The Cost of a Missed Putback

Please don’t miss, Josh.

Just a quick little tidbit for you. Have you ever been watching a game when one of your guys tries to tip in a rebound and misses? You probably thought to yourself, “Oh well, he missed the shot, but at least it’s a rebound.” But is the rebound worth more than the missed shot cost you? I think the answer is pretty surprising.

Using the RotoPoll Rater Creator, we can see the relative effect of the rebound and the missed shot. Based on the numbers for the season to date, a rebound adds 0.36 (roughly) to a player’s overall RotoPoll score. Incredibly, missing a single field goal subtracts 0.59 from a player’s score. That’s right: Missing a shot costs you almost twice as much as a rebound helps you.

For those of you suspiciously thinking, “Wait a second, that doesn’t seem right. Maybe your scoring system is screwed up,” I can only offer to let you take a look at how the scores are calculated and offer your opinions. I stand firmly behind these scores and the methodology for calculating them (and I think this is the same way most sites do it).

Sample data:
Before the rebound and missed putback
After the rebound and missed putback
For a net result of -0.23. The difference holds up, no matter what stats you use as a baseline.

Just another thing to think about while you’re watching your fantasy teams in action.

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And in other news, Matt Barnes went off again last night, topping our list.

Who is the “most average” NBA player?

Monta Ellis: Mr. Average.

Most average sounds like an oxymoron. Let me explain.

The RotoPoll player rankings are based on the statistical distributions, in each stat category, of the top 180 NBA players. This means that the “average” player, at least for the purposes of roto leagues, would have a score of 0.0 in each category. To put it another way, the “most average” player is the one closest to the league average in all categories.

Obviously, nobody has perfect zeroes across the board, but who is the closest? Let’s take a look. So far this season, the Top 10 Most Average players are:

Monta Ellis
Lamar Odom
Tayshaun Prince
Troy Murphy
Luke Walton
Mike Dunleavy
Mo Williams
Andre Iguodala
Jameer Nelson
Luke Ridnour

(These rankings are created by measuring the absolute value of the standard deviation from the mean, in each category, and summing them for each player.)

I guess a more positive (and flattering to the fine men listed above) way to describe average would be well-rounded, although I’m kind of partial to the way The OCC put it, fantasy-neutral.

Why is a score of zero good for 40th in the rankings, not 90th?

As of today, a player with a score of 0.0 would be ranked 40th, right between Deron Williams and Amare Stoudemire. Clearly, those guys are not “average” players in any sense of the word. So why aren’t their scores higher? Why is zero such a good score?

This is an interesting question. Since the rankings are based on the top 180, you’d expect the 90th-ranked player (or someone thereabouts) to have an overall score of zero. It turns out that, as with most statistical populations, the stat categories are skewed toward the top of the distribution. That is, the top few guys are way out ahead of the pack, and it levels off after that. When you add up all the categories and their skews, you get a top-heavy list. This doesn’t mean the results are inaccurate. Rather, it highlights the overwhelming value of the elite players. Experienced fantasy owners already know this, and therefore try to be on the slim end of unbalanced (2-for-1, 3-for-2, etc.) trades.

I wonder how Amare would react if I told him he was an average player. Mabye you should tell him instead.

The Fantasy All-star Teams

In the real world, Lebron and Yao lead the NBA All-star voting. But let’s take a look at the 2006 fantasy all-stars for the season so far, and how they’d stack up against the “real” ones.

If you took the early All-star voting returns and put together a a starting five for each conference, they would look like this:

	East	West
G	Dwyane Wade	Kobe Bryant
G	Vince Carter	Tracy McGrady
F	Lebron James	Kevin Garnett
F	Chris Bosh	Tim Duncan
C	Shaquille O’Neal	Yao Ming

(Note: Allen Iverson was the leading vote-getter among guards in the East, but would only rank third in the West.)

But if we take the top producers at each position, in each conference, from the RotoPoll rankings, our starting fives look like this:

	East	West
G	Dwyane Wade	Steve Nash
G	Gilbert Arenas	Allen Iverson
F	Paul Pierce	Kevin Garnett
F	Lebron James	Shawn Marion
C	Jermaine O’Neal	Yao Ming

So actually, there are some significant changes, but overall it’s not that different. Gilbert gets the All-star nod he’s deserved (and been overlooked for) for so long, one O’Neal gets replaced with another, and AI narrowly beats out Kobe in his new conference.

