I Like The Way You Score: Point Inflation

Categorized as: Fantasy Basketball
Posted on: November 22nd, 2006

In part 1 of this post, I asked about the ease of finding players off waivers who can contribute points to a roto team, and then failed to answer my own question. Well, Nels came to the rescue with this comment (my apologies for stealing it, but it deserves its moment in the light):

Ask, and ye shall receive:

2006-07: 116 players with 10 PPG and at least 85% of games played
2005-06: 100 players with 10 PPG and at least 70 (85%) games played
2004-05: 93
2003-04: 96
2002-03: 92
2001-02: 98
2000-01: 93

That’s an 18% increase since 01-02, and a 26% increase since 02-03 (which I believe is the first year Patrick was using for his comparison). So there are 26% more “quality” players who can consistently get you 10+ PPG.

Here is what Nels was saying in graphical format, for any visual types out there (you might want to click on it to see the full size image).

Increasing the PPG cutoff to 13 (this approximates “available and useful talent”) results in 81 players making the cut so far this year, 67 last year, and 63 in 2002/2003. It’s a slightly more modest increase, especially since the 81 number is likely to go down once more games are played this year.

While Nels provided a straightforward answer to the question, I came to a similar conclusion using a much more convoluted and time consuming method. To each his own, I guess. Here’s my Rube Goldberg approach to the same problem:

Using the player rankings for each year from 2002 to 2006, I divided players into 3 distinct categories.

• Starters (players 1 to 100) – The best of the bunch. In a 10 team league with 10 starters, a total of 100 players would be starting in the league. Of course, these guys would be available for trading, but you’d definitely have to give up value in return.
• Bench Players (101-150) – I assumed 5 bench spots, for a total of 5*10=50 players. These guys are more available than the starters, but still not free.
• Waiver Players (151+) – Ah, freely available talent.

In order to model a typical fantasy league, I looked at 2 distinct measures, the average of the group (e.g., the average points per game for all starters) and average of the top 3 performers (e.g., the top 3 scorers who fall into the bench player category). The point of the latter measure being: If your scouting waivers for points, you’re going to pick up the top scorer from waivers, not the average one. I averaged the top 3 scorers in each category instead of pick the top one, however, to prevent an outlier from screwing up the analysis.

How does each group stack up in terms of points per game (click on the chart to view a larger one):

Back to the original question – yes, points have become easier to pick up from guys off waivers. However, they’ve also become easier to get by trading for certain bench players and they’ve increased among starters as a whole. The points per game from the top 3 scorers in the waivers group increased from 12.4 in 2002 to 14.7 in 2006. The top three bench guys increased from 14.2 to 16.2, while the starters as a group increased their scoring from 16.5 to 17.2, on average. Overall, the leaguewide scoring increase is generally being driven by the large group of starters, but the bench and waiver group are also seeing increases among certain players.

So, it looks like we’ve got a little point inflation going on. Back in the day, we use to be happy with 15 points a game, and goddammit, now everyone wants 17. Next thing you know, 20 will be the new 15.

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