65 replies to this topic

[emmitt22]

What exactly is the difference between the actual and average rankings on yahoo, and which one is a better indicator of how a player is performing? Most players rankings are similar, but some are very different.

[indoorkites]

Average Ranking is where you rank the players based on their stats using yahoo's algo with total stats/game played.

Actual ranking is total stats

Average Ranking is best for determining rank... but take in account injury proness and such.

Edited by indoorkites, 16 January 2013 - 02:57 AM.

[pnoozi]

emmitt22, on 16 January 2013 - 02:52 AM, said:

What exactly is the difference between the actual and average rankings on yahoo, and which one is a better indicator of how a player is performing? Most players rankings are similar, but some are very different.

Normal 'rank' is a player's rank based on total stats on the season.  Average 'rank' is a player's rank based on what he average per game.

[Jatlec26]

You want to use "average stats" instead of "total stats".

[Kobe_No_Means_No]

There are two ways to rank a player using Yahoo. One is total rank and one is average rank. Total is cumulative stats and average is per game stats.

I believe you're asking what is o-rank. O-rank (overall rank) are rankings created by Yahoo's own "experts" who work for the site. Disregard the o-rank, because it doesn't really make sense. Take a look at o-rank and you'll find Dwight Howard listed at #11. Dwight Howard has never performed closed to top 10, and he will never perform close to top 10 for the rest of his career (in standard 9-category leagues). In a good year, Howard is barely top 75. This year he is 221. However, after he finishes this year at 221 Yahoo will rank him at #11 again next season. So just because a Yahoo "expert" says he's #11 doesn't mean you should use that ranking to make draft/trade decisions.

[Donnie99]

use the yahoo average stats for searching the higher ranked players. if you compare the two and saw that the average rank is higher than the actual rank. that player plays less games than the average which is a good thing (except he is just injured for some parts) considering he has more games than the others.

[Donnie99]

Kobe_No_Means_No, on 16 January 2013 - 04:26 AM, said:

There are two ways to rank a player using Yahoo. One is total rank and one is average rank. Total is cumulative stats and average is per game stats.

I believe you're asking what is o-rank. O-rank (overall rank) are rankings created by Yahoo's own "experts" who work for the site. Disregard the o-rank, because it doesn't really make sense. Take a look at o-rank and you'll find Dwight Howard listed at #11. Dwight Howard has never performed closed to top 10, and he will never perform close to top 10 for the rest of his career (in standard 9-category leagues). In a good year, Howard is barely top 75. This year he is 221. However, after he finishes this year at 221 Yahoo will rank him at #11 again next season. So just because a Yahoo "expert" says he's #11 doesn't mean you should use that ranking to make draft/trade decisions.

yeah, its because of d12's poor ft% . if you remove that, i guess he is in the top 20 in the rankings.

[Kobe_No_Means_No]

Donnie99, on 16 January 2013 - 05:57 AM, said:

Kobe_No_Means_No, on 16 January 2013 - 04:26 AM, said:

There are two ways to rank a player using Yahoo. One is total rank and one is average rank. Total is cumulative stats and average is per game stats.

I believe you're asking what is o-rank. O-rank (overall rank) are rankings created by Yahoo's own "experts" who work for the site. Disregard the o-rank, because it doesn't really make sense. Take a look at o-rank and you'll find Dwight Howard listed at #11. Dwight Howard has never performed closed to top 10, and he will never perform close to top 10 for the rest of his career (in standard 9-category leagues). In a good year, Howard is barely top 75. This year he is 221. However, after he finishes this year at 221 Yahoo will rank him at #11 again next season. So just because a Yahoo "expert" says he's #11 doesn't mean you should use that ranking to make draft/trade decisions.

yeah, its because of d12's poor ft% . if you remove that, i guess he is in the top 20 in the rankings.

No. Traditional big men such as Howard are at a disadvantage when it comes to fantasy basketball to begin with. Even if you take away the ft% he's still not top 20. No 3s, an assist to turnover ratio of 1.8/3.3 (and no, that's not backwards.) There is absolutely no reason for Howard to be ranked #11 on anybody's list, but it's also a great way to check the legitimacy of a ranking list.

[Donnie99]

hmm i agree with your opinion regarding their disadvantages, however, if we look at tim duncan and chris bosh, dwight is almost on par with them if not have a better stats (rebs, blks,fg%) and they also don't have a great assist to turnover ratio.  The difference is their 80+% ft shooting.

