Fantasy Basketball ADP Risers: Tyler Herro, Reed Sheppard and Cooper Flagg Climb Into Camp

Media day is September 28 for most of the league and training camps open the following day, which means fantasy basketball drafts are already running. The board looks different than it did in July, and the moves are almost entirely explained by one input: usage.

Usage rate is the most predictive single variable in fantasy basketball. Efficiency matters, role matters, minutes matter, but the number of possessions a player finishes drives more of his fantasy scoring than anything else. Every riser on this list is rising because somebody left, somebody got traded, or a rotation opened up in front of him.

Tyler Herro, Milwaukee

The biggest ADP mover of the offseason, and it traces directly to the Giannis Antetokounmpo trade. Miami sent Herro, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Kel'el Ware and Kasparas Jakucionis to Milwaukee to acquire Antetokounmpo and Bobby Portis.

Herro spent his Miami career as a high-volume scorer operating alongside other options. He arrives in Milwaukee as the clearest primary creator on the roster, on a team that just lost the player who had consumed the largest usage share in the league at his position for the better part of a decade.

The fantasy math is straightforward. Possessions that Antetokounmpo used are now available, and Herro is the player most equipped to take them. Expect a jump in points and assists, with the usual caveat that higher usage almost always comes with slightly worse efficiency. He is being drafted meaningfully earlier than he was in July and the movement is justified.

Reed Sheppard, Houston

Sheppard's case is the cleanest role-growth argument on the board. His shooting efficiency has been elite from the moment he entered the league, and the expansion of his Houston role is the piece that converts that efficiency into fantasy production.

Efficient shooters with growing minutes are the most reliable ADP risers in any season, because the two inputs multiply rather than add. A player who shoots well on eight attempts is a specialist. The same player on fifteen attempts is a weekly contributor across points, threes and percentages.

The risk with Sheppard is the same risk with every young player on a deep roster: the minutes have to actually materialize. Watch what Houston's staff says at media day about the starting backcourt.

Cooper Flagg, Dallas

Flagg has not looked like a rookie, and the consensus on him has moved accordingly. At 19 he is already producing across categories rather than in one, which is the profile that makes a young player valuable in fantasy rather than merely interesting.

Multi-category rookies are rare and they are disproportionately valuable in nine-category leagues because they fill holes that specialists cannot. A rookie who scores is a bench piece. A rookie who scores, rebounds, and contributes defensive stats is a starter.

The caution on Flagg is the same as on every rookie: the variance is enormous, the minutes can fluctuate with matchups, and the workload management on a young player is entirely at the coaching staff's discretion. Draft him where the upside justifies it, not where the hype does.

The rest of the risers

**Victor Wembanyama** is not a riser in the conventional sense because he was already near the top of every board, but the shape of his production keeps expanding. Points, rebounds and blocks were always there; the playmaking has been added, and the usage keeps climbing. In category leagues he is the most valuable single asset in the game because he wins blocks by himself.

**Jalen Williams** gained from a late-season role expansion that included more on-ball responsibility. More ball-handling means more assists, and his scoring efficiency has held up as the volume has grown. He is the kind of player who gets drafted a round later than his production warrants because he does not have a signature category.

**Bennedict Mathurin** signed a two-year deal in New Orleans and the expectation is a usage increase. Mathurin's fantasy profile has always been scoring-first with limited peripheral contribution, so the value case depends entirely on volume. A larger role in a new situation is exactly what that profile needs.

**AJ Dybantsa** is the rookie name climbing on projected role rather than on anything he has done in an NBA game. Treat rookie ADP movement in September as speculation until camp confirms it.

The Verdexed model take

The systematic edge in September fantasy drafts is not in identifying the risers. Everyone has read the same articles. The edge is in recognizing that the market overcorrects on usage stories and undercorrects on minutes stories.

Usage narratives are easy to tell. A star leaves, somebody inherits his shots, and the story writes itself. That story gets priced fast, and by late September a player like Herro is often drafted at or slightly past his fair value because the entire market has processed the same logic.

Minutes stories are harder to tell and therefore stay cheap. A player who goes from 24 minutes to 31 minutes with an unchanged role gains roughly 30 percent in every counting category, which is a larger fantasy gain than most usage bumps produce. Nobody writes about it because there is no narrative attached.

Our approach heading into camp is to fade the most-discussed usage risers by a round and to target players whose minutes are likely to grow because of a departure, an injury ahead of them on the depth chart, or a coaching change. The information that reveals those situations comes out at media day and in the first week of camp, not in August projection articles.

What to do in your draft

Draft the risers, but do not reach for them. If Herro or Sheppard falls to you at the price the board was setting in August, take it. If you have to pay a round of premium for the story, let someone else.

Wait on rookies. September rookie ADP is the least reliable data on any board, and the players who matter in fantasy typically become obvious in November rather than in October.

Prioritize category scarcity over raw production. Blocks and steals are the categories that decide head-to-head matchups, and the pool of players who supply them is much smaller than the pool of players who score.

And hold your draft after media day if you can. One week of camp reporting is worth more than three months of projections.