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Fantasy Basketball Draft Tip #2: If you think he’s a sleeper and I think he’s a sleeper, then he’s not a sleeper

Author Icon for Patrick

Categorized as: Author: Patrick, Fantasy Basketball, Fantasy Basketball Strategy
Posted on: July 25th, 2008

Whether it be stocks, basketball players, or boy bands, we’re all looking for the next hot thing (don’t lie to yourself, my money is on Los Primeros). Despite the fact that the next big thing usually comes out of nowhere, we all think we can somehow discover it before anyone else and in the process look incredibly smart make a little scratch from our superior intelligence along the way.

So, it’s no surprise that one of the go to topics for any fantasy basketball pundit is the sleeper list, which is usually a list of relatively unknown/less successful players (almost always young) that is vomited onto a page using words like upside, opportunity, youth…

There is a problem with this approach. Like a stock, the minute everyone starts talking about a player and how he’s going to break out this year, he’s likely overvalued. For example, everyone was getting all lathered up about Lamarcus Aldridge last summer – and for good reason. Here was a 22-year old, second-year player who was both athletic and talented and happened to finish the last month of his rookie season on an absolute tear. You could have replaced the word “sleeper” with “Aldridge” before last season and no one would have blinked. The hysteria built to a point that Dr. A of Rotoworld selected Aldridge in the THIRD round of the Dropping Dimes Experts League draft. The third round, in case you just missed that. Like a house in Southern California in 2006, the bidding war for Aldridge was on and in this case, Dr. A “won.”

Aldridge finished last season ranked #69 on the GMTR player rater, a very respectable showing for a second year player still learning how to play the league. Still, his showing was a far cry from being a third round pick and, even if you got him in the fifth round, you ended up with a right valued player, not a sleeper.

So, here’s my tip. Get the word “sleeper” out of your mind. When you go into a draft with the mindset that Aldridge is a sleeper and you need to get him, you’re likely to do silly things like draft him in the third round. Drafts are fluid, things change, the asshole drafting in front of you steals one of your picks and then you start to panic. That guy who was supposed to be a third round pick and is still available in the sixth round of your draft – guess what – your draft just promoted him to sleeper status. And it didn’t care what all the expert sleeper lists had to say on the subject.

So, make sure you have a full cheatsheet listing every player, don’t just have a list of the players you like or a list of sleepers. Every player has a value or spot where it makes sense to draft them, whether you like them personally or not. It’s important to know what those spots are, in case a few unexpected things happen during your draft (which is usually the case).

…Or maybe you really thought Aldridge was going to be a top-25 player last year, which you can probably blame on the sleeper lists as well. Notice that these lists often don’t tell you where you should draft a guy, just that he’s a “sleeper,” like it’s a secret code word and once you run it through your Little Orphan Annie Secret Society decoder pin, you should know what to do with that information. Sleeper is an easy word to throw around (I’m guiltily of it as well). It gets a point across without having to be specific or give any real predictions. But that same vagueness makes it a pretty useless term when you actually want to learn something about a player and it’s especially useless when prepping for a draft.

So, I promise, you won’t be hearing any more sleeper talk from me.

Other Stuff Like This:

  • Hey Dr. A, thanks for checking in! I hope there are no hard feelings for me using your pick an example. I could have talked about the 25 different times I’ve drafted Darko Milicic, but I was trying to avoid mentioning that embarrassment again.
  • Dr. A
    OK, Aldridge was a BIG stretch...I had a competitive team and was not all that upset with Aldridge's season, but yeah, it was a mistake. And I knew going into making the pick that it might or might not work out. I'm just glad that there is a lesson to be learned here and we can do better next time. God knows I didn't have Aldridge as a third-round pick over on Rotoworld...Some times the heat of the moment (with no money on the line) can take over...
  • Hawthorne Wingo
    Dr. A: What a maroon!
  • I couldn't put it better myself, dyeyk2000.
  • dyeyk2000
    i guess it's just a matter of setting ceilings. how early are you willing to go with a player? obviously asking for 3rd round production form aldridge last year was a bit of a stretch. it was possible, but it was pushing it.

    and just a tip. try not to pick players at the round you THINK they will perform. always try to get a discount with your picks.

