Per game or per season, the question that decides ten draft picks

Every fantasy ranking has to answer one question before it can order anyone, which is whether a player should be judged by what he does when he plays or by what he gives you over the season. For most players the two answers are close, because most players play most games. For a small group of stars with injury histories they are far apart, and nearly every disagreement you will see between rankings, or between your league mates, about those players comes down to which of the two questions the ranker is answering.

Our projections board answers the second one, but it does so in a specific way. It takes a player's value per game on the nights he is projected to play, fills the nights he is projected to miss with a replacement-level free agent, and averages the two over the season, and it charges a little extra for long absences, because a roster spot tied up for months costs more than the games themselves. The table below shows the players for whom that makes the biggest difference, under ESPN's default points scoring.

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.