[Dynasty999]

Kobe_No_Means_No, on 16 January 2013 - 07:54 AM, said:

Donnie99, on 16 January 2013 - 05:57 AM, said:

Kobe_No_Means_No, on 16 January 2013 - 04:26 AM, said:

There are two ways to rank a player using Yahoo. One is total rank and one is average rank. Total is cumulative stats and average is per game stats.

I believe you're asking what is o-rank. O-rank (overall rank) are rankings created by Yahoo's own "experts" who work for the site. Disregard the o-rank, because it doesn't really make sense. Take a look at o-rank and you'll find Dwight Howard listed at #11. Dwight Howard has never performed closed to top 10, and he will never perform close to top 10 for the rest of his career (in standard 9-category leagues). In a good year, Howard is barely top 75. This year he is 221. However, after he finishes this year at 221 Yahoo will rank him at #11 again next season. So just because a Yahoo "expert" says he's #11 doesn't mean you should use that ranking to make draft/trade decisions.

yeah, its because of d12's poor ft% . if you remove that, i guess he is in the top 20 in the rankings.

No. Traditional big men such as Howard are at a disadvantage when it comes to fantasy basketball to begin with. Even if you take away the ft% he's still not top 20. No 3s, an assist to turnover ratio of 1.8/3.3 (and no, that's not backwards.) There is absolutely no reason for Howard to be ranked #11 on anybody's list, but it's also a great way to check the legitimacy of a ranking list.

Agree on Howard, disagree on traditional big men being at a disadvantage. PG's are the ones at a disadvantage not bigmen due to their insane high turnover rate. Guys like Al Jefferson, Marc Gasol, Al Horford, LMA, Pau Gasol (before this year), Dirk Nowitzki, Chris Bosh, Kevin Garnett etc almost always rank higher than PGs such as RWB, Deron, Rondo etc

Edited by Dynasty999, 16 January 2013 - 10:49 AM.

[Kobe_No_Means_No]

Donnie99, on 16 January 2013 - 09:47 AM, said:

hmm i agree with your opinion regarding their disadvantages, however, if we look at tim duncan and chris bosh, dwight is almost on par with them if not have a better stats (rebs, blks,fg%) and they also don't have a great assist to turnover ratio.  The difference is their 80+% ft shooting.

Yes it's a big part of it. How freethrow is weighted also takes shot volume into account. For Dwight, if you want him to reach top 20, you have to eliminate the turnover category as well, as he's on the top 10 for most turnovers while dishing out almost no assists.

In my opinion, the best way to go for blocks is to spread it out. Have multi-cat guys like batum, granger, gay... at most have 1 specialist who doesn't kill you in any particular category. Or, just don't go for blocks in H2H leagues.  

Theoretically speaking, here is a breakdown of 9 categories:  
pts, 3s, steals, assist, ft% - favor guards
reb, blk, fg%, TO - favor bigs

It's 5-4 favoring guard-oriented players. So to make your life easy it's smart to build a guard-oriented team rather than doing "Dwight Strategy" or relying on bigs. And especially for Dwight, he's even bad at TOs, which traditionally should favor the bigs as they're not passing the ball much.

[Dynasty999]

Kobe_No_Means_No, on 16 January 2013 - 10:48 AM, said:

Donnie99, on 16 January 2013 - 09:47 AM, said:

hmm i agree with your opinion regarding their disadvantages, however, if we look at tim duncan and chris bosh, dwight is almost on par with them if not have a better stats (rebs, blks,fg%) and they also don't have a great assist to turnover ratio.  The difference is their 80+% ft shooting.

Yes it's a big part of it. How freethrow is weighted also takes shot volume into account. For Dwight, if you want him to reach top 20, you have to eliminate the turnover category as well, as he's on the top 10 for most turnovers while dishing out almost no assists.

In my opinion, the best way to go for blocks is to spread it out. Have multi-cat guys like batum, granger, gay... at most have 1 specialist who doesn't kill you in any particular category. Or, just don't go for blocks in H2H leagues.  

Theoretically speaking, here is a breakdown of 9 categories:  
pts, 3s, steals, assist, ft% - favor guards
reb, blk, fg%, TO - favor bigs

It's 5-4 favoring guard-oriented players. So to make your life easy it's smart to build a guard-oriented team rather than doing "Dwight Strategy" or relying on bigs. And especially for Dwight, he's even bad at TOs, which traditionally should favor the bigs as they're not passing the ball much.

