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How to punt blocks, and the guards and passing bigs it makes cheaper

Ignoring blocks moves Darius Garland from 43rd to 26th on our 9-cat board, Jalen Brunson from 35th to 22nd and Domantas Sabonis from 36th to 27th, while Anthony Davis falls to 47th and Jaren Jackson Jr. to 75th.

By · 4 min read

Most blocks come from centers and power forwards, and their standard rank already includes the shot-blocking. Punting blocks means you stop paying for that and spend your picks and trades on the guards who score, pass and shoot threes, plus the rebounding big men who rarely block a shot. It suits a manager whose roster leans toward guards after the draft, and because blocks are cheap to give up for a team built that way, it is one of the easier punts to move into through trades in the first weeks of the season.

Ranks from our projections board and the analysts' consensus, updated nightly.

We reran our 9-cat board with blocks removed and the other eight categories weighted as on the standard board. The table shows the movers that matter most, as of mid-October, from our projections. The consensus column is the analysts' standard 9-cat board, shown for reference.

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All stories in the NewsroomOctober 21, 2026

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