Lock-In week one, where Maxey's four games beat Murray's two

Sleeper's Lock-In mode counts one game per player each week, and the manager chooses which. After a player finishes a game you can lock that score before his next game starts, and once it is locked the rest of his week counts for nothing; if you never lock, his last game of the week stands, as both RotoWire's and FantasyPros' explainers of the format describe. That turns every player's week into a series of decisions, and it means the number of games he plays matters in a different way from a daily league. A daily league adds his games together, while Lock-In gives you more chances to catch his best night, so a third or fourth game is worth something, but much less than a full game.

We value a player's Lock-In week with a model fitted on every game of 2025-26. It takes his average, the spread of his game-to-game scores at that average, and the chance that he plays each later game of the week once he has played one, and it works out what the week is worth if every lock is made at the right moment. Replayed on the second half of last season under a standard points scoring, locking by that rule scored 28.6 fantasy points per player-week, against 23.9 for never locking and letting the last game count. Below is what that model says about week one, which runs Monday, October 19 to Sunday, October 25.

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.