    for example, if you thought aldridge would perform at 3rd round level last year AT HIS BEST, you shouldn't pick him at the 3rd round. instead go for someone who can possibly outvalue their 3rd round draft position (ex. last year were baron and camby) . at worse these guys would have given you 3rd round value. at worse aldridge was possibly 6th or 7th round value. always pick at floor value, and then take into account possible gains.
  • @Nick - you've got a nice problem to have, that's for sure. I kind of agree with Nels, Butler is the best player you mentioned other than Bron. However, Butler happens to play the same position as LeBron and is an injury risk. So, I'd either:

    1. Take a risk and go with Butler (maybe trade him for a player at a different position, or
    2. Go a little safer with Iverson and lock up your PG spot.
    3. or go really safe with Gay or Granger (they should both perform similarly). Iverson will probably be better than both of these guys, but he's getting a little old and could possibly start declining fast.
  • @Nick, it's either going to be Caron or AI. I don't think the other 3 you mention are going to outperform those two. On the Big Board, we have Caron at 9 and AI at 11 (I am assuming Iverson, not Iguodala). Since it's a keeper league, I'd go with Caron, since he's got about 5 years on Iverson.
  • @Karlo, you are close right. That is pretty much the definition of a sleeper. But there are two parts to being a sleeper. The first one is what you mentioned, but the second is that you have to be able to draft the player who is going to be better than last year at a position in the draft lower than where he will end up in the rankings.

    Thus, Patrick's point is that in this era of fantasy sports where information is abundant, players who appear on multiple sleeper lists tend to become overvalued and end up going higher in the draft than they should, so even if they do produce higher than they should, people who've drafted them are only getting what they paid for, instead of getting someone who is more valuable than where they were picked.
  • Be sure to drink your Ovaltine... Ovaltine?

    So I'm in a 10-team daily lineup H2H league with 2 keepers and 6 active roster spots (PG, SG, SF, PF, C, and Util). We use 9 cats: FGM, FTM, 3PT, FG%, R, A, S, B, TO.

    My keeper candidates are: LeBron, Caron, AI, Rudy Gay, Steve Nash, and Danny Grainger (yeah, I won the league last year and no, I'm not sure how I ended up with that team having made ZERO trades during the season). I'm definitely holding onto LeBron. Otherwise I have no idea whom to keep. Any thoughts? (Q for both Patrick and Nels).
  • dyeyk2000
    me! me! i coined that! i want my own column on it! <3
  • I think that when people generally say that a player is a sleeper, you predict them to produce higher than they have in the previous season. Players like Kobe Bryant or Lebron aren't considered sleepers because they are always expected to produce at the level they produced last year. However, like Hedo Turgulu last year, people may mave predicted that he would have a break out year, but nobody expected. In my opinion, that is the definition of a sleeper.
  • One clarification about the post - I'm not against recommending/dissing players, I mean, that's kinda of what we do here at GMTR, I'm just not a fan of those 20 person sleeper lists that treat ever player as "youvegot togetthisguy-causehesgoingtobeawesome".

    Marbury may be a "breakout candidate" (my new favorite term) but I'm going to try to explain my case and tell you not to pick him before pick 150 or so. I still may be an idiot for joining team Marbury, but at least I'm an idiot with an alibi. :)
  • breakout candidates... I like the sound of that.
  • Anonymous
    so you're gonna stop calling them sleepers and call them what? breakout candidates now? :P
  • You’re just baiting me right now, MeNoRikey, right? Well, the cheese smells too good to resist.

    Generally I'm a believer in playing the draft as it comes at you, like I said in the post. However, there is a guy so repugnant, a guy with absolutely no redeeming value, that I can safely say that he will not be on anyone’s sleeper list. No one else is going to want him and there is a small chance he could have some value. He is:

    Stephon Marbury

    Done laughing? Ok, all signs point to him being released by the Knicks. But thye owe him $21 million, so no one is going to trade for him, and if he sticks with the team his competition at the point is Chris Duhon and some dude named Anthony Robertson. There is a small chance that everything will break right for Marbury, in which case you’ve snagged a low end starting PG in the last round of a draft (I wouldn’t pick him any higher than that) and if not, you can drop him and move on.

    Of course, watch him now get released this afternoon.
  • MNR, If I told you my PWWDWTMPWNTODWTICDHIALRs, then they wouldn't really be PWWDWTMPWNTODWTICDHIALRs anymore, would they?

    You were probably asking, Patrick, thought, right? I'll let him decide if he wants to answer your question, thereby contradicting and/or destroying the entire point of his post.
  • MeNoRikey
    Just a quick question. What player do you think will do well that most people will not think of doing well, thereby I can draft him in a lower round? Thanks.
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