Granted, I’m biased, but I think the RotoPoll starting lineups are better, and more representative of who deserves to be playing in Las Vegas.

Dwyane Wade now #1

Excuse me, Gil.

It was a very merry Chiristmas for Dwyane Wade. Not only did he thrash Kobe, get his team a win, and put up the best fantasy line of the year, he also took over the overall #1 RotoPoll ranking, bumping Gilbert Arenas ever-so-gently down to second.

Dwyane obliterates Kobe, takes over top spot

Michele Tafoya: Dwyane, how does it feel to pass Kobe for the best fantasy line of the year?

Dwyane Wade: Incredible in every way. Better than hoisting the Larry O’Brien trophy. I want to be the #1 pick in all midseason leagues this year.

Merry Christmas, Dwyane Wade owners. The man absolutely went off today in the most highly-promoted matchup of the season so far, as his Heat beat the Lakers, 101-85. And in their much-anticipated individual matchup, D-Wade destroyed KB24 (Kobe Bryant) with 40, 11 dimes, and a Kirilenko-esque 4 steals and blocks, while Kobe managed just 16 points on 4-17 shooting. Kobe wasn’t even the best player on the Lakers today, as Ronny Turiaf made the most of some big minutes.

	Min	FG	3Pt	FT	Off	Reb	Ast	TO	Stl	Blk	PF	Pts
Kobe	37	4-17	0-4	8-9	0	2	4	3	1	0	4	16
Dwyane	41	12-20	1-1	15-16	0	4	11	4	4	4	2	40

In fact, that’s not the only way that Wade punked Kobe today… Wade’s game was good enough to knock off Kobe as the best single-game line of the season. (You’ll see it on the RotoPoll top games list tomorrow–and if you were wondering, Kobe’s performance clocked in at a solid average ranking of 226th.)

Update: Upon looking at their lines side-by-side, you can see that Wade outperformed Kobe in every single category, and by a lot. This was an out-and-out fantasy thrashing.

As seen on Deadspin!

You probably know about Deadspin, one of the web’s leading sports blogs (in fact, it’s probably how you found this site).

In the spirit of giving thanks, I’d like to just take a second and thanks the good folks at Deadspin for showing us some love lately. A few recent posts have made it onto their site:
http://www.deadspin.com/sports/blogdome/blogdome-a-hunting-tale-223199.php
http://www.deadspin.com/sports/blogdome/blogdome-get-your-wizznutzz-gear-223831.php
http://www.deadspin.com/sports/leftovers/leftoverdome-224054.php

Thanks, Deadspin. And if you don’t read Deadspin already, go check it out.

Pick up Willie Green?

I just wanted to weigh in on something real quick…

RotoWorld, which let me just say is one of my favorite sites in the world, has been advocating grabbing Willie Green for a while now, as he should get good minutes with Allen Iverson gone. FantasySportsRadar, on the other hand, says to stay away because of his poor percentages. I agree with Radar on this one, not just because of the tendency to undervalue percentages, but also because Willie just doens’t give you much: His 2-week rank, win the post-AI era, is a mere 238, and the FG% portion of his value is an abysmal -2.3. For perspective, their are only 6 players with a more negative impact in the entire NBA over the past two weeks.

So, long story short: Stay from Willie Green, even if he’s getting minutes.

A Name I Didn’t Expect to See

This morning’s biggest surprise had to be seeing that Jason Kapono posted the 6th-best fantasy line of the night, last night. Also of note: Eddie House, coming in 4th.

Lebron owners are feeling the pain

Yikes. As if it weren’t bad enough that my team saw Danny Granger, Ricky Davis, and Damien Wilkins combine for 11 points on Saturday night, my #1 guy, my rock, my Lebron James, put up a stinker too. As a fantasy owner, you don’t really care that he “took over the fourth quarter” and led his team to a win, what you care about are his numbers. And they seem ok on the surface: 32 points, 7 rebounds — but that’s it. No D, and what’s worse, a frightening 4/10 from the stripe. The foul shooting continues to plgue King James this year, putting a serious buzzkill on his fantasy value.

So Lebron’s 32 and 7, which might look good to the uneducated eye, is in reality only good for a rank of 111th in 8-category leagues, not quite what most of us were hoping out of a #1 pick. (Oh yeah, he also had 7 turnovers.)

So Lebron, kiss your wrists or whatever you’ve gotta do, and let’s start making those free throws.