The NBA’s ‘silly season’ is upon us — here’s how fantasy basketball managers should maneuver it

Welcome to silly season. That’s what fantasy basketball heads call this absurd stretch of the NBA calendar, where it appears nine-ish teams have decided — with TWO months left in the regular season — that it’s in their best interests to bench and load-manage their best players — and to lose as many games as possible.

That’s right: real NBA organizations colluding not to compete.

Advertisement

Much of the “strategy” stems from the chance to land a superstar in a highly anticipated 2026 draft class. It’s definitely stacked — Darryn Peterson, Cameron Boozer, A.J. Dybantsa, Caleb Wilson, Mikal Brown Jr., Kingston Flemings and more have franchises waving the white flag in February instead of waiting until late March, as they used to.

But here’s the thing: silly season isn’t nearly as bad as everyone thinks. Yeah, some veterans will get shut down and some minutes will be unpredictable. But early tanking also creates a massive opportunity for waiver wire hunting — if you know where to look.

How silly season actually works

When teams enter silly season mode, you start seeing the random DNPs, late scratches for “illness,” managed workloads and late-season role reductions for vets in favor of giving younger players more playing time. Lauri Markkanen, for example, is a known silly-season commodity. He was on the wrong side of a Jazz tank job last season. A solid early-to-mid round pick who most thought would be unscathed by the All-Star break is already experiencing ridiculous, silly season theatrics. Not only has he been load-managed since January, but now he’s catching DNPs, plus getting benched in the fourth quarter of games. Mind-blowing stuff.

Advertisement

There’s no penalty for teams at the league level to stop this non-competitive nonsense, and unfortunately for fantasy managers and fans, we’re left to deal with it. Plenty of others will face a similar fate as Markkanen’s after the All-Star break, so let me tell you how I’d handle it.

Getting ahead of the curve

The obvious move is to sell high on assets in tanking situations that you think are at risk for being load-managed from Week 18 through the fantasy…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/fantasy/article/the-nbas-silly-season-is-upon-us–heres-how-fantasy-basketball-managers-should-maneuver-it-153232164.html

Author : Dan Titus

Publish date : 2026-02-12 15:32:00

Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.