage "sloppy" guards later in the draft.  You'll be able to draft all those guys chucking up a high volume of shots for terrible teams.  Welcome to the Association, LaMelo Ball!  Hello, Coby White, you say you have the keys to the Bulls offense now, eh?  The key to doing it well is accumulating enough bigs in the early/mid rounds so that you aren't also punting rebounds and blocks. The nice thing is that that you have options, particularly if you drafted Trae in the latter part of the first, allowing you to swing back in the early second round and select Joel Embiid.  Embiid is the true kingmaker at the center position for a FG/TO punt build alongside a high usage 1st round guard, racking up boards and blocks, while also adding to your team's tremendous early lead in the points category.  Unfortunately, he's much harder to get as a Harden drafter at the top of a 10 or 12 team draft, in which case you may want to reach a bit to grab a guy like Pascal Siakam or Jusuf Nurkic (or both) in order to lock in some big man stats before you start going hog-wild on inefficient guards.

Giannis Antetokounmpo or LeBron James 

Punt free throw percentage

It's common to think about punting free throw percentage with one of these stars, since they give you such a head start in assists, which are a category that traditional bad free throw shooting bigs won't help with later in the draft. My preferred targets in the 2nd and 3rd round double-down on those hard-to-win-with-bigs categories such as assists or steals, ideally filling your PG position with someone who won't compromise your utter dominance in field goal percentage. A guard with a high field goal percentage who can pile up assists and steals, like Ben Simmons or Kyrie Irving is an ideal fits if he slides back around to you. De'Aaron Fox is another option in the 3rd/4th round area. It'll often leave you in a better position in your punt than going for what might seem like a more obvious building block in the 2nd round Andre Drummond or Rudy Gobert. If you can grab one of those guys in the 3rd, though, go for it! You'll also be able to score plenty of elite rebounders and shot blockers who will be almost as good in later rounds by targeting the likes of Mitchell Robinson and Steven Adams.

Anthony Davis or Karl-Anthony Towns 

Punt assists

Assists are a tricky category to win, and will usually be dominated by teams that take a star facilitator like Luka Doncic or LeBron James in the first round and build around him. Let's say you take a big Anthony Davis or Karl-Anthony Towns early, then watch all the good point guards, point forwards, and Jokic disappear before you pick again at the end of the second round.  It's obviously tempting to just throw up your hands and not bother with the category.  Luckily, fantasy basketball can reward you for getting frustrated and giving up, unlike most of the rest of life.  In that case, you can focus on maximizing scoring and shooting out of your guards, while continuing to pick up well-rounded bigs.  Excellent 2nd/3rd round combos with Davis or Towns include dynamic score-first guards like Donovan Mitchell and Kyrie Irving or well-rounded bigs who score like Deandre Ayton. Then you can follow up in later rounds with a focus on solid percentages and scoring -- Myles Turner, Buddy Hield, and Michael Porter Jr. are excellent mid-round targets in this build.

Okay, I have my 1st rounder and complementary 2nd and 3rd rounders -- now what?

In the mid rounds, you generally attack players at the core positions who fit your strategies. I will say that once you get into the mid-rounds, it's okay to start reaching on a round higher than a player's rank suggests.  The absolute difference in value between picks gets lower the later you get in the draft, so this isn't really much of an overpay. I prefer not to make too many "value picks" based on your draft site's rankings that don't fit your team, with the intention of trying to trade for the guys you actually want for your punt build.  There's a good chance the manager who does take those punt-friendly players is punting the same cats themselves, and will be unwilling to part ways with their key players for guys who won't fit their teams either.

Once you have the basis of your team, one idea is to fill the back end of your roster with specialists in the weakest categories you're still competing in. Alternately, you can just draft for maximum upside regardless of how well a guy fits your punt. If you see a late round deep sleeper you're convinced will break out, grab him -- you either didn't spend much, or you have an asset actually worth trading for a lot more. The bottom of your roster isn't a big deal, since you'll be using it to snag breakout stars or stream players, so draft for upside over fit.

So that's it!  You've got the basic concept of punting down.  Welcome to world of losing a little to win it all in fantasy basketball.

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