A variety of team and individual records have already been set this season, which isn’t even three weeks old. Today’s column begins with a sampling of the highlights, followed by an examination of playing time by position and by teams.

Tim Duncan became the 11th player in NBA history with at least 14,000 rebounds, and soon thereafter became the third active player with at least 25,000 points (joining Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett). Manu Ginobili pointed out that Duncan is over 30,000 points if you include his unbelievable career playoff totals: 4,988 points on 50.0% shooting, 2,733 rebounds, 727 assists, 157 steals and 545 blocks.

Anthony Davis was on pace to become the first player in NBA history to lead the league in both steals per game and blocks per game, though John Wall took a slight lead (+0.03) after the Pelicans played on Tuesday. Davis is also in the top-five in scoring (25.5) and rebounding (11.4), and he’s No. 9 in FG percentage (57.9%). We’re running out of superlatives to describe his play. A quick look at Davis’ recent blurbs on Rotoworld reveal the following phrases: “He’s lapping the field for fantasy value,” “We haven’t seen this type of transcendent player in many, many years,” “Davis is dropping ginormous fantasy stat lines like it’s going out of style,” and yes…”We’re running out of superlatives for Davis.” See? I wasn’t kidding.

Editor’s Note: Rotoworld’s partner FanDuel is hosting a one-day $350,000 Fantasy Basketball league for Wednesday’s NBA games. It’s $25 to join and first prize is $40,000. Starts at 7pm ET on Wednesday. Here’s the FanDuel link.

Dirk Nowitzki passed the 27,000-point mark, overtaking Hakeem Olajuwon on the all-time scoring list in the process. Dirk is rolling along with top-15 fantasy value in under 28 minutes per game, and his per-minute efficiency is terrific to watch as the Mavs aren’t likely to increase his playing time much at age 36. When asked to compare his patented one-legged fade-away jumper with Olajuwon’s ‘Dream Shake’, Nowitzki gave a classic quote: “Hakeem to me is one of the greatest. I grew up watching him in the 90’s — his footwork, his touch was next to no other … I came up with a shot where I just have to basically lean back, don’t be athletic at all and just hoist it up. I came up with my own ‘Dream Shake’ I guess — the white version.”

The Grizzlies are off to their best start in franchise history at 10-1, including a series of comebacks and narrow wins on the road. They’re committing a stingy 12.0 turnovers per game and holding opponents to an average of 91.5 points, which has compensated for their sparse 3-point shooting (5.5 makes per game, 26th in the league) and surprising -2.1 rebound differential. Courtney Lee has been phenomenal while starting at SG alongside Tony Allen, even emerging as a top-20 fantasy value at this early stage. Vince Carter is still finding his groove with the second unit and the impending return of Nick Calathes from suspension will give them another boost, but they have their work cut out on Wednesday with half the team questionable due to flu-like symptoms.

Kobe Bryant set a dubious record for most missed field goals in an NBA career, but a few days later he blew past the 32,000-point mark to become the fourth-leading scorer in league history. He’s on pace to pass Michael Jordan (32,292) later this season, but he has a long way to go before approaching Karl Malone (36,928) or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (38,387). Kobe finally shot above 50% on Tuesday, scoring 28 points on 18 field goal attempts vs. the Hawks, but his awful FG% barely budged and is stuck at 38.9% on the season. That’s a significant caveat, without which he’s returning solid top-20 value.

*These stats came from a variety of sources including Basketball-Reference, ESPN, BasketballMonster and NBA.com.

Playing Time by Teams and Positions

Certain players like Dirk Nowitzki and Kawhi Leonard are capable of elite value despite playing around 30 minutes per game, but most players’ fantasy production is predicated on their playing time. I took a look at minutes-per-game for players by teams and by position, to help owners know what to look for when evaluating their own rosters.

I eliminated any players who haven’t appeared in at least four games, or who are averaging under 10 minutes per game. That leaves a population of 314 players, roughly corresponding to a 10-man rotation for each team.

First up is the minutes-by-position analysis.

Position	Average minutes/game	% over 30.0 minutes/game
Point Guards	25.17	34.4%
Shooting Guards	25.09	34.3%
Small Forwards	23.42	25.8%
Power Forwards	24.04	26.2%
Centers	22.88	20.0%

Guards fare well in this analysis, as PGs and SGs easily average the most minutes per game, and more than one-third of the players at each position gets 30+ minutes per game. Shooting guards as a group struggle to produce fantasy value despite their lofty playing time, as I’ve discussed elsewhere, but at least that’s not compounded by a lack of minutes.