Yes it's 5-4 but it's skewed. For one the pts which you gave to guards, yes guards have slightly better but it's a very small difference. There are tons of big men in the 15-20 ppg range. Ontop of it, there are plenty of bigs who get 1 steal per game, good luck finding more than like 3-4 guards who get 1 block per game and almost all PGs get between .1-.3 which is a huge gap. In addition, there are plenty of bigs who shoot 75-80% from FT% and sometimes even higher than 80%. Again good luck finding even a few guards who shoots 50% or over from FG%. And again there are bigs who dish out 2-3 assists as well as keeping their to's 2 or below. Get 2-3 of these big's and you suddenly have 7-9 assists just from your bigmen alone. Overall a great big is better than a great guard unless that guard is cp3 who has great fg% and great turnover rates.

Edited by Dynasty999, 16 January 2013 - 10:58 AM.

[scroller52]

normally i'd use a combination of the actual and avg rankings to value players as well as the season, last 30 days, 2 weeks values as well.  but more importantly basketball monster rankings when it comes to a pure #'s game...

[Kobe_No_Means_No]

Dynasty999, on 16 January 2013 - 10:52 AM, said:

Kobe_No_Means_No, on 16 January 2013 - 10:48 AM, said:

Donnie99, on 16 January 2013 - 09:47 AM, said:

hmm i agree with your opinion regarding their disadvantages, however, if we look at tim duncan and chris bosh, dwight is almost on par with them if not have a better stats (rebs, blks,fg%) and they also don't have a great assist to turnover ratio.  The difference is their 80+% ft shooting.

Yes it's a big part of it. How freethrow is weighted also takes shot volume into account. For Dwight, if you want him to reach top 20, you have to eliminate the turnover category as well, as he's on the top 10 for most turnovers while dishing out almost no assists.

In my opinion, the best way to go for blocks is to spread it out. Have multi-cat guys like batum, granger, gay... at most have 1 specialist who doesn't kill you in any particular category. Or, just don't go for blocks in H2H leagues.  

Theoretically speaking, here is a breakdown of 9 categories:  
pts, 3s, steals, assist, ft% - favor guards
reb, blk, fg%, TO - favor bigs

It's 5-4 favoring guard-oriented players. So to make your life easy it's smart to build a guard-oriented team rather than doing "Dwight Strategy" or relying on bigs. And especially for Dwight, he's even bad at TOs, which traditionally should favor the bigs as they're not passing the ball much.

Yes it's 5-4 but it's skewed. For one the pts which you gave to guards, yes guards have slightly better but it's a very small difference. There are tons of big men in the 15-20 ppg range. Ontop of it, there are plenty of bigs who get 1 steal per game, good luck finding more than like 3-4 guards who get 1 block per game. In addition, there are plenty of bigs who shoot 75-80% from FT% and sometimes even higher than 80%. Again good luck finding even a few guards who shoots 50% or over from FG%. And again there are bigs who dish out 2-3 assists as well as keeping their to's 2 or below. Get 2-3 of these big's and you suddenly have 7-9 assists just from your bigmen alone.

I understand what you're saying, but in H2H all you need is 5 categories to win. Of course you can have Dwight, or build your team around another big, and still have the possibility of winning, but why would you when guards give you the advantage?

I agree that points is the tipping point category that shifts the balance, and the advantage clearly goes to players with guard-tendencies. On the top 25 scoring list right now, there are 6 centers. Lamarcus Aldridge, David Lee, Brook Lopez, Kevin Love, Chris Bosh, and Dwight Howard. Of those 6, other than Dwight Howard and Brook Lopez, none of the others quite fit the "go big" mold as they all block under 1.5 shots. Basically, if you choose to go big, winning rebounds and blocks, you will not win in scoring, and thus ending up with a 4-5 loss.

[Dynasty999]

Tanking 4 cats in any competitive league will almost always lead to a lot of losses. The chances of winning all 5 cats even if you are very strong in them is small vs very good players due to injuries, scheduling, variance, and the fact that these teams even if they are worse than you in many/all of those 5 cats aren't THAT much worse than you meaning they can easily win 1 or 2 of them each week. Also if you look at the top 25, especially like the top 15, most of them are bigs, not guards.

Edited by Dynasty999, 16 January 2013 - 11:18 AM.

[Kobe_No_Means_No]

So the most efficient way to win is to focus on guard stats. This doesn't mean you compile an entire team of guards, but a team focusing on the 5 guard categories. The important part is how you select your PF and C, because you don't want to select a traditional big. For PF it's still not difficult, Melo, Gay, I think Danny Granger used to be PF (haven't checked this year), and basically those who can contribute in the guard categories.  

