Yahoo Sports is giving fans yet another way to play fantasy basketball this season with the launch of Perfect 5, a free-to-play game connected to each week's marquee NBA on Prime matchups. Designed to complement season-long fantasy basketball, the new format features weekly roster building and scoring. Specifically:
Fans pick five players from the games featured in each week's NBA on Prime doubleheader.
Each player has a salary between $1 to $5. Fans have a $15 budget to build their five-player roster.
Players earn fantasy points in categories like points, rebounds, assists, steals, blocks, and 3-pointers made.
The objective: build a roster that outscores the competition.
Friday's Perfect 5 board is two games: Knicks at Celtics at 4:00 PM ET and Rockets at Spurs at 6:30 PM ET. Here's who I picked with my $15 and why.
Victor Wembanyama – C, San Antonio Spurs – ($5, 69% picked)
Wemby shot 1-of-13 in San Antonio's loss to OKC, the worst shooting night of his career. Still, he finished with 12 points, 13 rebounds and 6 blocks. He gets Houston at home, and while it's one of the league's most physically imposing teams, Wemby has a steady track record against the Rockets. In 11 regular-season contests against them, Wemby is averaging 19 points, 11.5 rebounds, 2.6 assists and 4.3 stocks per game. He's the highest rostered player, but he also has the highest projection on the board at 51.17 fantasy points. I'm buying the bounce back.
Jayson Tatum – PF, Boston Celtics – ($5, 11% picked)
Tatum went 6-of-23 from the field in Boston's loss at Detroit on Opening Night, but even though the shot wasn't falling, Tatum still dished out 11 assists. Now he faces the Knicks, a team he's averaged 24-7-4 against with more than a steal a game in his career. Despite the underwhelming debut, Tatum rarely has back-to-back sub-30% FG shooting performances in regular-season games. He'll come out aggressive and hopefully get to the rim more to balance out the contested-shot-taking cycle he often falls into. He projects at 42.23 fantasy points, and I like that only 11% of the field is starting him.
Fred VanVleet – PG, Houston Rockets – ($2, 48% picked)
Wednesday's contest was his first game action since tearing his ACL, which cost him the entire 2025-26 season. Houston's floor general got off to a good start, scoring 6 points, 11 assists, 3 steals and a block in 29 minutes. RotoWire projects him for 30 minutes against San Antonio, with a fantasy score of 26.86 for $2; you're getting a $3 salary for a dollar less.
Mitchell Robinson – C, Boston Celtics – ($2, 16% picked)
Revenge spot. Robinson goes against his former team after playing 18 minutes in Boston's opener (4 points, 3 rebounds, 2 blocks). He projects at 21.86 with 8.8 rebounds and 1.2 blocks, and RotoWire has him at 22 minutes. At a $2 salary, he's the rebounds-and-stocks anchor that lets me roster Wemby and Tatum. He tweaked his ankle in the opener, but he looks fine and should start on Friday night.
Andre Drummond – C, New York Knicks – ($1, 41% picked)
He grabbed 14 boards in 24 minutes in the Knicks' opening loss to Philly, while Karl-Anthony Towns got into his usual foul trouble situation. I'm banking on more foul trouble against Boston. He projects at 10.91 fantasy points, one of the best $1 salaries on the board. Don't expect another double-double off the bench, but the effort from Tuesday's contest should carry over well against a frontcourt of Mitchell Robinson and Neemias Queta.
How close is that to the max?
I ran every legal $15 lineup in the pool, about 2.1 million of them. The top Yahoo projection is 159.5 points: Wembanyama, Amen Thompson, Fred VanVleet, Mitchell Robinson and Neemias Queta. Mine projects at 153.03, so I'm only about 6.5 points short.
RotoWire's daily projections like it even more. Ran through the Yahoo points formula, my five comes out to 160.3 on the base projection, with a 58.3 floor and a 298.4 ceiling. Those floor and ceiling numbers are outer bounds, since each stat is set at its own best or worst case, so real results will land well inside them. The minutes are the key: Wemby and Tatum project at 32 and 33, VanVleet at 30, Robinson at 22 and Drummond at 16 (up to 22 if Towns gets into foul trouble).
You can start building your Perfect 5 roster for Friday’s slate now, including going up against me in my Perfect 5 group. Good luck!
In Perfect 5, fans compete against the broader Yahoo Fantasy community. Those who finish in the top five each week earn points to use in the new Yahoo Sports Shop. In addition, fans can organize private groups to compete directly with friends, or play against likeminded fans in public groups organized by NBA team allegiances. Perfect 5 also features season-long standings to reward fans who build the best rosters week in and week out.