BreakoutsPro

Three bold calls: Flagg in the top ten, Kessler and Jerome

Cooper Flagg finishes top ten, Walker Kessler finishes inside the 9-cat top 40, and Ty Jerome outplays a pick outside the top 100, with the numbers behind each call.

By · 3 min read

A bold call is only worth making if it rests on something more than a feeling, so each of the three below starts from our projections and then goes one step further than the projection itself. Two of them our model already agrees with, and the third is a call the projection supports only if you believe the small sample that produced it.

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

Ranks are from our projections board, which values a player by what he gives you across the whole season including the games he is expected to miss, under ESPN's default scoring for points. Draft prices are ESPN's at the end of September.

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This story is for Pro members. Pro is $4 a month or $20 for the season, and opens every story in the Newsroom along with the full projections and every analyst's rankings.

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.

All stories in the NewsroomOctober 8, 2026

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