Fantasy Basketball Centers for 2024: Targets and Fades

Nailing fantasy basketball centers for 2024 will be, as it always is, a key differentiator between the contenders and the teams that struggle.

Most leagues only require one starting center, similar to the tight end position in fantasy football. And while having an elite option at a onesie position like C or TE separates a team, I’d argue it’s far more vital in basketball.

We’re seeing a depressing runout for the TE position in fantasy football through the first few weeks of the 2024 season, really leveling the playing field at the position. If you’re struggling at the position, you can eat it knowing that most of your leaguemates are in a similar position.

In fantasy basketball, the opportunity cost of punting the center position is far too stark.

Let’s make sure that won’t be an issue for you in 2024.

Note: ADP via ESPN Live Draft Trends and Yahoo Live Average Draft Position as of Oct. 12

Top Fantasy Basketball Centers for 2024

I shouldn’t have to convince you that Nikola Jokic and Joel Embiid are two elite anchors for your team in the first round. Hell, I even hesitated including Victor Wembanyama (more below).

But the fact of the matter is that Wembanyama is the optimal target in any draft strategy this season. So what follows is my reasoning as to why he, along with a pair of other centers, highlights my top targets at the center position for 2024.

Victor Wembanyama | C | San Antonio Spurs

ESPN ADP: 3.6 (C2)
Yahoo ADP: 1.8 (C1)

Wembanyama is one of the first four players off the board in the vast majority of drafts this season, and if you have the chance to take him in Round 1, you do it, regardless of pick.

Very rarely do players come around with the ability to singlehandedly win you an entire statistical category on a weekly basis, but that’s exactly what he does with blocks. His 3.6 blocks per game led the NBA last season, despite his 29.7 minutes per game, ranking 101st. He swatted at least six blocks in a game 12 separate times, with eight of those games going for seven or more. Category-winning.

Wembanyama played in 71 games last season, and once his loose minutes restriction started to increase we really saw the statistical domination that we were hoping for (per Basketball Reference):

Highlighted on the right-hand side of the table, Wembanyama showed true statistical domination when he was on the court — but more specifically when he started playing starter-level minutes.

The five meaningless games in April are especially notable, as he averaged north of 35 minutes per game. In those games, he averaged 25.0 points, 12.8 rebounds, and 6.8 assists per game. This was along with 28 blocks in five games (5.6 per game). He also shot 75% or better from the stripe in all but two months out of the season, while averaging 1.8 3PM per game across the entire season.

It’s safe to assume that Wembanyama won’t average north of 35 minutes per game this season, but there’s a non-zero chance that it happens. Even if it doesn’t, Wembanyama’s production and progression throughout the season last year coupled with the expectation that he takes another leap this season (he’s the betting favorite for both Defensive Player of the Year and Most Improved Player) make him the most coveted asset in all of fantasy basketball.

Alperen Sengun | C | Houston Rockets

ESPN ADP: 29.5 (C8)
Yahoo ADP: 29.3 (C9)

If you don’t have the luxury of snagging Wembanyama, or even one of the other first-round centers (Jokic, Embiid, Anthony Davis) to anchor your lineup, Alperen Sengun is my next choice.

Reminiscent of a Jokic-lite type of player, Sengun enjoyed his first true breakout in 2023-24.

Finishing third in Most Improved Player voting, Sengun’s third season saw him post career-highs in points (21.1), rebounds (9.3), assists (5.0), steals (1.2) and minutes per game (32.5). He shot above 53% from the field despite almost a five-shot increase in FGA per game (15.6) and also posted 29 double-doubles and two triple-doubles across his 63 games. This, off the bat, locks in an incredible floor-ceiling combination across numerous categories from your onesie position.

With the Rockets’ young core another year more experienced and Sengun as a centerpiece (27.0% usage rate), we should continue to see gaudy stat lines consistently. While his floor/ceiling combination is lower than the likes of other similar center archetypes like Domantas Sabonis or Jokic, that reality is baked into his cost, but almost too severely.

As the eighth or ninth center off the board, there’s a legitimate shot that Sengun returns early second-round production for a massive discount this season.

Jalen Duren | C | DET

ESPN ADP: 104.8 (C22)
Yahoo ADP: 99.0 (C31)

If you’re catching onto the theme here, I want to do what I can to lock down the center position early in my drafts this season. If I am going to wait at the position past the first handful of rounds, Jalen Duren is my preferred mid- to late-round target. He doesn’t come with the statistical versatility that Wembanyama and Sengun do, but his utter domination on the boards and consistency across scoring and efficiency categories make him an ideal option at his cost.

