The best fantasy basketball advice you’ve never heard
December 16th, 2010
There are a number of tools out there to help the serious fantasy basketball player. The Rotoworld Season Pass is helpful. Brian McKitish’s weekly ESPN player rankings are very useful. John Hollinger does a very good job of spotting upcoming talent (e.g., Love, Conley, and Hibbert). Basketball Monster’s player rankings are invaluable.
What is missing, however, is a system that ties it all together and provides dollar values to assist with trading. The above player values address this problem. I have been playing fantasy basketball for 20 years. I developed a system similar to Basketball Monster’s to calculate player values several years ago. What I have done with the above dollar values is carefully integrated the pure numerical rankings from Basketball Monster with my extensive knowledge of fantasy basketball (with assists from voraciously reading Rotoworld and ESPN) to generate player rankings with dollar values.
The dollar values can be used to generate trades. For example, what is a fair offer for Chris Paul. A look at the player values reveals that Horford ($35) and Rondo ($33) for Paul ($70) is likely a fair trade.
Next week I will update the list and provide the rationale for some of the more surprising rankings. I should be very clear and note that the list is for roto leagues only. It assumes that you are a very active owner and frequently picking up players from the waiver wire. The reason that only the top 100 players are ranked is that they are the only ones with value. Typically, if you are an active owner, you are able to pick up players from the waiver-wire who can provide you with production for a few games over and above what you would get from holding onto the player ranked #101. Best of luck with your season and please feel free to share feedback with me regarding the rankings.
12-14-10 Player Values
1. Paul, C.: $70 51. Martin, K.: $15
2. Durant, K.: $65 52. Gordon, E.: $15
3. Curry, S.: $58 53. Holiday, J.: $15
4. Nowitzki, D.: $53 54. Allen, R.: $14
5. Gasol, P.: $51 55. Boozer, C.: $14
6. Westbrook, M.: $51 56. Jennings: $14
7. Williams, D.: $50 57. Harris, D.: $13
8. James, L.: $49 58. McGee, J.: $13
9. Smith, J.: $48 59. Scola, L.: $13
10. Bryant, K.: $47 60. Gallinari, D.: $12
11. Stoudemire, A.: $45 61. Odom, L.: $11
12. Rose, D.: $43 62. Brand, E.: $11
13. Ginobli, M.: $40 63. Griffin, B.: $11
14. Felton, R.: $40 64. Arenas, $10
15. Love, K.: $40 65. Roy, B.: $10
16. Granger, D.: $39 66. Aldridge, L.: $10
17. Ellis, M.: $38 67. Camby, M.: $10
18. Horford, A.: $35 68. Williams, M.: $10
19. Howard, D.: $35 69. Collison, D.: $9
20. Rondo, R.: $33 70. Blatche, A.: $9
21. Anthony, C.: $33 71. Randolph, Z.: $9
22. Wade, D.: $32 72. Beasley, M.: $8
23. Nash, S.: $31 73. Afflalo, A.: $8
24. Gay, R.: $31 74. Johnson, J.: $8
25. Wall, J.: $30 75. Chandler, W.:$8
76. Kidd, J.: $30 76. Augustin, D.: $7
27. Conley, M.: $28 77. Bogut, A.: $7
28. Wallace, G.: $28 78. Kirilenko, A.: $7
29. Lopez, B.: $28 79. Brooks, A.: $7
30. Pierce, P.: $27 80. Parker, T.: $7
31. Lee, D.: $27 81. Terry, J.: $6
32. Hibbert, R.: $27 82. Nelson, J.: $6
33. Jackson, S.: $25 83. Bynum, A.: $5
34. Iguodala, A.: $25 84. Stuckey, R.: $5
35. Evans, T.: $24 85. Lewis, R.: $5
36. Noah, J.: $24 86. Carter, V.: $5
37. Garnett, K.: $24 87. Deng, L.: $4
38. Millsap, P.: $24 88. Kaman, C.: $4
39. Richardson, J.: $23 89. Ibaka, S.: $3
40. Gasol, M.: $22 90. Frye, C.: $3
41. Duncan, T.: $21 91. Mayo, O.: $3
42. West, D.: $21 92. Ariza, T.: $2
43. Billups, C.: $21 93. Diaw, B.: $2
44. Jefferson, A.: $20 94. Thomas, T.: $2
45. Bargnani, A.: $19 95. Calderon, J.: $2
46. Nene: $18 96. Johnson, A.: $2
47. Bosh, C.: $18 97. Fields, L.: $2
48. Wright, D.: $17 98. Milicic, D.: $1
49. Miller, A.: $16 99. Matthews, W.: $1
50. Green, J.: $16 100. Davis, B.: $1
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How to be a loser in real life and a winner in the pretend world…
March 4th, 2009
You can finally breathe. The trading deadline for the NBA has passed. Your league’s trading deadline is over. Heck, even Marbury has already signed with the Celtics. The fantasy basketball season is 3/4ths over and you can finally relax. All you’ve got to do now is keep an active line up going for your team and you are golden, right? Wrong! What follows is a guide to alienating your wife, ignoring your children, and winning your fantasy basketball league. Out of pure laziness, the guide will be focused on ESPN leagues, but the principles apply to other leagues as well.
