My quest to give fantasy owners an objective basis for drafting their team continues with today’s look at statistical averages and z-scores by positions. Among the top-175 qualifying fantasy players last season (9-cat, per-game), the mean statistical lines looked like this:
The goal is to be above the average in at least five categories every week in H2H leagues, of course, but these mean stats give us a baseline against which we may compare our own teams. This is particularly useful following mock drafts -- by averaging your players’ projected stats, you can determine the areas in which your might be too weak or too strong (with the understanding that we’re using last year’s aggregated stats...a few slight shifts can be anticipated, but not enough to invalidate the numbers as a rough gauge of statistical means).
Here is one of my actual head-to-head 9-cat Yahoo! teams, drafted last week (Steve Alexander recapped the draft in his column, “Rotoworld Friends & Family Draft”: Kevin Durant, Kyle Lowry, Al Horford, Rudy Gay, DeAndre Jordan, Lance Stephenson, Tony Parker, Mario Chalmers, Channing Frye, Andrew Bogut, Ersan Ilyasova, Gorgui Dieng and Alec Burks.
It wasn’t my strongest draft ever, but that makes it all the more useful as an example of how to assess your team. Using the projections found in the Rotoworld NBA Draft Guide, we come up with the following averages for my 13-player roster (percentages are unweighted):
Points: 14.56
3-pointers: 0.97
Rebounds: 6.36
Assists: 3.29
Steals: 0.98
Blocks: 0.78
FG Percentage: 44.4% on 11.2 attempts
FT Percentage: 80.6% on 3.0 attempts
Turnovers: 1.70
Minutes: 30.92
Here are the cumulative z-scores (more on them later) for my lineup compared to last year’s top-175 options. Although only 156 players were drafted, using the top-175 helps to account for waiver wire moves throughout the season. Note that the percentages here are weighted by number of attempts.
These numbers will obviously be impacted by the health (or lack thereof) of my players, and which guys are most often active in my 10-player lineup. They therefore skew toward the low-end of what I expect my team’s production to look like, but it gives a fair idea of my strengths and weaknesses. This team is generally well-balanced, though balance isn’t necessarily ideal for a H2H league and I might prefer to have this squad in a roto league. My decision to pair Kevin Durant‘s fabulous weighted-FT% with DeAndre Jordan‘s onerous FT% was not made lightly, but I got Jordan in the fifth round (pick No. 49) where I simply couldn’t pass him up. All things considered, I’ll probably make a few trades to emphasize my team’s strengths before the start of the season.
While I’m discussing a balanced roster vs. one built to emphasize certain strengths...the aforementioned idea that you can be too strong in a category is straight-forward. Defeating an opponent by four blocked shots in a H2H week yields the same value as defeating them by 24 blocks. Similarly, winning the blocks category by 30 blocks in a roto league yields the same value as winning it by 300 blocks. This is yet another reason to be wary of ‘punting’ categories (my weekly reminder)...you may be thrilled to have landed both Andre Drummond and DeAndre Jordan, but it could be detrimental if you’re racking up superfluous rebounds/blocks/FG% on a weekly basis.
We’ll now look at those mean statistics on a position-by-position basis, before assembling them into a default Yahoo! team with 13 players, including with 10 active spots and three bench spots. For every position on the next page (e.g. PG, SG, SF) I cite the mean and z-score for each category among the top-175 players. Z-scores are given in parentheses, and all FG percentages and FT percentages are weighted by attempts.
If you’re interested in the spreadsheet which I made as the basis for this column, click here and you can view or download it from Dropbox.com.
Follow me on Twitter @Knaus_RW for stats, injury updates and player news throughout the NBA season.
Note: I assigned each of the top-175 players a single position (PG, SG, SF, PF or C). For players straddling two positions, I used the position which Basketball-Reference.com identified as that which a given player occupied most frequently during the 2013-14 season. For example, Bball Reference had Gerald Green spending 57% of his time at SF last year, so that’s the position I assigned him for the purposes of this analysis. For more information about how multiple-position eligibility might impact draft strategies, check out my recent column “Positioned to Win.”
