The First Standings

A thought occurred to me as I was going over my rotisserie league statistics a few days ago, if the NBA were scored the same as a roto league which teams would be the best? Since the statistics used to score fantasy teams do matter in NBA games it would stand to reason that the best NBA teams would also be the best roto teams. I decided to see if that was true and compiled some the data from the season so far and scored it with some interesting results, but first some caveats.

1) I have no idea where this will lead or what it will be useful for. For now it is just a random curiosity but it could be interesting to show which teams have the best fantasy players in general, which teams without a obvious studs might be rich with sleepers, which teams provided the best environment for roto stats and of course it might just tell us something about being a good NBA team as well.

2) As of now very few games have been played and there is a great disparity between the statistics that can be accumulated in 9 games and those that can be accumulated in 6 or 7 games so the rankings might be even more ridiculous towards the beginning of the year than they will be all year long.

Now in honor of David Berri a chart.

NBA Roto League Standings 11/16/07

As you can see the first place team is Phoenix with 220 points or about 67 rotowins per season in overly simple the (Roto Points/Possible Roto Points)*82 formula I just came up with. Second is San Antonito with 210.5 or 63 rotowins. As you can see from the chart Phoenix is in the top 10 in every category except turnovers and San Antonio is in the top ten in every category, so both of these teams, traditionally thought of as being two of the best three teams in basketball for the past few years, are good roto teams too (as is Dallas who is in 5th right now) which is not surprising. The teams in last are not all that surprising either. Both New York and Chicago have been thought of as being dysfunctional this season and it shows in the roto standings. New York outright horrible with just 22 rotowins and are only above average in Field goal % and Turnovers (in which they are helped a lot by having played only 7 games to teams like Houston’s 9). Chicago is just as bad with 23 rotowins. Perhaps most troubling, for the real NBA, is that they are last in Field Goal % and in the bottom 10 in rebounding, not a formula for success.

So if the best and worst teams in this league don’t surprise then who does? The best and worst teams in the NBA: the Celtics have absolutely blown the doors off of everyone they’ve faced except for Toronto and make it look like no Boston team except the Bruins will lose for the rest of the calendar year but in roto they are sitting at 13th with 48 rotowins, not bad but in every other statistical measure this team is going bonkers. All I can say is that they too have played just 7 games and that their extraordinary field goal % and steal rates might be keeping them at 5th worst in the league in rebounding. The other surprise is Seattle who despite going 1-8 have racked up 52 rotowins, obviously they have played as many games as anybody in the league, and more than most teams, but the real key here is the pace that they play at. Anyone who has watched the Sonics knows that they are like the anti-Suns, they force you to play at a pace so fast that they have no chance of beating you (unless you are the Heat who simply couldn’t manage to score enough), this causes them to get more points, free throw attempts, 3’s, rebounds, steals, blocks and turnovers (which the Sonics are dead last in). So, we have already found that the Sonics, not known for their big fantasy studs (except Durant who, being a rookie, isn’t your typical stud) is a prime environment for roto points. If you have a chance trade for a player of about equal skill who plays for Seattle you should probably do it and if you are debating which guy to start one night always go with the guy on Seattle or who plays Seattle if possible.

Thanks for reading-
Dan

Hopefully I will be able to do this every Friday for the rest of the season so check here on Fridays. In the future I hope to explore a lot of other interesting stuff involving specific categories and teams so let me know if you’re interested in any particular facet of the data.

Tags: best teams, Bulls, Celtics, first post 07, Knicks, Sonics, Spurs, standings, Suns, worst teams