What Is The Most Valuable Category?

Such an important topic to hit today. A little background for you, I've been busy between last night and this morning updating my player ranks and tiers, and updating the data for the Analyzer. It's tough work, but once you get through it, it's fun to look at the results and play around with them.

So this morning I'm going through the ranks and I notice some guys bumping up, some bumping down, and some staying the same and I start to see a pattern. So I went back to the optimizer and essentially asked the question 'Which stat category are you placing the most value on when you rank a guy'.

I came into this season telling myself it was assists, after all there's only a limited amount of PG's out there and there's a pretty big variation between the numbers guys drop. But there's more to the story! The analyzer reminded me that it's not just the variance that matters but the magnitude as well. Sure there's less guys dishing out dimes, but the one's that do, all get a pretty close amount. In other categories, you might have more guys contributing, but the top guys are in such a league of their own that it has a big impact.

So I poured the analyzer and myself a cup of coffee and got down to business. Follwing are the major stat categories and their relative value to one another.

7. Turnovers Per Game -3.66
I'll start with the lowest and easiest, turnovers. We've already established the fact that you can't have a winning team without tanking TO's, and apparently the analyzer agrees with us here. Note the score next to the stat, I placed it there to give you all an idea on the differences.



6. Points Per Game - 4.15
Not a shocker here. While there are a couple of 30 point scorers, there's enough 20+ point scorers and even guys around the 16 mark to make this a deep and easy category to attain.

5. Steals Per Game - 4.80
Whoa, our first surprise. I would've thought steals were a tough category to get. I think that comes from rules changes in the NBA, and also the fact that there's much mroe passing now than there was just a few years ago. No more one on one matchups means more steals, means their easier to find.

4. Rebounds per Game - 5.14
You can thank guys like Ben Wallace and Erick Dampier and even Gerald Wallace for this one. It seems like you can find solid rebounds at almost any position this year, and thus there's only marginable value to acquiring them.

3. ASSISTS PER GAME - 7.40
Now you gotta look at the score here, you can see that I wasn't far off. Assists are quite valuable, but still only 3rd in our list. I was pretty stunned at this one myself. I think it has to do with teams really looking to start a solid distributor on their team, so while dimes only really come from PG's and LBJ, almost all the PG's give you what you need.

2. Three Pointers Per Game - 8.70
Here's your Danilo Gallinari and Channing Frye stat line. You can thank those two for skewing our whole distribution. They just don't feel like they're doing all that much, but apparently just one of them locks you up pretty good. I was surprised here a little, caught off guard.

1. Block Per Game - 8.99!
Wow, you know I would've said blocks after assists, but never thought blocks were that hard to come by. Here's the thinking behind it now that I've looked at the numbers. In order to get a competitive amount of blocks, you're going to either have to get a stud like Howard or Duncan or even Noah, that chip in other categories, or you have to take a Sammy D or Big Ben which will kill you in many places. Yes folks, blocks have the most value in fantasy basketball this year.

Put this information to good use! When forming your trade offers, even if you're strong in a particular category, don't be so quick to ship it off. If you're heavy in blocks, that's a good thing and keep in mind that if you trade yourself short, and someone gets injured, you might have a tough time getting those stats back!

Hope you enjoyed! I'll update later with my latest Top Tiers report.