Blinders: Projecting NBA Players
Individual Stat Projections in Fantasy Basketball
About the Writer: After much research and preparation, Blinders turned his vision and passion for fantasy sports into the first Daily Fantasy sports site with Salary Cap based games in June of 2007: FantasySportsLive. He is a longtime online poker player and blogger, and the only daily fantasy grinder who was willing to take on Buffalo66 in his multi-sport fantasy challenge. Last NFL Season Blinders went 71-10 on FanDuel alone.
A while back I posted about how an individual player’s fantasy score can be broken into three main components that I called Baseline Fantasy Strength, Match-Up Factors, and Game Variance. Baseline fantasy strength is the average fantasy score your player would make against an average defense, over an infinite number of trials. The match-up factors account for all of the game specific factors (mostly knowable) that will tend to make your player score higher or lower than their baseline strength. The game variance, accounts for all of the unknown things that can and do happen in actual games. Assuming that players are priced at or near their baseline strength like we do at FSL, the skill in daily fantasy sports is applied in the match-up factor area. Nothing can really be done about game variance, other than having or hoping you have a large enough bankroll to get to the long-term. Long-term in daily fantasy sports is in the thousands of leagues range.
I wanted to go into some depth on how to determine the defensive match-up factor for fantasy basketball. The defensive match-up factor is a primary component of the game match-up factors, but does not include other factors like the injury status of your player, the hotness of your player, if your player is expected to get more or less minutes than normal, if the game is at home or away, and other game specific factors. To get to the defensive match-up factor you really need to go to the detail of projecting individual player statistics in fantasy basketball. The problem with fantasy basketball is that you have 5 unique positions, but team defensive statistics are not broken down by type (rushing, passing, receiving) like is done with football. There are a few sites that will give you a defensive strength grid by G, F, and C but that is really not going to be very accurate at the individual player level. There are just too many exceptions in the NBA. You have pure point guards and high scoring point guards. You have defensive and offensive specialists. You have players that are good rebounders but poor scores. You have players who could be listed and play at multiple positions. The list goes on and on, and a simple defensive strength against a plain Vanilla Guard is just not going to cut it. So to see how your player is expected to perform, you need to understand the defensive strength factors for each and every statistical category that is scored at the site you are playing at.
You start by breaking down an individual player’s baseline fantasy strength into their season averages for each scored statistical category. To get the baseline strength number you multiply the averages at each category (points, rebounds, assists, steals, blocks, turn-overs) by the fantasy points received at each category and sum the results. To get a defensive match-up adjusted projection you do the same, but also multiply each category by the defensive strength factor for that category. The defensive strength factor is how the defense does relative to the rest of the league in the scored category. For example if the league average for points allowed was 100, and the defense you are up against gives up 110 points on average, they have a points ease factor of 1.1 or 110%. Since your fantasy player’s baseline strength is against an “average” defense, this tells you how far the team you are playing varies from average, and as a result how far your player should vary from their average. A player who averages 20 points per game would be expected to score 22 points against this same defense, before any other match-up factors are considered. Once you have the primary defensive strength factors worked out you can apply the other match-up factors to build a full fantasy score projection model for the NBA. I have included the defensive match up strength factors for all Fantasy Sport Live scored statistical categories in percentage format below (through Tuesday).
| Team | RebEase | AssEase | TOEase | StlEase | BlkEase | PtsEase |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PHO | 107% | 115% | 109% | 107% | 87% | 110% |
| MIN | 101% | 115% | 97% | 131% | 123% | 109% |
| GS | 107% | 112% | 114% | 118% | 111% | 107% |
| NY | 103% | 102% | 105% | 101% | 77% | 106% |
| WAS | 105% | 109% | 108% | 101% | 97% | 106% |
| HOU | 103% | 96% | 93% | 108% | 113% | 106% |
| TOR | 94% | 102% | 98% | 112% | 111% | 104% |
| LAC | 96% | 109% | 90% | 109% | 121% | 104% |
| OKC | 101% | 104% | 100% | 92% | 79% | 104% |
| MEM | 103% | 102% | 114% | 112% | 115% | 103% |
| CLE | 103% | 114% | 89% | 94% | 115% | 103% |
| DEN | 104% | 102% | 96% | 94% | 131% | 103% |
| SAC | 100% | 94% | 95% | 86% | 101% | 102% |
| LAL | 101% | 105% | 100% | 97% | 109% | 100% |
| DET | 104% | 104% | 93% | 109% | 95% | 100% |
| CHI | 98% | 99% | 105% | 111% | 119% | 100% |
| NJ | 103% | 104% | 81% | 86% | 91% | 99% |
| PHI | 101% | 97% | 95% | 104% | 93% | 99% |
| SA | 98% | 96% | 108% | 94% | 107% | 98% |
| IND | 103% | 88% | 98% | 105% | 113% | 98% |
| CHA | 91% | 101% | 95% | 101% | 127% | 97% |
| UTA | 102% | 87% | 104% | 97% | 97% | 96% |
| ATL | 99% | 96% | 90% | 88% | 91% | 96% |
| POR | 94% | 94% | 113% | 90% | 95% | 96% |
| MIL | 100% | 91% | 110% | 85% | 103% | 93% |
| NO | 99% | 98% | 101% | 92% | 91% | 93% |
| DAL | 100% | 96% | 99% | 104% | 71% | 93% |
| BOS | 92% | 88% | 108% | 85% | 79% | 92% |
| MIA | 97% | 92% | 95% | 83% | 53% | 92% |
| ORL | 91% | 89% | 95% | 100% | 85% | 91% |