Offseason Beat: Draft Guide Preview: Schedules
It’s draft season time and as a part of our previews for the Draft Guide, here is a taste of what Doc has been doing for schedule analysis. It’s a concise and extremely valuable column, and for the rest of that analysis and way more you can click here to check into the guide. You’ll get 1st Half and 2nd Half breakdowns, playoff schedule analysis and other useful tidbits. The guide itself is our biggest guide to date and the projections are modeled after the Bruski 150.
I’m also getting a bunch of questions about when the B150 will be released and the official date for that on the free site is October 19. Last year we did good and brought back an MVP award. In the putting one’s money where the mouth is department, we brought back a bronze in the National Fantasy Basketball Championship’s most expensive contest, despite having to endure Russell Westbrook‘s time off the floor. Rotoworld’s flagship ranking system has produced top-3 finishes in each of the last four seasons among NFBKC competition. Considering I didn’t spend the summer getting married and traveling like last year, I feel even better about this year’s work so keep an eye out for that.
Editor’s Note: You can follow Doc on Twitter right here and Bru can be followed here.
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2015-16 WEEKLY SCHEDULE BREAKDOWN
Steve “Dr. A” Alexander
Working the schedule in weekly fantasy leagues can give you a huge advantage over your opponent. I wish I were better at taking my own advice because I tend to ignore the schedule once I post this column each year, and then usually end up getting haunted by someone using it to beat me in the playoffs. In any case, here’s a look at each team’s schedule and how it looks for the first and second halves of the season, the fantasy playoffs as well as other tidbits that can help you win your league.
If you’re in a league that limits starts to 82 games per position, or you just don’t care about the weekly number of games on the schedule, you can safely move on to another column.
I broke the season into two halves, ignoring several short weeks. This year, Week 1 (Oct. 26) through Week 11 (Jan. 4) represents the First Half Schedule. For the second half, I don’t count Weeks 16, 17 and 25, as they are dominated by mostly two-game weeks. There are some exceptions, which I will cover later. So each half contains 11 full weeks of hoops action.
Overall Schedule
I like to judge the best overall schedule by which teams have the most four-game weeks each year. This time around, the Warriors, of all teams, have 14 four-game weeks to lead the way. They also have a perfect playoff schedule, to boot. The Celtics and Magic have 13 four-game weeks. On the flip side, the Nets and Pelicans have just nine four-game weeks, and the Hawks, Bulls, Pistons, Pacers, Thunder, Spurs and Jazz have just 10 four-game weeks this season.
Four-Game Weeks
14 – GSW
13 – BOS, ORL
12 – DEN, MIA, NYK, PHI, POR, SAC, TOR, WAS
11 – CHA, CLE, DAL, HOU, LAC, LAL, MEM, MIL, MIN, PHX
10 – ATL, CHI, DET, IND, OKC, SAS, UTA
9 – BRK, NOP
Five-Game Weeks
There are possibly more five-game weeks this year than any other. I counted a five-gamer as a four-gamer for the purpose of compiling four-game weeks above, but here are the six teams with five-game weeks.
Nets – Week 23 (playoffs)
Bulls – Week 23 (playoffs)
Wolves – Week 3
Suns – Week 10
Raptors – Week 21 (playoffs)
Jazz – Week 11
While the Bulls and Nets don’t have many four-game weeks, the five-gamers in the playoffs help to offset the poor schedule in head-to-head leagues. The Raptors already had a strong four-game schedule and it gets a boost with five games in Week 23.
Editor’s Note: For the rest of this article and to check into everything the guide has to offer you can click here.
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