Hey guys,
Dreadfully sorry but I haven’t actually finished my two 15 page papers that are due today and tommorow I leave for christmas break so I won’t be updating this week or next. Check back in the new year though for new standings.
Again, sorry,
Dan
Hey guys,
So lets start off with the standings:
NBA ROTO LEAGUE STANDINGS 12-14
As you can see right off the bat Phoenix is still dominating in the roto league standings but Denver has fallen off the blistering pace that they were on last week. After my comment last week about Denver having more rebound than any other team despite being out-rebounded in their games made me wonder how the leaders of other categories are doing compared to their direct in-game competition. This should show even clearer which teams play style that suit Roto scoring. First, let’s look at three pointer made: Do the Magic, Warriors and Suns draw teams into shoot-outs? Well, if so their opponets aren’t hitting their shots because those teams are right in the middle of the pack for three point defense behind the truly bad like Washington, Toronto and Seattle.
Points would seem to make more sense as the amount of points one team scores directly effects the amount of possesions the other team gets and this proves to be somewhat true Phoenix, Golden State and Utah are near the top in both points scored and points allowed (though they are all behind the Sonics in points allowed). Rebounds would be another stat that would seem to be highly influnced by the type of game being played. Surely enough, the Sonics, who are the top rebounding team this week, are being out rebounded (with a rebounding rate of .495 which means they get slightly under 50% of rebounds) The Nuggets, Magic and Warriors are also all in the top 10 rebounding teams despite having rebounding rates below .500. Meanwhile, Boston, who looks like they can’t rebound at all from the roto standings, has the league’s best rebounding rate at .530. Boston even stays in the middle of the pack for rebounds per game but holds their opponets to the fewest rebounds of any team because so many fewer shots are missed in each Celtics game (Utah and Philly also do impressive jobs keeping opponets off the glass).
Finally I would like to note that there is an 9% difference between FT% against Denver (who somehow holds opponets to 69%) and Washington (who’s competitors sink 78% of their free throws). What is the deal with this? Are Washingtonians horrible at waving those white things behind the basket? Can Carmelo make free thows miss with his mind? Those are the only two rational solutions I could come up with.
Until Next Week,
Dan
Hey guys, Here are the second standings for if 9 category roto-league scoring was applied to the NBA:
NBA ROTO League Standings 12/7
First thing that I notice after looking at them is how much these standing resemble the actual NBA standings and John Hollinger’s new Playoff Odds tool. The top 16 teams in the Roto standings are 15 of the 16 teams that Hollinger’s tool thinks will get into the playoffs and the team that has the best chances of making it that isn’t in right now. Also, the Hawks are the eight best team in the east in the roto standings . So it is looking pretty good for roto scoring as being a trustworthy predictor of how good a team is. However, I would also like to see how this might apply to actual fantasy basketball. One of the best ways to do this is to look at specialist categories that your team is struggling in and see which NBA teams are dominating them because that will probably continue, and certain stats like threes and steals are born of coaching style. The Nuggets, Jazz, Warriors, Lakers and Celtics are the teams most likely to go for steals but the Nuggets, who lead the league, have an insane 7 players averaging at least 1 steal a game including Anthony Carter, Kenyon Martin, J.R. Smith and Eduardo Najera (at least 3 of which have to be available on your waiver wire). For threes the best teams are The Magic, Warriors, Raptors, Suns, and Grizzles. Of those teams Golden State is spreading it around the most with six guys averaging a three a game including Matt Barnes, Kelenna Azubuike and Mickael Pietrus (though he is hurt for the moment) , whereas the other teams in the top five get most of their threes from a couple of guys averaging 2-3 a game who already owned in most fantasy leagues. Another quick thing I’d like to point out: Even though the Nuggets are doing great in this league and have a ridiculous four categories won when no other team has more than one they are actually getting out rebounded despite leading the league in rebounds and give up the most steals and points in addition to getting the most of them (thought they are beating their opponets in those categories). Just goes to show you how much of an advantage teams that played 20 games over the teams they’ve played 2-4 more games than teams like the Celtics and Bulls.
Thanks for reading,
Dan
Standings will be up later today but I thought I’d look and see how well fantasy stats predicted last nights games since that would replicate Head to Head league’s smaller sample size and one on one matchups . At first, it seems to me like the much smaller sample size would make it less reliable but then again the fact that all the stats were made with a single basketball takes out things like the issue of pace. Last night’s first game was 90-89 Atlanta over theT’Wolves but in fantasy stats the Wolves won 5-4 with (it was a 4-4 tie in leagues that don’t count turnovers). However, even though it predicted the outcome wrong it did guess that it would be a very close game and if Atlanta had hit one more free thow or the Wolves one less (the final score was 78.6 to 78.4) or Joe Johnson’s buzzer beater rimmed out it would have been correct. The other two games were not nearly as close as the Nuggets easily beat the Mavs and the Blazers dispatched the Heat and in those games the fantasy score came down 6-3 in favor of the winner, though the Blazers did lose turnovers so it becomes 4-3 in 8-cat leagues. So this extremely small sample size seems to indicate that fantasy stats are a pretty good way to see how good a team is since it predicted two of three games correctly and predicted the third would be very close, which it was, even if it chose a different victor. Quickly though I thought I’d see how many “fantasy worthy” performances each team had to see if the winning team had more contributers or was carried by a stud more often. I’m calling any performance “fantasy worthy” that has at least one of these things: 10+ points, 6+ rebounds, 4+ assists, 2+ threes, 2+ steals or 2+ blocks. The T’wovles had 6, though Telfair snuck by with exactly 4 assists, and the Hawks had nobody outside of their starting five contribute in any meaningful way. In the Nuggets-Mavs game Denver had 7 “fantasy worthy” performances, with Anthony Carter squeaking out 4 assists, and the Mavs had 6. In the Portland-Miami game the story was the same with the winning Blazers having 7 and the Heat losing with 6. As you can see in every instance the team with more “fantasy worthy” performances won the fantasy game, though this was not the case in terms of the actual basketball games which means it’s proably better have good contributions from everybody on your team rather than one player who just went off though that may not be as true in reality, I mean look at the Cleveland LeBrons. See you later today with the standings.
Dan
Hey guys, sorry I have missed 2 of my first 3 updates but thankgiving got in the way one week and last week I had 3 papers due. However, I promise to update tommorow so if you enjoy that first post below this one then show up tommorow for another. Also, HUGE shoutout to nels at givemetherock.com which is really a daily must visit for anyone serious about fantasy basketball.
Dan Lester