Centers are predictably the lowest-playing-time group. Their position is the most prone to foul trouble, by a wide margin, and many teams rotate typical ‘PFs’ into the center spot as needed. That makes big men who reliably play 30+ minutes even more valuable, and there are only 12 of them so far this season: Nikola Vucevic leads them all with 36.7 minutes per game, followed by DeAndre Jordan, Chris Bosh, Marc Gasol, Pau Gasol (who technically plays PF anyway), Dwight Howard, Al Jefferson, Joakim Noah, Marcin Gortat, Derrick Favors, DeMarcus Cousins and Roy Hibbert. A few more high-profile centers just miss the cut, including Al Horford and Andre Drummond.

The good news is that centers seem uniquely capable of producing top-100 fantasy value in limited playing time. Andrew Bogut (27.6 minutes) has been a steady mid-round value this year, as has second-year center Kelly Olynyk (26.5) for the Celtics. Even more intriguing are players like Gorgui Dieng and Brandan Wright, the latter of whom is returning solid top-80 value despite playing just over 18 minutes per game! He’s doing it with phenomenal efficiency — 75.0% shooting and low turnovers are the bedrock of his value, with a handful of rebounds to round things out.

In fact, of the 26 players averaging at least top-150 value in 25 or fewer minutes, 15 are big men: Brandan Wright, Marreese Speights, Larry Sanders, Gorgui Dieng, Mirza Teletovic, Patrick Patterson, Ed Davis, Lavoy Allen, Kyle O’Quinn, Amare Stoudemire, Chris Kaman, Kevin Garnett, Tristan Thompson, Alex Len, Carl Landry. Low playing time for these guys isn’t necessarily a death-sentence for their fantasy value, as it might be for a less efficient player like Donald Sloan, Trey Burke or Arron Afflalo.

A variety of team and individual records have already been set this season, which isn’t even three weeks old. Today’s column begins with a sampling of the highlights, followed by an examination of playing time by position and by teams.

Tim Duncan became the 11th player in NBA history with at least 14,000 rebounds, and soon thereafter became the third active player with at least 25,000 points (joining Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett). Manu Ginobili pointed out that Duncan is over 30,000 points if you include his unbelievable career playoff totals: 4,988 points on 50.0% shooting, 2,733 rebounds, 727 assists, 157 steals and 545 blocks.

Anthony Davis was on pace to become the first player in NBA history to lead the league in both steals per game and blocks per game, though John Wall took a slight lead (+0.03) after the Pelicans played on Tuesday. Davis is also in the top-five in scoring (25.5) and rebounding (11.4), and he’s No. 9 in FG percentage (57.9%). We’re running out of superlatives to describe his play. A quick look at Davis’ recent blurbs on Rotoworld reveal the following phrases: “He’s lapping the field for fantasy value,” “We haven’t seen this type of transcendent player in many, many years,” “Davis is dropping ginormous fantasy stat lines like it’s going out of style,” and yes…”We’re running out of superlatives for Davis.” See? I wasn’t kidding.

Editor’s Note: Rotoworld’s partner FanDuel is hosting a one-day $350,000 Fantasy Basketball league for Wednesday’s NBA games. It’s $25 to join and first prize is $40,000. Starts at 7pm ET on Wednesday. Here’s the FanDuel link.

Dirk Nowitzki passed the 27,000-point mark, overtaking Hakeem Olajuwon on the all-time scoring list in the process. Dirk is rolling along with top-15 fantasy value in under 28 minutes per game, and his per-minute efficiency is terrific to watch as the Mavs aren’t likely to increase his playing time much at age 36. When asked to compare his patented one-legged fade-away jumper with Olajuwon’s ‘Dream Shake’, Nowitzki gave a classic quote: “Hakeem to me is one of the greatest. I grew up watching him in the 90’s — his footwork, his touch was next to no other … I came up with a shot where I just have to basically lean back, don’t be athletic at all and just hoist it up. I came up with my own ‘Dream Shake’ I guess — the white version.”

The Grizzlies are off to their best start in franchise history at 10-1, including a series of comebacks and narrow wins on the road. They’re committing a stingy 12.0 turnovers per game and holding opponents to an average of 91.5 points, which has compensated for their sparse 3-point shooting (5.5 makes per game, 26th in the league) and surprising -2.1 rebound differential. Courtney Lee has been phenomenal while starting at SG alongside Tony Allen, even emerging as a top-20 fantasy value at this early stage. Vince Carter is still finding his groove with the second unit and the impending return of Nick Calathes from suspension will give them another boost, but they have their work cut out on Wednesday with half the team questionable due to flu-like symptoms.

