What every player is worth in your auction

The arithmetic, in seven steps

First, the room holds teams times budget dollars, and that is the whole number the board has to add up to. Second, one dollar is reserved for every roster spot in the league, because nobody can be bought for less than the minimum bid and that money is spoken for before anyone is priced. Third, the league’s starting seats are filled from the pool the way your host fills them on draft night, the dedicated seats first (point guard, shooting guard, small forward, power forward, center), then the guard and forward seats, then utility, each seat taking the best player still unseated who is eligible for it. A PG/SG can land in either guard seat, the G seat or a utility seat; a center only in a center seat or a utility seat, which is why the centers come out scarce. Fourth, the weakest starter seated in each seat sets that seat’s line, and a player’s value over the line is his value above replacement minus the lowest line of any seat he could take, floored at zero. Fifth, the remaining dollars are split across the draftable pool in proportion to that value; no position has a fixed percentage, its share of the money is its share of the value. Sixth, prices are whole dollars, and the rounding remainder is handed out largest fraction first, so the board adds up to the room’s money exactly. Seventh, in Market mode, each player’s dollars above the $1 floor are bent by a power below one before the split, which pulls the top of the board in and lifts the middle; the order never changes and the total still balances. Formula mode skips the seventh step and shows the strict proportion.

Categories, z-scores, and what a punt does to a price

In a points league a player’s worth is one number, his projected points under the table your host uses, and the board prices him off it. In a category league there is no single number until you choose one, and the choice this board makes is the standard one: each player’s z-score in every category you play, summed. A z-score says how far above or below the pool’s average he is in that category, in units of the pool’s spread, so a rebounder who is two spreads above average in rebounds contributes the same as a shooter two spreads above average in threes. Field-goal and free-throw percentage are weighted by attempts, because a 60% shooter on five attempts a night does not move your team’s percentage the way a 60% shooter on twenty does. Turnovers count against a player. When you strike a category on the punt row, the whole pool is fetched again with that category removed from the sum: a big man who shoots 55% from the line stops paying for it, his z-sum rises, the last starter in every seat he could take moves, and his price moves with both. That is the honest way to price a punt build, and it is why the same player can be a $40 player on one board and a $62 player on the next.

Nomination tactics in a basketball room

The first thing to know about a basketball auction is that thirteen roster spots and $200 means the average player costs about $15, and that the top of the board is where the money goes wrong. Rooms overpay the first three or four names nominated, because every manager has a full budget and nobody wants to be the one who missed the elite center. So nominate players you do not want early, the ones the board prices high but you would rather not own, and let the room spend on them. Nominate your own targets late in the first third, once the room has a few $70 players on its books and the caution has set in, and let the price board tell you the number to stop at. Nominate cheap players you do not need in the middle of the draft to drain the rooms that are chasing them. Track dollars per open roster spot for every team, not just your own; a manager with $30 and nine spots to fill is not bidding against you for a $25 player no matter how much he wants him. In a category league, watch who is punting what: if two managers are visibly punting free throws, the centers they both want will go above the board’s price and the shooters they both ignore will go below it, and the board cannot see that, so the price here is a floor for a contested player and a ceiling for an ignored one.

Where the board is weak, and what it will not claim

These prices are MustDraft’s own. No crowd feed of real basketball auction results exists for us to fit to, so the Market flattening is a stated choice, one named constant, rather than a measurement of what rooms actually paid, and the copy above says so. The pool prices a season projection: it knows nothing about games per week, back-to-backs or your playoff schedule, which matter more than a dollar or two in the last five roster spots. The best-game formats the hosts now default beginners to are not priced at all, because a player’s value when only his best game of the week counts is not a season total and we would rather leave it blank than guess. And one of the three roster shapes on offer, the four-bench one, is a plausible shape rather than a published default, which the note under the chip says. Once you have a board you trust, the mock draft room drafts the same pool as a snake, punts included, and the draft order page draws your nomination order with a link as the receipt.