More on Ranking Players by Position

Categorized as: Author: Patrick, Fantasy Basketball, Fantasy Basketball Strategy
Posted on: June 10th, 2008

A while ago (ok, it was more like a few days, but that’s forever in blog years) Nels posted a series of emails discussing the idea of ranking players by taking into account their position. The idea being is that a player becomes more valuable if the position he plays is scarce (think centers). For example, in the CBS 30-man league last year, I waited until round 6 to draft my starting center. 6 * 30 + center = Fabricio Oberto, apparently. While I was busy drafting backup shooting guards, everyone else was picking the center position bone dry. It was a mistake that cost me a shot at the title (just go with me on that).

Anecdotes aside, we haven’t really quantified how important positions are to the value of a player. And instead of answering that question, I’ll just throw some random words together and hope they related to the subject at hand.

1. Nels is correct in his post. Analyzing last year’s stats only tell us what HAS happened, which as everyone who has played fantasy sports knows, is decidedly different from what WILL happen. When Gilbert Arenas goes down for the year, your team is screwed no matter how many stats you have to back up the sheer awesomeness of that pick.

2. That being said, (excluding stat projections) doesn’t all analysis deal with the past? John Hollinger’s PER, Roland Ratings, Win Score, Tommy Points, etc. These stats still have value (well, some of them) because they help us understand the game, players, and what goes into winning and losing. Positional value is like a quieter, coherent and sane version of Tommy Points.

3. How about some actual data? Sounds good to me. Here is a graph of 2007-08 GMTR ratings for the top 20 players at each position.* You may want to click on the image to view a bigger version.

The graph tells us a bunch of interesting stuff (again, go with me on that).

• It appears that the “take the best player available in the first couple rounds” approach is a valid one as there is a large drop-off in value after the first 1 or 2 players at every position. There’s no need to be drafting Yao Ming when Chris Paul is on the table.
• PF’s, specifically Shawn Marion, was the “worst” best player at any position last year. That’s a big change over previous years when Garnett was a fantasy beast.
• After the third center (Marcus Camby), centers did indeed lag behind the other positions by about a half a point of rating (1-2 rounds in a draft).
• Small forward was the deepest position in 07-08.
• It’s tough to find a big man in the late rounds. After the 11th one, PFs sucked as much as centers.

It’s no comprehensive analysis, but it does hint at the fact that you should take a player’s position into account when drafting, especially in the mid-to-late rounds. Like Nels, I’d take Kobe over Amare in the first round next year, but I can guarantee that Fabricio Oberto won’t be on my team again.

*To make things easy on myself, I used the positions provided by Dougstats.com, which classifies a player at his natural position. Yes Chris Bosh qualifies as a center in Yahoo leagues, but he’s included with the PFs here. It’s quick, it’s dirty, and it’ll give us a general idea of what’s going on, even if the data behind the graph isn’t perfect.

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