Kobe Bryant set a dubious record for most missed field goals in an NBA career, but a few days later he blew past the 32,000-point mark to become the fourth-leading scorer in league history. He’s on pace to pass Michael Jordan (32,292) later this season, but he has a long way to go before approaching Karl Malone (36,928) or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (38,387). Kobe finally shot above 50% on Tuesday, scoring 28 points on 18 field goal attempts vs. the Hawks, but his awful FG% barely budged and is stuck at 38.9% on the season. That’s a significant caveat, without which he’s returning solid top-20 value.

*These stats came from a variety of sources including Basketball-Reference, ESPN, BasketballMonster and NBA.com.

Playing Time by Teams and Positions

Certain players like Dirk Nowitzki and Kawhi Leonard are capable of elite value despite playing around 30 minutes per game, but most players’ fantasy production is predicated on their playing time. I took a look at minutes-per-game for players by teams and by position, to help owners know what to look for when evaluating their own rosters.

I eliminated any players who haven’t appeared in at least four games, or who are averaging under 10 minutes per game. That leaves a population of 314 players, roughly corresponding to a 10-man rotation for each team.

First up is the minutes-by-position analysis.

Position	Average minutes/game	% over 30.0 minutes/game
Point Guards	25.17	34.4%
Shooting Guards	25.09	34.3%
Small Forwards	23.42	25.8%
Power Forwards	24.04	26.2%
Centers	22.88	20.0%

Guards fare well in this analysis, as PGs and SGs easily average the most minutes per game, and more than one-third of the players at each position gets 30+ minutes per game. Shooting guards as a group struggle to produce fantasy value despite their lofty playing time, as I’ve discussed elsewhere, but at least that’s not compounded by a lack of minutes.

Centers are predictably the lowest-playing-time group. Their position is the most prone to foul trouble, by a wide margin, and many teams rotate typical ‘PFs’ into the center spot as needed. That makes big men who reliably play 30+ minutes even more valuable, and there are only 12 of them so far this season: Nikola Vucevic leads them all with 36.7 minutes per game, followed by DeAndre Jordan, Chris Bosh, Marc Gasol, Pau Gasol (who technically plays PF anyway), Dwight Howard, Al Jefferson, Joakim Noah, Marcin Gortat, Derrick Favors, DeMarcus Cousins and Roy Hibbert. A few more high-profile centers just miss the cut, including Al Horford and Andre Drummond.

The good news is that centers seem uniquely capable of producing top-100 fantasy value in limited playing time. Andrew Bogut (27.6 minutes) has been a steady mid-round value this year, as has second-year center Kelly Olynyk (26.5) for the Celtics. Even more intriguing are players like Gorgui Dieng and Brandan Wright, the latter of whom is returning solid top-80 value despite playing just over 18 minutes per game! He’s doing it with phenomenal efficiency — 75.0% shooting and low turnovers are the bedrock of his value, with a handful of rebounds to round things out.

In fact, of the 26 players averaging at least top-150 value in 25 or fewer minutes, 15 are big men: Brandan Wright, Marreese Speights, Larry Sanders, Gorgui Dieng, Mirza Teletovic, Patrick Patterson, Ed Davis, Lavoy Allen, Kyle O’Quinn, Amare Stoudemire, Chris Kaman, Kevin Garnett, Tristan Thompson, Alex Len, Carl Landry. Low playing time for these guys isn’t necessarily a death-sentence for their fantasy value, as it might be for a less efficient player like Donald Sloan, Trey Burke or Arron Afflalo.

From player positions, we move on to team-by-team playing time assessments. Generally speaking, the more players a team has averaging over 10.0 minutes per game, the deeper their rotation has been this season. A lack of players over 30.0 minutes per game suggests that a team’s best fantasy players are being held in check by limited court-time. The team’s mean minutes per game sums this up, with the lowest means suggesting it will be hard to find reliable value in a particular coach’s rotations.

For example, the Nuggets have the lowest mean playing time at 20.9 minutes per game. They have 12 players averaging at least 10.0 minutes per game, but only one of them is exceeding 30.0 minutes per game (Ty Lawson). Arron Afflalo and Wilson Chandler are close, but guys like Kenneth Faried, Timofey Mozgov and Randy Foye are languishing in the mid-to-low 20s. A deep rotation with minutes spread thinly across the roster is bad news for fantasy owners, and coach Brian Shaw shows no signs of relenting.