During the draft and the first half of the season, the goal is obtain the most valuable players possible, while ignoring your category needs. Starting at the midway point of the season and through 2/3rds of the season, you want to address the category needs of your team. Additionally, you want to decide how much beta you want your team to carry for the last third of the season. Beta is a statistical term that refers to variance. If your team is winning and projected to finish in first place, you would like to decrease your team’s beta (e.g., trade players who are risky, but have upside like Camby for solid players whose output does not vary much, like Nowitzki). Alternatively, if your team is not projected to win, you may want to increase your beta by trading solid players for risky players with more upside. Key to your trades is trying to make sure that you are acquiring players who have something to play for in March and April (like Lebron, Paul, and Nowitzki) and avoiding those players who have nothing to play for in the spring (like Bosh and Butler).
Let’s say that you have followed my advice and you are now at the 75% mark of the season. At this point, the categories become dominant. I recommend that you do the following on a daily basis:
1. Review the Rotoworld news updates each night. Review the box scores for all of the games before you go to bed. In particular, look for injuries and the players who take their place. Care more about minutes and a solidly defined role rather than a hot shooting night by a player.
2. Review the ESPN’s Daily Dime and Truehoop each morning. If you are going to do well in fantasy basketball, it is essential that you know the NBA, not just fantasy, extremely well.
3. Each morning, review the standings for your leagues. Not only that, but also go through each category (e.g., steals, points, etc) and sort the category so that it is ranked from top to bottom. This is how you know which categories you need to focus on to win. Don’t worry about whether you are first or last in a category. Focus only on those categories in which you are close to your competitors. Thus, if you are near the bottom in assists, but not close to gaining or losing ground in the category, don’t worry about the category. In contrast, if you and several other teams are separated by only a few steals in that category, make sure that you are starting players who are going to get you thefts.
4. Once you know your category needs, you will know the type of players that you need to pick up for your leagues. Obviously if a solid player becomes available, pick them up right away. That is a fairly rare event. Instead, what you want to focus on are the players who are playing well of late. For ESPN leagues, you find this out by going to the Add Player page and sorting the free agents by PR15. That will show you who is playing best of late. The cutoff for a worthwhile player is 3 (that is the value for the 100th most valuable player, generally speaking). Anyone lower than a 3 is usually not worth picking up.
5. On a weekly basis, you will want to go to basketballmonster.com . Set the parameters up so that you get a printout of the top 100 players for the season, past 30 days, and past 15 days. This way you can be sure that you are continuing to keep the best playing ballers on your team.
6. Check highposts.com regularly on the off-chance that POE has succeeding into haranguing me into writing another article.
Follow these tips religiously and three things are guaranteed: 1. Your relationships in the real world will suffer; 2. You will grow to hate Kaman and Boozer for tying up precious space on your roster; 3. Your team will finish as high as is possible in your league.
There you have it! You too can become a winner in the pretend world and a loser in the real world. Your cheesy ESPN fantasy basketball league champion shirt awaits you!
Introducing Don No Soul Simmons our resident Fantasy Guru
February 7th, 2009
I thought I would start my articles on fantasy basketball by sharing how I tend to value players. First, I use a statistical system that generates dollar values for players. The system is similar to the one used by ESPN (Player rater) and basketballmonster.com . I will be reviewing dollar values as they relate to trades in a later article.
I also look at other attributes when trying to decide who to acquire. A primary consideration is the degree to which the player is injury-prone. Thus, I tend to avoid T-mac, Brand, B. Davis, Bosh, D. Wade and so forth. Instead, I try to acquire players who are rarely injured like LeBron, Nowitzki, Duncan, Jamison, and Billups.
I tend to be active on the waiver-wire. When I have 13 decent players on my team, it hinders the degree to which I can pick up players off of waivers. Thus, I tend to overpay for the best players. This has the benefit of giving me good keepers for future years, acquiring players who tend to be more reliable and less injury-prone, and clearing up my roster so that I can be active on the waiver-wire. It also has the benefit of flipping out the less stable members of my leagues and helping to generate insightful bulletin board chatter.
I try to obtain players who have clearly established roles on their teams and get plenty of minutes. I love players who get lots of minutes and hate those with erratic minutes. Thus, I like acquiring guys like Joe Johnson, Durant, Duhon, Iguodala, and Bosh. I hate players with erratic minutes like Tyrus Thomas, JR Smith, and most players on Golden State.
I try to pick players from up-tempo teams like the Knicks and avoid slow-tempo teams like Detroit. Thus, I had a hunch Duhon would be valuable this year and that Iverson would be terrible in Detroit.
These are just a few of the criteria I use when judging players. I look forward to sharing more strategies with you in the future.
Don "No Soul" Simmons
For more on ‘No Soul’ check out his bio on the Our Squad page and can be reached at NoSoul@TheHighPosts.com
