The Top 20 Fantasy Seasons Ever* (Part 1)

Categorized as: Fantasy Basketball
Posted on: May 20th, 2006

*Ever means since 1979.

While waiting for LeBron to drive to the basket AGAIN, I thought I’d start out my time at Give Me the Rock with the audacious task of ranking the top 20 greatest fantasy seasons of all time (and by proxy, the top fantasy players of all time). But as my momma always said, “go f**king balls out, or don’t go at all bitch”. I might be paraphrasing there.

I’ll keep this part short, but I basically created standardized rankings for every player in each season from 1979-1980 through 2006 (the years of available statistics). The scores were calculated on a per game basis and based upon a 10 team, 8 (and 9) category roto league, which means that I ranked players both with and without turnovers included. Including turnovers didn’t have that much effect on the results, so in the final results, I left them out. Only two players who fell in the top 50 were particularly affected when including turnovers. Who are they? Kudos to you if you can guess. I’ll tell you in the part 2 of this article. Players with less than 10 games played were not ranked (bye 2005 Ron Artest) and adjusted for games played (bye 1981 Magic Johnson).

Let’s start the countdown with the 11-20 ranked fantasy seasons since 1979-1980. Ratings in parenthesis.

11. Michael Jordan, 1987, (9.5)
12. Michael Jordan, 1991, (9.2)
13. Magic Johnson, 1989, (9.0)
14. David Robinson, 1994, (8.9)
15. Kevin Garnett, 2004, (8.7)
16. David Robinson, 1995, (8.6)
17. Larry Bird, 1983, (8.6)
18. Kobe Bryant, 2003, (8.5)
19. Hakeem Olajuwon, 1994, (8.5)
20. David Robinson, 1991, (8.4)

Michael Jordan, as you can imagine, shows up again in the top 10, so I won’t spend too much time on him. Surprisingly, Magic’s highest showing is at number 13. Seeing how he was a triple-double machine, I expected to see him higher. Magic’s 88-89 season was his finest fantasy wise, where he averaged 22.5 points, 7.9 rebounds, and 12.8 assists (take that Steve Nash!). He also shot 91% from the free throw line. It was his blocks (only 0.3 a game in 1989) that kept him from being ranked higher that year and throughout his career.

David Robinson’s best season was in 93-94, when he averaged just about 30 points a game. He also shows up at number 16 and 20. I knew Robinson was great player, but the only fantasy game I was playing back then was final fantasy, so I had no idea what a fantasy monster he was for about 6 years. Interestingly enough, his stats mimic those more recently of Tim Duncan, although Robinson’s free-throw percentage was actually pretty decent.

I think that it’s safe to say that Kevin Garnett peaked as a fantasy player in 2004. Am I assuming too much saying that it’s downhill from here [Editor's note from the year 2009: No, you're not]? Larry Bird is another guy you might be seeing again, so we will skip over him for now. Kobe, Kobe, Kobe. There was a lot of talk about his scoring in 2006 (he ended up with a 7.8 rating, which puts his 2006 at #30), but he was actually better in 2003. That made me a little curious, so I compared his 2003 to 2006. FT%, FG% were exactly the same. He also hit more 3′s and scored 5 points more a game in 2006. It was his assists, steals, and blocks in 2006 that all went down from his career averages (and way down since 2003). Obviously, not playing with Shaq could be a cause for the drop. But, the jury’s still out on the Kobe “scoring machine” era and whether it will be a net positive or net negative on his fantasy game. He’ll make an interesting fantasy pick next year.

Finally, over the course of his career, Olajuwon did all the things that someone nicknamed the Dream would be expected to do. But in 93-94 he had a year where everything came together and (in addition to averaging a 27 and 12 with almost 4 blocks a game) he won an MVP, a finals MVP, and a championship for his trouble.

So, that is the rundown from 11 to 20. Coming next, the top 10.

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