The teams with the next-lowest mean playing times are the Bucks (21.6), Wolves (22.4) and Knicks (22.4), all of whom have just one player exceeding 30 minutes per game (Brandon Knight, Thaddeus Young and Carmelo Anthony, respectively). It’s unsurprising, then, that Milwaukee only has one player with top-100 so far this season, while the Wolves (Knight and Larry Sanders) and Knicks (Melo and Iman Shumpert) are under-represented with two each.

On the other side of the spectrum, there are six teams with rotations tight enough that only nine qualifying players are averaging at least 10.0 minutes per game — the Nets, Cavaliers, Pistons, Warriors, 76ers and Suns. The Cavaliers’ “Big Three” is getting more than their share of playing time, with Kevin Love, Kyrie Irving and LeBron James all averaging at least 37.0 minutes per game (LeBron is over 39.0). James said in a recent interview that he wants that number to come down. “I don’t want to [play heavy minutes] all year,” he said. “Obviously right now it’s difficult because we’re trying to find a groove and we’re trying to find a rhythm … but at the same time you gotta be smart about it.” Head coach David Blatt should concede to his superstar’s request, but a slight dip in minutes is nothing for LBJ’s owners to fret about.

The 76ers are an interesting anomaly. While the rest of the six teams mentioned above all rank in the top-10 for highest mean playing time, the Sixers are middle-of-the-pack. Tony Wroten is the only player currently averaging 30+ minutes per game, though Michael Carter-Williams would also make the cut if he’d qualified (by playing in at least four games). The rest of Philly’s roster tends to see 15-28 minutes per game, with the result that not a single player is averaging top-150 value in nine-cat leagues (Wroten and MCW both surge ahead if you punt their turnovers and/or FT%). As for Tony Wroten, his weaknesses are too glaring for me to comfortably deploy him in typical fantasy formats, especially with his touches and usage rate threatened by the return of Michael Carter-Williams. Look elsewhere for help at PG.

The unfortunate Thunder lead the NBA with a mean playing time of 28.7 minutes, far ahead of the second-place Pistons (27.3). OKC is one of 12 teams with four players averaging 30.0+ minutes, but they’re one of just six teams with four players above 32.0 minutes — the other teams are the Blazers, Magic, Pelicans, Grizzlies and Hawks. Portland coach Terry Stotts is particularly inclined to give his starters heavy minutes, as he proved last season, and only the Thunder see a significant easing once minute-hogs Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook return to action. They were spotted going through a light workout on Tuesday but aren’t likely to return until the very end of November, at the earliest.

Here’s a team-by-team breakdown showing how many players are averaging at least 10.0 minutes per game, how many are averaging more than 30.0 per game, and each team’s averages. It’s ascending by mean minutes per game.

Nuggets: 12 players over 10.0 minutes (one over 30.0 minutes), team mean of 20.9 minutes per game

Bucks: 12 players (one over 30.0), mean of 21.6

Wolves: 12 players (one over 30.0), mean of 22.5

Knicks: 11 players (one over 30.0), mean of 22.6

Hornets: 12 players (three over 30.0), mean of 22.7

Spurs: 11 players (two over 30.0), mean of 22.9

Mavericks: 10 players (two over 30.0), mean of 22.9

Heat: 12 players (three over 30.0), mean of 23.1

Celtics: 11 players (four over 30.0), mean of 23.2

Grizzlies: 11 players (four over 30.0), mean of 23.3

Trail Blazers: 11 players (four over 30.0), mean of 23.3

Wizards: 11 players (three over 30.0), mean of 23.5

76ers: 9 players (one over 30.0), mean of 23.7

Hawks: 11 players (four over 30.0), mean of 23.7

Kings: 10 players (four over 30.0), mean of 24.2

Raptors: 10 players (two over 30.0), mean of 24.2

Jazz: 10 players (four over 30.0), mean of 24.3

Lakers: 10 players (four over 30.0), mean of 24.4

Magic: 10 players (four over 30.0), mean of 24.4

Pacers: 11 players (four over 30.0), mean of 24.5

Clippers: 10 players (three over 30.0), mean of 24.8

Pelicans: 10 players (four over 30.0), mean of 25.0

Bulls: 11 players (four over 30.0), mean of 25.3

Warriors: 9 players (three over 30.0), mean of 25.3

Nets: 9 players (three over 30.0), mean of 26.0

Cavaliers: 9 players (three over 30.0), mean of 26.3

Suns: 9 players (three over 30.0), mean of 26.4

Rockets: 10 players (three over 30.0), mean of 26.8

Pistons: 9 players (three over 30.0), mean of 27.3

Thunder: 11 players (four over 30.0), mean of 28.7

If you have any questions, drop me a line on Twitter @Knaus_RW, where I’ll provide fantasy advice, injury updates and more throughout the course of the season.