Different (Better?) Categories

[bujfan2030]

I was looking at this issue in one of my leagues. Including Assists and a/to really skews values towards point guards. Someone like Rondo moves from the early third round all the way to the first round. If you include a/to you almost have to split rebounds to balance out the values. Ideally we need a stat that includes blocks rebounds and steals along with assists per turnover. But to the best of my knowledge there's no efficiency stat like that available. One stat that's beginning to appeal to me is 3 pt. %.

[Fenris-77]

I believe the suggestion was to replace Ast and turnovers with Ast/TO, thus shrinking the number of categories by one while still accounting for both stats.

[bujfan2030]

Ok but if you're reducing the # of cats to make it appeal to a more mainstream audience, chances are they're not going to understand PPS. And even without assists that A/To favors point guards if you don't split the rebounds.
i don't hate A/to, but it feels like a less than ideal stat to me. Assists can get dictated by the type of offense one plays in(Darren Collison, Jrue Holiday.) And if you are going to have an efficiency stat why not create your own catch all stat (A+BLK+REB+STL/TO)
That's still box-scorey enough to be easily explainable.
Beyond my initial love of Basketball, I think the thing that kept me coming back to playing fantasy basketball was that it helped me see different aspects of a player's game. And different ways a player can bring value to his team. But I honestly don't know how to translate something like that to the average fan. I do remember one of my early teams was an 8 team, 6 cat H2H and being spectacularly bored. Thankfully my other league was a 12 team public league 9cat roto and in spite of 4 teams being inactive, that was a much better experience, because the active owners were intense in their competition. I guess that's a long way of saying make it user friendly but not to the point where its not challenging.

[RedHopeful]

I'm interested. Didn't have a chance to do much but peruse everything here so far but I will say one thing. A bunch of us basketball guys play in a longstanding baseball league. This year we substituted AVG and OPS for OBP and SLG. I was ALL for it but reflecting back on it now that the season is about over, I'm not so sure it's any kind of improvement. I know it's apples to oranges but I do lean towards Rounders argument that novelty doesn't always override familiarity.

That said, I'm leaning towards joining the league.

[bujfan2030]

bokzg wrote
Do you mind explaining your experiences in >9 category leagues? I've never been in any since most of the ones I've seen seemed to be adding categories for the sake of adding categories, with little reasoning behind it.

One of my leagues is an 11cat(standard + FTM,FGM) keep 5. I took over a bad team. You really need at least one elite scorer(I think) to be competitive. Tried punting points, but that generally means punting three categories in this league. And I've yet to find the right combination of players to make that strategy work in that league. Think I could live with this format in a redraft league. Keeper is tough.
In a newer 16 team keeper(5) league, in addition to FGM and FTM we're adding a/to, splitting rebounds, getting rid of TO, adding 3%. So 13 cats
We just started drafting and with the exception of Rondo going at #5 it's been a pretty typical 1rst round
1 - Ryan - LeBron James (Mia - SF)
2 - Eddie - Kevin Durant (OKC - SF)
3 - Matt A - Kevin Love (Min - PF,C)
4 - Michael - Chris Paul (LAC - PG)
5 - Cub - Rajon Rondo (Bos - PG)
6 - Tim Zirk - Al Jefferson (Uta - PF,C)
7 - Pangy - Russell Westbook (OKC - PG)
8 - YungFate - Deron Williams (Bro - PG)
9 - Nathan - Dwight Howard (LAL - C)
10 - Robb - Kobe Bryant (LAL - SG)
11 - DNeff Eddie - Andrew Bynum (Phi - C)
12 - Andy - Kyrie Irving (Cle - PG)
13 - J Vo - LaMarcus Aldridge

[Rounders Block]

There's a good chance that in these leagues with added categories, managers don't realize the impact those added categories have on player valuation. The more complex the league settings, the bigger the advantage to the smarter managers in the league.

[bujfan2030]

There's a good chance that in these leagues with added categories, managers don't realize the impact those added categories have on player valuation. The more complex the league settings, the bigger the advantage to the smarter managers in the league.

There's also a pretty good chance of disputes arising as to a player's actual worth

[Fenris-77]

I'm interested. Didn't have a chance to do much but peruse everything here so far but I will say one thing. A bunch of us basketball guys play in a longstanding baseball league. This year we substituted AVG and OPS for OBP and SLG. I was ALL for it but reflecting back on it now that the season is about over, I'm not so sure it's any kind of improvement. I know it's apples to oranges but I do lean towards Rounders argument that novelty doesn't always override familiarity.

That said, I'm leaning towards joining the league.

I've had the same thoughts about that change in the Crossover baseball league. Overall it's been a whole bunch of meh. There's something about quality starts that pisses me off too, but I'm not sure quite what.

As far as things like PPS go, my concern isn't actually about whether people understand the particular stat. That particular stat can always be rebranded or explained in a way that makes sense to even a casual fan. The trick is in the packaging at that point, not the stat itself. The main point of the exercise here was to try and pair fantasy hoops down to 7 cats but still have it make 'sense', and the version with PPS is the best I've been able to come up with. Or scoring Stl/Blk as one cat, that works too.

And yes, multiplying the categories does hand the advantage to the more informed manager. Since everyone here thinks he's that guy we should all be very much in favour...

[RedHopeful]

The more complex the league settings, the bigger the advantage to the smarter managers in the league.

[geodbear]

My thought about A/TO is that it's a good alternative to TO where you get a boosted 1/9 value on scrubs, which skews rankings. Also, for the most part in a roto league with assists and TOs, you end up in a zero sum game, meaning if you're good in assists, your equally not as good in TOs. I know there are exceptions, but I haven't seen too many teams that get that efficiency in TO's and assists to win overall, because those teams it seems end up with lower usage type players so other stats get dropped. (Note: I have not an analysis on this so it's based on loose observation.)

In any case, boosting scoring cats with FGM and FTM, tends to reflect the "better" real life players (i.e., high usage ones). As bujfan mentioned, you want to balance splitting the rebs with assists and a/to. At least, that's how I see it with expanding the stat categories.