Fantasy Basketball Rankings: DraftKings 2024 Best Ball Center Rankings 1-15

Best ball, best sportsbook, best time of the year. Welcome to NBA Best Ball on DraftKings.

This format gives players a chance to draft a fantasy basketball team for a season-long competition that requires no active in-season management. Each week your highest scoring players are automatically slotted into your starting lineup and their scores will count towards your fantasy point total.

You can find all the details, scoring, and rules for this format in Stan Son’s overview post along with links to the rest of our season preview content.

I have ranked my top 15 centers for the 2024 DraftKings NBA Best Ball season.

We’ll be providing additional Best Ball content as the season progresses. Good luck!

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1. Nikola Jokic, Denver Nuggets

As the undisputed king of fantasy basketball over the last three seasons, Jokic is showing no signs of slowing down. After an impressive summer Olympics campaign with Serbia resulting in a silver medal, Jokic probably didn’t get much time to rest during this off-season before the 2024-25 season gets underway. Do I care? Absolutely not. Jokic is a basketball machine who will be looking to lead his team to another top seed within the stacked western conference. It won’t be easy; running mate Jamal Murray is not in his best form (this is an understatement) and if Jokic doesn’t have a reliable second option on his team, he will have to drag this team into the postseason by himself.

It’s hard to envision a world in which Jokic fails to average at least 55 fantasy points this season. Something would have to go cataclysmically wrong. All that being said, Joel Embiid is going to be the higher upside pick with significantly more risk. Do you think 5% more upside is worth 50% more risk? This math isn’t exact, but I think not.

One trend I enjoy monitoring is Jokic’s FG% by year. In the 22-23 season, he shot an unbelievable 63.2% from the field on 14.8 attempts a game while nailing 38.3% of his shots from beyond the arc. In the 23-24 season, that FG% went down to a meager 58.3%, a natural result of taking almost 18 shots per game. I have no doubt that the best player in the NBA will be able to sustain his elite efficiency this upcoming season. He’s also played fewer than 70 games only once in his NBA career.

3. Alperen Sengun, Houston Rockets

Sengun is about one year away from being a perennial first round pick. Befitting his team’s name, the young Turkish star ended his third season with career-highs in PPG, RPG, APG, and SPG. The Houston offense will run through Sengun in nearly every possession next season as evidenced by his usage rate of 27% last season compared to the low 20’s in his first two seasons under Stephen Silas. He’s a crafty passer who plays the low-post game with drop steps and agile spin moves that are typically difficult for 6’11 players. His game can still evolve. His three point shooting leaves much to be desired; this is almost a requirement of being an elite big man in today’s NBA. His defense has often been called into question, but hey, we’re talkin’ fantasy basketball and we only care about steals and blocks, which aren’t always correlated with real-life defensive ability.

Sengun’s ceiling is still unknown. But in this case, uncertainty should not invite room for debate. You don’t get called a “baby Nikola Jokic” for nothing, and while asecending to the level of Jokic – indisputably an all-time great – is unlikely, he should still be a perennial All-Star talent who’s rounding into form at just 22 years old.

This year’s Houston squad features tons of young talent like Amen Thompson, Jalen Green, Jabari Smith Jr., Tari Eason, and recent number three draft pick sharpshooter Reed Sheppard. They also have defensive-minded veterans like Fred VanVleet and Dillon Brooks on the court steering Ime Udoka’s defensive ship. Something’s brewing in Houston.

14. Naz Reid, Minnesota Timberwolves

Reid feels a bit underpriced to me. He’s coming off a strong 6MOTY campaign in which he averaged 13.5 PPG with 5.2 RPG while shooting 47.7% FG and 41.4% from 3. His precision from beyond the arc is a career-high on a career-high five attempts per game. His new found ability to stretch the floor paid dividends for the Timberwolves last season and allowed Minnesota to consistently field two big men at any point during the game, resulting in a league-best defensive rating of 108.4.

Reid is only 25. While he doesn’t offer the starry ceiling of players like Jalen Duren, Evan Mobley, or Myles Turner, he should be an integral part of the Wolves’ rotation this season and is certainly bang for your buck at his price point. He’s currently ranked at 107 and has a DK ADP of 106.8. We have reason to be more bullish on Reid’s outlook this season than a triple digit ADP.

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I am a promoter at DraftKings and am also an avid fan and user and may sometimes play on my personal account in the games that I offer advice on. Although I have expressed my personal view on the games and strategies above, they do not necessarily reflect the view(s) of DraftKings and do not constitute a representation that any particular strategy will guarantee success. All customers should use their own skill and judgment in building lineups. I may also deploy different players and strategies than what I recommend above. I am not an employee of DraftKings and do not have access to any non-public information.