Hey guys,
I hope you had a good holiday season. I’m back with fresh new NBA Roto League standings for the new year:
Right now 12 of the top 13 teams in these standings are set to make the playoffs with the top team (Phoenix) having the best record in the west. However, after that it goes kind of screwy so I’d like to look at the teams that this overvalues and undervalues and why. I’d assume that as most of these categories are offensive, and the only defensive categories (steals and blocks) don’t really give a good picture of how good a defense is, that it would overvalue good offensive teams and undervalue good defensive teams. With overvalued teams this seems the case with the Warriors, Pacers, Nuggets and Sonics being among the teams I’d consider most overvalued. However, the Rockets are also among the most overvalued being the first team in these standings that is not currently set to make the playoffs. The categories that the Rockets are best in are 3’s, Rebounds, Steals and Blocks, outside of 3’s these are basically the defensive categories so this seems to be a case where a good defensive team is measured fairly accurately, or even overvalued, by roto scoring. I think the three most undervalued teams in these standings are the Celtics, Spurs and Hawks. Two of those teams are clearly among the best defensive teams in the league (Boston and San Antonio) yet when you look at San Antonio it becomes clear that the defensive stats do not measure defense very well as the Spurs getting less than 5 points in each of the defensive categories: rebounds, blocks and steals. Also, the Spurs are doing very well in all of the offensive categories except points. I however do not think of the Hawks as a dominate defensive team and they are actually doing pretty well in both blocks and steals. Their weak categories are 3’s, points and assists and what they are very good at is not turning the ball over and getting turnovers, which actually basically makes them a good defensive team, go figure. Also, a couple of funny notes to anyone who isn’t a Knicks fan: the Knicks are actually getting worse in these standings and they are 42 blocks behind the Spurs who are the second worst in the league. To put that in perspective if the Spurs had 42 more blocks they would get 16 points in that category instead of 2.
Thanks for reading,
DL
Tags: Celtics, Fantasy Basketball, Hawks, Knicks, NBA, Rockets, Spurs