Still only 21 years old, Duren took a significant leap across the board in his sophomore season:

2023-24: 9.1 points, 8.9 rebounds, 64.8% FG%, 61.1% FT%, 24.9 minutes per game
2022-23: 13.8 points, 11.6 rebounds, 61.9% FG%, 79.0% FT%, 29.1 minutes per game

He utterly dominated the glass, posting 44 double-doubles in 61 games while logging at least 15 rebounds on 14 separate occasions, and made a noticeable improvement at the free-throw line with his 79% clip, something that is often a negative for centers in fantasy basketball.

Duren should continue to see around 30 minutes per game this season with Isaiah Stewart shifting to the bench as his backup while Tobias Harris slots in at the four. While this may knock his scoring upside a bit, there’s a case to be made that it actually increases his rebounding ceiling even more.

You’ll have to strategically plan for the possibility that Duren could miss games down the stretch given how bad the Pistons are, but very few, if any, players in his ADP range provide single-category domination in the fashion that Duren does.

Sleeper

Ivica Zubac | C | Los Angeles Clippers

ESPN ADP: 136.3 (C37)
Yahoo ADP: 98.0 (C30)

You could realistically put Duren in the sleeper section considering where his ADP falls, but Ivica Zubac feels like a massive bargain in ESPN leagues, specifically.

Zubac’s eighth year in the league proved to be his most productive, as he posted a career-high in points per game (11.7) while maintaining rewarding production elsewhere, posting 9.2 rebounds and 1.2 blocks while shooting 64.9% from the field and 72.3% from the stripe, all while playing only 26.4 minutes per game.

While he’s likely always going to be a bit capped from a minutes perspective, he’s facing very little competition at the center position, with Mo Bamba being the only other center on the roster. This could vault Zubac closer to the 30-minute threshold, which proved to be a difference-maker for him last season.

In 15 games seeing between 30 and 39 minutes last season, Zubac averaged 15.1 points and 11.2 rebounds per game. Now, with little positional competition, no more Paul George, and a Kawhi Leonard who has yet to practice this preseason, Zubac could not only be looking at more playing time but a more prominent role on offense, too. It doesn’t help that he’s playing in an offense run by one of the best pick-and-roll guards in basketball, James Harden, either.

He’s a great bet at his ADP on both sites, but he specifically sticks out as a massive steal in ESPN leagues.

Breakout

Dereck Lively | C | Dallas Mavericks

ESPN ADP: 131.5 (SG46)
Yahoo ADP: 120.6 (SG44)

Lively should step into the 2024-25 NBA season as the unquestioned starting center for a Mavs team set on contention after playing only 55 games in his rookie season (42 starts).

In those 55 games, however, his production wasn’t all that different whether he started or not. He averaged 8.6 points, 7.1 rebounds, and 24.7 minutes per game as a starter compared to 9.4 points and 6.1 rebounds in 13 games as a reserve. I understand that these are far from eye-popping, but the upside was certainly on display. In 10 games last season where Lively saw between 30 and 39 minutes, he averaged 14.2 points, 11.6 rebounds, and 1.6 blocks while logging a +13.1 plus/minus.

Not only is this production great for fantasy basketball at his price, but it was clearly a positive for the Mavs. His last preseason game only added fuel to the breakout fire, as Lively posted a 12/3/2 stat line with a pair of steals in only 14 minutes while showing eerie similarities to a versatile big from Greece (watch him take it up the court and hit a spin-move in the lane) …

Dereck Lively has evolved pic.twitter.com/VvUYbuQmwt
— NBACentral (@TheDunkCentral) October 8, 2024

His on-court development, especially this preseason, may steam his price up, but he has all the potential in the world to greatly outperform his draft-day cost.

Bust

Brook Lopez | C | Milwaukee Bucks

ESPN ADP: 105.8 (C24)
Yahoo ADP: 74.1 (C21)

As much as I love Brook Lopez, he just isn’t the fantasy basketball asset he used to be entering his age-36 season. He’s still providing solid production in terms of efficiency and has been mostly durable outside of three seasons ago where he missed the majority of the season.

That said, his cost, specifically on Yahoo, is simply too rich for a center who averaged under 6.0 rebounds per game last season but wasn’t buoying his production with elite scoring or domination in another category (though 2.4 blocks per game gets the job done).

A full offseason with Damian Lillard on the team may certainly improve performance across the board, but this offense is centered around Lillard and Giannis Antetokounmpo, with Lopez as the fourth option on offense at best. Plus, given how effective Giannis has been at the five, I wouldn’t be surprised to see more small-ball lineups where the Bucks look to push the pace, thus running Lopez off the court.

I’m more inclined to pul the trigger on ESPN where he could be a viable backup center, but on Yahoo I’d much rather target Lively nearly 50 picks later.

Players Mentioned in this Article