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    • The Value of a Position

    Author Icon for Patrick

    Categorized as: Fantasy Basketball
    Posted on: August 13th, 2006

    With a shoutout to the guys over at Fantasy Basketblog and the awesomely named post, “See What Condition My Position Is In” and a commentator named Rook, who wrote the following in response to that article:

    Okay, I fully agree with the need for good centers, but I’m having trouble with the position scarcity topic lately… I think it can be easy to go into a draft with a mantra of “don’t end up with a bad center!!!” and then make the mistake of taking an overvalued C, whose statistical equivalent will be available in the sixth or seventh round, over a real stud PF or SG. In a draft, under time pressure, don’t forget that just being a center doesn’t increase a player’s value by more than several picks. It doesn’t make an eighth round guy into a fourth round guy. Are there good rules of thumb the FBB authors and commenters have for much of a bump a C should get in pre-draft ranking by virtue of being a C?

    You can see the entire post and comment at the end of the post here. It makes a number of good points about position scarcity and drafting.

    As always, I’m a sucker for a challenge, so here’s my shot at quantifying the value of a position. One of the simplest ways to adjust for the value of a player’s position is to assign some sort of positional adjustment to their ratings. To create this adjustment, I used the most common fantasy basketball league setup that I know of (and one that I’ve played in – 10 starters – 2 C, 4 F, 4 G) and then calculated the average and median ratings* for all starters by position. That would be the averages and medians for the top 20 centers and top 40 guards and forwards. If a player qualified for more than one position, they were moved up the position ladder, meaning that GFs became forwards and FC’s became centers. I believe this follows how players would likely be used in a 10-starter per team league like this. Here are the numbers for the last three seasons.


    Average and Median Ratings by Position (2003-2006)


    There are a lot of numbers in there, but you can safely ignore everything except for the last row, if you want. Since I went through the trouble of making it, however, you’ll have to humor me because I find a lot of interesting stuff in this table. In fact, I’m going to break this down headline style, just because I can. Note that all the seemingly broad sweeping generalizations to come only speak for a specific league and team setup for the years covering 2003 to 2006. But I won’t let that stop me from jumping to wide-ranging conclusions.

    Centers are the scarcest position, but they are followed closely by forwards

    More closely than I had expected. During the last three seasons, the average center provided a rating of -0.8, forwards -0.5, and guards 1.0. As you might know, a 0 represents league average, so the average center was close to 1 standard deviation worse than average overall and guards 1 standard deviation better. Since there are a lot of great forwards in the NBA, I was surprised that they were almost as bad on average as centers.

    However, forwards are getting better

    I used three years of data to cover possible abnormalities in a single season’s worth of data. A side effect was the discovery of a (short) trend that found the forward position improving each of the past three years. This improvement isn’t at the high end (which I had first thought) because forwards have always been the best in the league. The improvement actually occurs in the 0 to 1 range of ratings (slightly above average) with players ranging from Carmelo Anthony to Caron Butler to David West. There just happens to be a lot of good young forwards coming into their own right now.

    Guards are the cheap available talent of fantasy basketball

    If you’re going to wait on a position during your draft, make it a guard. Elite guards are few (Kobe, Wade, Arenas) but serviceable guards are everywhere at the lower end of ratings. My personal hypothesis would be that even a crappy guard can get a steal, a three, and some assists in 20 minutes a game and make himself at least fantasy filler. You’ll be in much better shape looking for guards on the wavier wire than forwards or centers

    The bump you give to a center (or forward) depends on the draft round.

    Talent compresses as you move down the draft. If you bump Yao Ming’s rating by 0.8, it doesn’t do very much because the guys in front of him are some of the best in the league. Mehmet Okur is helped more because the players around him are not quite as good and the talent is closer to each other. So, round 1 and 2 should be about taking the best player available without worrying about position. In rounds 3 to 7, the bump starts to become a round for centers and a half a round for forwards. Round 8+, the bump increases to approximately 2 rounds for centers and a round for forwards. However, at this point, there is a lot of uncertainly in predicting player value and therefore the draft should become mostly about looking for sleepers and guys with upside with less regard for position.

    So, there you are in your draft, you’re on the clock, palms are starting to sweat and you can hear your own heart beating. It’s the middle of the second round, you sit there with pick number 15 scouring the cheat cheats. Do you reach for Brad Miller with the pick?

    No. Miller was ranked at #32 last year with a rating of 0.6. A bump of 0.8 to his rating would put him at #25, a worthy 3rd rounder, but not quite worth the second round reach. Of course, maybe you think Miller is going to have an awesome year, in which case you’re welcome to invite me into your league.

    * Ratings were calculated by me, using the standard mean/standard deviation calculation with effective free-throw and field goal percentage in place of regular FT and FG %.

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    • http://www.gatoradedump.blogspot.com Mike Prada

      This is really intriguing stuff. If I understood the nature of statistics as comprehensively as you do, I’d like to see if you could apply the same theory to fantasy football. Is it worth it to overvalue a tight end like Antonio Gates simply because he is the best at his position? Is there really statistical validity to the theory to draft running backs early on and wait on wide receivers/quarterbacks? It’s definetly interesting to consider using this model.

    • http://www.givemetherock.com PMad

      Thanks for the complement. This kind of analysis is probably even more appropriate for football because there are more positions and the scoring system is usually simplier (points). I did try it once with fantasy football a couple of years ago and found pretty much what you said, RBs and TEs get the bump, while you can wait a while to pick a QB. However, that led me to draft Todd Heap and Kellen Winslow (it was a 2 TE starter league) way too high in the same year they both got hurt. Sometimes uncertainly can overwhelm good intentions and planning.

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