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Fantasy basketball is all about lists: the top 20 point guards, the top 10 rookies, the 99 reasons why I hate Bonzi Wells. The game is driven by stats and these stats give us ample opportunity to calculate, sort, rank, and evaluate players in pretty much any way that we can think of, such as with the GMTR player rater. But instead of giving you another list, what if there was a way to visually display players to see how they relate to one another?
I’m sure you’ll be ecstatic to find out there is such a way. It’s called Multidimensional Scaling, but I promise that’s the last time I’ll mention those two words. Basically, the procedure takes information for each player (in this case, the 9 most commonly used statistical categories in rotisserie leagues) and places each player on a two-dimensional map* so that the more dissimilar a pair of players, the further away they are from each other on the map. Got all that? Similar players = close together. Dissimilar players = far apart. And as the distance grows, the more and more dissimilar players become to each other.
Here is the perceptual map of the top 100 fantasy players for 07-08 (Click on the picture to see a version that can actually be read)
First off, does this map pass the smell test? Does it make sense? Well, on one side of the map we have Marcus Camby. On the other side we have Steve Nash. They seem like pretty different players. So far, so good.
Second, this map takes 9 pieces of information on each player and condenses into two dimensions. However, it leaves it up to us to figure out what these dimensions actually are. The first, horizontal, dimension is the easy one. It clearly goes from big men (or guys who play like it) on one side to little men on the other, with a bunch of forwards in the middle. The second, vertical, dimension is a little tougher. I have a guess myself, but I’d like to get your opinion. What’s your take on the vertical dimension?
A couple of other interesting things to be gleamed from the map:
- The most unique player in this group is not Lebron James, Kobe Bryant, or even Chris Paul. As you can probably see, it’s Dwight Howard by a huge margin.
- The most similar player to Dwight Howard is either Josh Smith or Amare Stoudemire, and even then, they are about as similar as Chris Paul is to Gerald Wallace (really not at all).
- I could get out my ruler, but it looks like the two most dissimilar players are Dwight Howard and Peja Stojakovic.
- There is some truth to the statement that “no player is average.” See the hole right in the middle of the map, where a completely average player would end up? Someone like Devin Harris, Mike Dunleavy, or Luol Deng would probably fall into the “most average” spot, but no one is perfectly average.
- The purest PG? According to the map, it’s Steve Nash, followed by Jason Kidd and Chris Paul. Similarly, Marcus Camby or Dwight Howard are the most “center”.
- What useful information does this map provide for fantasy purposes? Well, it does show you which players are very similar to each other. Say you’re in a draft and you miss out on someone like Tim Duncan, who would be a perfect fit for your team. A quick glance at the map and you’ll see that Al Jefferson would be the next closest thing to Duncan.
- The downside: The map doesn’t provide player rankings (although it could), so it isn’t a guide on who you should draft or in what order. Still, it’s a lot more interesting to look at than a list of names and numbers.
* The map doesn’t necessarily have to be in two dimensions, it can be in 1, 3, 25, it’s just the easiest to interpret using two.