Point Guard
There were 40 players (among the top-175) who spent at least 51% of their playing time at PG last season. They had the following statistical means:
Points: 14.40 (+0.11)
3-pointers: 1.40 (+0.46)
Rebounds: 3.41 (-0.77)
Assists: 5.99 (+1.35)
Steals: 1.26 (+0.60)
Blocks: 0.22 (-0.68)
FG Percentage: 43.0% on 11.8 attempts (-0.64)
FT Percentage: 80.6% on 3.4 attempts (+0.49)
Turnovers: 2.40 (-0.74)
Minutes: 31.46
Shooting Guard
There were 35 players (among the top-175) who spent at least 51% of their playing time at SG last season. They had the following statistical means:
Points: 13.87 (-0.01)
3-pointers: 1.54 (+0.64)
Rebounds: 3.51 (-0.74)
Assists: 2.71 (-0.19)
Steals: 1.01 (0.00)
Blocks: 0.27 (-0.59)
FG Percentage: 44.4% on 11.2 attempts (-0.36)
FT Percentage: 80.6% on 3.0 attempts (+0.39)
Turnovers: 1.70 (+0.22)
Minutes: 30.42
Small Forward
There were 34 players (among the top-175) who spent at least 51% of their playing time at SF last season. They had the following statistical means:
Points: 14.08 (+0.04)
3-pointers: 1.35 (+0.40)
Rebounds: 5.01 (-0.16)
Assists: 2.67 (-0.21)
Steals: 1.16 (+0.35)
Blocks: 0.48 (-0.18)
FG Percentage: 44.9% on 11.3 attempts (-0.24)
FT Percentage: 77.3% on 3.3 attempts (+0.19)
Turnovers: 1.77 (+0.12)
Minutes: 31.24
Power Forward
There were 35 players (among the top-175) who spent at least 51% of their playing time at PF last season. They had the following statistical means:
Points: 14.31 (+0.09)
3-pointers: 0.51 (-0.64)
Rebounds: 7.18 (+0.67)
Assists: 1.94 (-0.55)
Steals: 0.84 (-0.41)
Blocks: 0.78 (+0.40)
FG Percentage: 48.7% on 11.5 attempts (+0.45)
FT Percentage: 74.8% on 3.5 attempts (-0.14)
Turnovers: 1.62 (+0.33)
Minutes: 29.22
Center
There were 31 players (among the top-175) who spent at least 51% of their playing time at C last season. They had the following statistical means:
Points: 12.85 (-0.22)
3-pointers: 0.21 (-1.00)
Rebounds: 8.77 (+1.28)
Assists: 1.69 (-0.67)
Steals: 0.73 (-0.67)
Blocks: 1.28 (+1.36)
FG Percentage: 51.7% on 10.1 attempts (+0.82)
FT Percentage: 69.2% on 3.4 attempts (-0.90)
Turnovers: 1.70 (+0.21)
Minutes: 29.59
Means for a standard Yahoo! 13-player roster
If we extrapolate those averages for a typical Yahoo! roster with 13 players (including the three bench spots), we can derive a more accurate ‘mean’ statistical line for fantasy purposes. Yahoo! Sports has a default 9-cat roster setting (for both H2H and roto) that looks like this: PG, SG, G, SF, PF, F, C, C, UTIL, UTIL, Bench, Bench, Bench.
For the specific positions (PG, SG, SF, PF, C) I’m using the stat lines given above. For the generic G and F spots, I’m combining PG/SG and SF/PF, respectively. And for the utility and bench spots, I’m using the overall averages for the top-175 population. Again, this is intended to be a general guide to fantasy owners envisioning a ‘typical’ or ‘generic’ fantasy lineup. It is by no means what you should strive for! As I stated earlier, these numbers will shift a bit season to season and ultimately the goal is to exceed the averages, not to match them. Without further ado:
Means for a 13-player Yahoo! roster last season (top-175 players):
Points: 13.86
3-pointers: 0.98
Rebounds: 5.64
Assists: 3.00
Steals: 0.99
Blocks: 0.62
FG Percentage: 47.0% (on 11.1 attempts)
FT Percentage: 76.0% (on 3.3 attempts)
Turnovers: 1.84
Minutes: 30.36
(*My thanks to Chris Fasciano for catching a previously uncorrected oversight!)
And finally, here is a chart detailing the average z-scores of each position (once again, this only includes the top-175 players in 9-cat leagues from last season):
I averaged each positions category z-scores out of sheer curiosity, but I wasn’t too surprised to see SGs dead-last on the list. Consider that beyond James Harden, the most valuable 9-cat shooting guards last season were Dwyane Wade (No. 28), Kyle Korver (50), Klay Thompson (54), Jodie Meeks (55), Jamal Crawford (57), Wes Matthews (59), Kevin Martin (62), Victor Oladipo (65) and Jimmy Butler (67). That’s not a particularly auspicious crew, and as a group SGs only had a positive z-score in two categories -- 3-pointers and FT%. They were just about average in points, assists, steals and turnovers, but well below average in rebounds, blocks and FG%.
I’ll end here because it took a long time just to compile these position-by-position lists and then derive stats for each group. If you have any questions or comments, email me or send me a message on Twitter @Knaus_RW. Thanks for reading, and good luck drafting a winning team!