For your center selection it's a little harder. It is a position where you'll lose some value, and where I choose to lose value. I tend to draft centers later and grab guys like Ryan Anderson (last season), Bargnani, Al Harrington (several seasons ago, can't remember)... but you know the type, cheap centers who can make some 3s. Now this year Ryan Anderson is pre-ranked too high, if you're building a guard oriented team I don't recommend spending a high pick on a center.  The reason being even if you get a great center such as Ibaka or Aldridge, your focus is on pts, ft%, ast, stl, and 3s... and those centers are not giving you the best value in those categories.

[Kobe_No_Means_No]

Dynasty999, on 16 January 2013 - 11:17 AM, said:

Tanking 4 cats in any competitive league will almost always lead to a lot of losses. The chances of winning all 5 cats even if you are very strong in them is small vs very good players due to injuries, scheduling, variance, and the fact that these teams even if they are worse than you in many/all of those 5 cats aren't THAT much worse than you meaning they can easily win 1 or 2 of them each week. Also if you look at the top 25, especially like the top 15, most of them are bigs, not guards.

Yes, I agree with you on that as well. Tanking 4 cats is not the way to go because of injuries and scheduling. However, you're not tanking 4 categories, you're simply putting emphasis on the main 5 guard categories rather than the main 4 big categories. With guys like Batum, Gay, AK, Wade... etc, they can give you enough blocks to compete. Rebounding is a category you will punt, but a middle of the pack blocking can be achieved without relying on specialists.

Also, ft% is pretty consistent. If your team focuses on ft%, week in and week out you will win that category. FG% are less consistent. Even Brandon Jennings may go off for 50 one week shooting 22 of 25, but Dwight Howard will never ever go 10 for 10 on freethrows.  There will be weeks when you have hot players on your team that you may even pull out a win in the fg% category.

[Dynasty999]

Or you can just be really good/great at everything outside of usually assists if you draft great bigmen. Great bigmen give you great fg%, blks, rebs, ft%, turnovers, points, steals etc You can find guards who hit 3s later on in the draft and you get the best value at the top of your draft by drafting these great bigs since people always reach on guards and you get the better players at the top.

[indoorkites]

All this talk about punting and nobody talks about the most underrated category to punt--points. Points are by far the most overrated category in fantasy basketball. It has the lowest standard deviation/mean ratio. Meaning that a player 1 z-score above average player in points scores 13.8 points with z-score 4.3 so you need 4 games for a 9.5 to tie a 13.8 point scorer that played 3.2 games. For blocks it's about .7 for mean with standard devation of .6, An average shot blocker needs almost double the games to tie a shotblocker that's 1 z-score above the mean. A shot blocker 1 z-score below the mean? almost 7 times as many games.

If you're punting, You can be reasonably sure your goal is to get a team that's about 8-12 z-score away from the mean for the category you're punting if done right, a team where everyone is 1 z-score below the mean in that category on average.

If this is the case, having a team that averages say 9.5 points can beat an average or below average scoring team a small percentage of time expecially including injuries while punting any other category and you almost always lose.

Here's the kicker of all kickers. The majority of value guys off the wire are ones that don't score. You'll almost never find a player during the season that's going to average over 15 points. Guys like Kawhi Leonard, Thabo, Splitter, Aminu, drummond, Amir Johnson, Bledsoe, sanders, koufos, Green, Jack, Barnes can all be found on the wire.

Not only that, there's bunch of first/second round value guys that don't score much, CP3, Serge, Marc gasol, Anderson,

Then you have guys like Kirilenko and  Noah.

Throw in the fact that you automatically win turnovers even if you pick up assist heavy guys like Vasquez, rondo, calderon, jameer, mo williams, jeff teague

Some volume 3pt shooters that don't score much Kyle Korver, Carlos Delfino, Reddick, Foye, Matthews, CJ miles, Lou Williams

You can round out an unbeatable team that punts points while getting a team that's very valuable in 9cat (1 z-score in value) simply because of how overvalued points are to fantasy basketball players that Kawhi goes undrafted after putting up a 72 rank season in his rookie year with no training camp.

This is just theory since I just thought of it yesterday when looking at 2 of the most undervalued guys in Kawhi and Thabo, so I'm assuming a snake draft won't work too well, this might be a great strategy in an auction draft

Edited by indoorkites, 16 January 2013 - 01:37 PM.

[Dynasty999]

Assists is a better cat to punt than points, especially when you factor in how much people reach for PGs. There is no way you win turnovers every week if you pick up guys like Rondo/vasquez etc. You win turnovers every week when you punt assists though. Points is a pretty good cat to punt though, just not as good as assists.

Edited by Dynasty999, 16 January 2013 - 02:12 PM.