The 2024-25 NBA season in just over a month away, meaning fantasy basketball drafts and preparation will start soon.
In a recent fantasy basketball mock draft carried out by ESPN’s fantasy basketball experts, Houston Rockets’ center Alperen Sengun was selected with the No. 24 overall pick.
Experts selected players based on a 10-team, head-to-heading scoring style, with Joe Kaiser, Eric Moody, Michael Schwartz, Andre Snellings, Eric Karabell, Tom Carpenter, Matt Williams, Steve Alexander, Jim McCormick and Keith Lipscomb taking part in the exercise.
Snellings, a senior writer at ESPN, selected Sengun with the fourth selection in the third round, one pick ahead of Milwaukee Bucks guard Damian Lillard.
Sengun was the sixth center off the board in ESPN’s mock draft, following Nikola Jokic, Victor Wembanyama, Domantas Sabonis, Joel Embiid and Anthony Davis. Each of the aforementioned players was selected in the first 12 picks of the exercise.
Oklahoma City Thunder center Chet Holmgren was the next big man to be drafted with Lipscomb selecting the Rookie of the Year runner-up with the 30th pick.
Sengun’s placement in the mock draft comes after the 22-year-old averaged 21.1 points, 9.3 rebounds, five assists, and 1.2 steals per game in his third NBA season. Heading into 2024-25, Sengun seems poised for an even better performance behind another offseason of growth and improvement.
Additionally, Houston adding Reed Sheppard to the roster could help given Sengun a few more open looks with the Kentucky product’s playmaking skills.
Sengun is such a valuable fantasy basketball option because of his versatility. The skilled big man racks up solid scoring, rebounding and assist numbers in addition to his decent defensive statistics.
The only other Rockets’ player to be selected in the top 50 was Jalen Green, who was picked by Snellings with at No. 44 overall. Other Houston standouts to be selected were Fred VanVleet (No. 55), Amen Thompson (No. 74), Jabari Smith Jr. (No. 103) and Sheppard (No. 117).
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