Teams are preparing to report for training camp, which means it's time to start getting ready for the start of Fantasy basketball season. We put together a crew with our friends from RotoWire.com to go through our first mock draft of the season, and the results are right here for you to peruse.
This was a 12-team, nine-category league, so turnovers do hurt you. That would be a red flag for the likes of James Harden and Russell Westbrook, even before the latter underwent knee surgery following the draft. Had we known his status, I would guess he might have fallen to the end of the first round, though it is still possible Westbrook will be available for the start of the season.
One player who did fall, and who I snatched up in the second round, was Chris Paul. Sure, injury concerns are very real for Paul, but snagging him with the 10th pick of the second round feels like stealing. He was a top-10 player when healthy last season, and he really hasn't shown much signs of decline besides a dip in assists playing next to James Harden.
I doubled up on injury risks in the third by snagging Devin Booker, another calculated risk. My first-round pick, Karl-Anthony Towns, has yet to miss a game in the NBA, so I felt I could take on some risk with Booker recovering from hand surgery. He emerged as the kind of high-volume sharpshooter we've been hoping he would be since he joined the league, and with the Suns' lack of options at point guard, it wouldn't surprise me to see Booker take another step forward as a playmaker in Year Four.
All in all, it's a balanced team, with a mixture of high-upside risks early and safer plays in the later rounds. If you want to win a title, you need some risk, and I think my team has enough upside to stomach it. Let's check out the rest of the results.
Here's who took part in the mock draft:
- Jeff Edgerton, RotoWire.com
- Ben Miller, RotoWire.com
- Mike Barner, RotoWire.com
- Chris Towers, CBS Fantasy
- Oscar Heanue, RotoWire.com
- Kyle McKeown, RotoWire.com
- D.J. Trainor, RotoWire.com
- Stan Son, Razzball.com
- Joel Bartilotta, RotoWire.com
- Alex Barutha, RotoWire.com
- James Anderson, RotoWire.com
- Alex Rikleen, RotoWire.com
