Dyson Daniels and the price of steals, from 25th to 59th depending on how your league counts them

Dyson Daniels is the clearest test of how a fantasy league values a single category. We project him for 12.6 points, 6.9 rebounds, 5.1 assists and 2.1 steals on 52.3% shooting with only 1.6 turnovers over 73 games for Atlanta, a line built around the one category where he is nearly the best in the league: among the 156 players at the top of our 9-cat board, only Ausar Thompson projects for more steals, and by two hundredths of a steal. Everything else about Daniels is ordinary or worse, with 0.6 threes a game and 63.9% from the line. So his rank depends almost entirely on what a steal is worth in your league, and the answer varies more than most drafters realize.

We priced him every way the site can. ESPN's default points scoring pays four points a steal, Yahoo's pays three and Fantrax's two, and our 9-cat board deliberately weighs steals below the other categories. The result is a player who is a fourth-round pick in one twelve-team league and a fifth-round pick in another, with the same projected line. Our earlier piece on steals and blocks showed where he sits among the stocks specialists; this one goes into why the scoring moves him and which builds should pay for him.

Every player in this story is on the fantasy basketball rankings and the 2026-27 projections, and the NBA depth charts show where each one stands in his team’s rotation tonight.