The Numbers Game: Point Leagues: Scoring is King
Points-leagues don’t get much love for a simple reason — they come in a wide array of styles. Whether you play in a 10-team or 14-team league, re-draft or keeper, it’s almost always simpler and more universally-applicable to refer to 8-cat or 9-cat values. This column won’t dive into specific player values in points-leagues — I’ll wait on that until the season is well underway — but it will identify which categories are most important in a variety of points-league formats.
The scoring systems I’ll discuss today are the ‘default’ scoring systems for Yahoo!, ESPN, CBS, FanDuel and Yahoo! DFS. I understand that plenty of leagues, particularly those that are very competitive, have their own customized scoring settings. If the scoring below doesn’t apply directly to your league(s), hopefully it will at least show you an interesting way to look at player values in points-leagues, or refine your waiver-wire stragy. It may also inspire you to tweak your scoring in future seasons.
*The charts and stats I cite are based on combined averages for the top-200 players from the 2014-15 season.
You can follow me on Twitter @Knaus_RW.
Yahoo! standard
Roster: PG, SG, G, SF, PF, F, C, UTIL, UTIL, IR, IR, Bench (x3)
Scoring
Points: +0.5
3-pointers: +3.0
FG attempts: -0.45
FG makes: +1.0
FT attempts: -0.75
FT makes: +1.0
Rebounds: +1.5
Assists: +2.0
Steals: +3.0
Blocks: +3.0
Turnovers: -2.0
This Yahoo system is instructive. Roto and H2H leagues weight every category equally, so a relatively small number of steals or blocks are just as important as voluminous points or rebounds. Defensive stats are de-valued in points leagues, almost without exception, and this Yahoo scoring system is actually kinder than most to steals and blocks.
At face value it looks like rebounds are the most important category, which would be the lone exception among the points-league settings we’re looking at today. However, once you factor in FGs and FTs (while subtracting FGAs and FTAs), ‘scoring’ as a holistic category accounts for 39.4% of all available points, while rebounds are at 28.8%. Targeting high-volume scorers makes sense in virtually all points-league formats.
ESPN: ESPN’s “standard” points system is a very basic +1 or -1 for a variety of typical stats. It’s meant to be changed and really is not a good system — somehow made field goals are worth +1 while simple attempts are worth -1. However, I looked through ESPN’s league directory at the ‘detailed settings’ for a few dozen leagues, both private and public, and a shocking number of them simply use the default. Given that people actually do use these settings, that’s what I’m going with (plus there’s no other ‘default’ to analyze). If nothing else, it should inspire people to never use ESPN’s default scoring system.
Roster: PG, SG, G, SF, PF, F, C, C, Util (x3), Bench (x3)
Scoring
Points: +1
FG attempts: -1
FG makes: +1
FT attempts: -1
FT makes: +1
Rebounds: +1
Assists: +1
Steals: +1
Blocks: +1
Turnovers: -1
More than 1/3 of all ‘positive’ points are erased by the inclusion of a -1 weight for field goal attempts, which is ridiculously punitive. And yet ESPN’s ‘default’ custom scoring is not an exception to the high-volume-scorer rule of thumb. Adding all of the positive scoring categories with the negative ones, we find that ‘scoring’ still accounts for 49.2% of all available points. Blocks (3.6%) and steals (6.2%) get short shrift once again. The biggest takeaway here is: don’t be lazy and use ESPN’s default setting.
FanDuel
Roster: PG, PG, SG, SG, SF, SF, PF, PF, C
Scoring
2-pointer: +2
3-pointer: +3
FT makes: +1
Rebounds: +1.2
Assists: +1.5
Steals: +2
Blocks: +2
Turnovers: -1
Here is a table showing what percentage of available scoring was accounted for by each category in FanDuel last year:
2PM: 31.7%
REB: 24.7%
AST: 17.2%
3PM: 11.7%
FTM: 9.6%
STL: 7.6%
BLK: 4.4%
Once again, scoring was king. This time it actually eclipsed the 50% mark, at a combined 53.1% for 2-pointers, 3-pointers and free throws. FanDuel (and Yahoo’s DFS leagues, below) does not impose any penalty for missed shots, whether from the field or the FT line. This makes Andre Drummond, DeAndre Jordan and Dwight Howard much more palatable, of course, but it also gives a big boost to low-FG% shooters like Kobe Bryant, Kemba Walker, Ricky Rubio or DeMar DeRozan.
Yahoo Daily Leagues:
Roster: PG, SG, G, SF, PF, F, C, UTIL
Scoring:
Points: +1
3-pointers: +0.5
Rebounds: +1.2
Assists: +1.5
Steals: +2
Blocks: +2
Turnovers: -1
Look familiar? This system is exactly the same as FanDuel, except that it lumps all scoring cats into ‘points’ and tacks on an extra +0.5 for made 3-pointers. That doesn’t make a huge difference on any given night but it’s worth keeping in mind when building your DFS teams with Yahoo. Last season, for instance, that 3-point bump would have tacked on a not-insignificant +1.5 points to Kyle Korver‘s average value.
CBS
Roster: C, F, F, F, F, G, G, G, G, UTIL, Bench (x3)
Scoring
Points: +1
Rebounds: +1
Assists: +2
Steals: +1
Blocks: +1
Turnovers: -1
According to the page explaining CBS’ rules for 2015, “Each NBA player’s points will be averaged based on the number of games he played during the scoring period. For example, if Dwyane Wade scores 90 Fantasy points in 3 games, 30 points will be contributed to the team score.” This doesn’t impact the % of value assigned to each category, it’s just a quirky thing I felt like sharing.
CBS keeps it simple with six categories, and the tyranny of points continues unchecked. The combined value of assists, rebounds, steals and blocks would have been 2,521 last season (again, based on the average stats of the top-200 players). Points alone would have been 2,693. This system at least has the advantage of not docking points for FG and FT attempts, as does its conceptual ESPN counterpart.
You can’t change the scoring systems for DFS leagues, you can only learn which categories (and therefore players) they favor, and exploit the rules to your advantage. For other leagues, however, where you have control over the settings, it seems to me that some tweaks would be desirable. Having scoring-related categories be the most potent is fine, but I can’t abide the near-total marginalization of defensive stats and efficiency in some of these leagues. Maybe I’ve been playing H2H and roto for too long. One final note: I set a DFS lineup while writing this, and with the power of scoring foremost in my mind, I built a team around Kevin Durant, Damian Lillard, DeMarcus Cousins, C.J. McCollum, Gerald Green and other value picks I think could hit it big. If you’re interested in some of my value picks for Wednesday, check out my ‘Bargain Bin’ column.
This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service – if this is your content and you’re reading it on someone else’s site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers.
