NBA STATS FROM A FANTASY PERSPECTIVE July 17, 1999   In the 1998-1999 season: For every rebound there were 2.2 points scored For every assist there were 4.4 points scored For every steal there were 11.0 points scored For every block there were 18.4 points scored For every trey there were 20.7 points scored The point is the most commonly occurring NBA statistic. There are many players who can score in double digits but do not contribute much beyond that. Examples are Rik Smits, Jerry Stackhouse, Larry Johnson, Reggie Miller, Corliss Williamson, Allan Houston, and Glen Rice. An inexperienced fantasy owner tends to over value a player whose main asset is scoring. In a rotisserie system, a player who scores by the trey can somewhat compensate for lack of output in non-scoring categories since the trey is a less frequent stat and therefore carries more value. The least frequent non-scoring category is the block. For every block there are roughly 18 points scored. In a rotisserie scoring system the occurrence of a block could be considered to be 18 times more valuable than the occurrence of a single point. In the Small World Hoops fantasy league, which is not rotisserie, a block is equal to 2.5 fantasy points. It can be argued that this system does not give due credit to the value of that stat and therefore shot blockers are not quite as important in that type of 'equivalent point system' as they would be in a rotisserie league. There are players who can be considered shot blocking specialists who have good fantasy value despite not scoring very much. Examples are Shawn Bradley, Ben Wallace, and Marcus Camby. If an owner does not realize the true value of their shot blocking they could be passing up a productive fantasy player. Normally it takes a rotisserie system to give these specialists extra value since the equivalent point systems rarely weight the block proportionally to its true frequency. The risk in taking a specialist is making his contributions meaningless if you already have plenty of output from other players for that category. When I compile rotisserie rankings I attempt give the proper weight to a player's stats in each category of a given scoring system in order to most accurately determine that players customized fantasy value. To roughly evaluate players from an overall perspective it is good to have a feel for what a typical per game output is for a player in all the main categories. I took the 120 players who averaged the most minutes played per game last season and determined their average output for 8 common categories. Just for comparison I listed the same value from the previous season in parentheses. Points: 14.3 in 1998-99 (15.2 in 1997-98) Rebounds: 5.99 (6.20) Assists: 3.30 (3.40) Steals: 1.20 (1.18) Blocks .71 (.75) Treys: 0.66 (0.57) Free Throws: 3.07 (3.20) FG%: 44.1% (46.1%) If you can get a player who can exceed the average in four or five of these categories you have got someone who can make a substantial contribution to your team. Players who exceed the averages in 6 or more categories are fantasy stars. A player's value for a particular category can be estimated by how many times he can exceed an typical value. For example, last season Tony Battie averaged 1.4 blocks per game which is roughly twice the number of a typical player. For someone to have a similar impact in the point category they would need to average twice the typical number of 14.3 ppg or 28.6 ppg. From this perspective the value of Battie's shot blocking is illustrated. When scoring systems are more complicated with weighting factors and multiple categories it is very difficult to project what the fantasy value of a player might be just by judgment. For a guy like Reggie Miller who scores with the trey and shoots a high free throw percentage his value in one system might be far lower than in another. For example a simple rotisserie system with points, rebounds, assist, blocks, and steals is not so good for Reggie since he is below average in four of the five categories. The player ratings developed in the HoopsKlyce Player Rating Report are customized to each league's scoring system. Factors are given to each player's projected stat output for each category to accurately represent the importance of the stat category in your league. These factors depend on whether you are in a rotisserie or equivalent point type of league as well as the number of categories in your league. The result may not be exactly right as no one will perfectly predict player rankings, but using a ranking based on some type of scientific method will most definitely maximize your chances of finishing first.   Previous Article Next Article Copyright © Hoops Klyce 2000 - All Rights Reserved Website Designed by Lelnet Failed to execute script '../cgi-local/ax.cgi': Win32 Error Code = 2