Compare Players

Reading a player card

Each player gets a card before the tables begin. The round badge in the corner is his rank on the category board under the format you picked, so it moves when you switch between nine categories, eight or points, and again when you punt something. The bold figure under the team is the number that rank is built from: in a category format, his z-scores added up over the categories in play with any punts and board weights applied; in a points format, his projected fantasy points. ADP is where he goes in drafts on average, or "none" if drafters have not priced him. The last line counts his club's games in the current fantasy week and the one after. In a head-to-head league that line can outweigh a small gap in value, because a solid starter with four games will usually outproduce a slightly better one with two. An injury designation, when there is one, sits beside the team, and hovering it shows the detail.

Per game, or across the season

The page opens on per-game figures, because that is how basketball production is quoted and how a nightly lineup is set: when he plays, what does he give you? Season totals ask what he adds across the whole schedule, and the two diverge whenever playing time does. Rest days, minor injuries and planned nights off cost a player nothing per game and a great deal in totals, so a star expected to miss a dozen or more games can lead per game and trail over the season. Roto leagues reward totals, since the standings add up the whole year; in a weekly head-to-head league the useful sum is per-game production times the games in the week ahead. With season totals in a category format, the projection's z-score decides each row. Per game, the printed figure decides, with the lower number taking turnovers. When two figures are identical at the precision shown, the row is a tie and nobody takes it.

Shooting percentages are weighed by volume

Your team's field-goal percentage for the week is every make divided by every attempt, so a player's effect on it depends on how often he shoots as much as on how well. A center hitting sixty percent on five tries a night barely moves the needle; a wing hitting forty-eight percent on twenty can sink it or carry it. The same goes for free throws, where a big man who gets to the line often and misses half his attempts does real damage. On season totals the two percentage rows are decided by the attempt-weighted z-score the category board uses, made shots against what an average shooter would make on the same number of attempts. Per game the page shows and compares the plain percentage, and the caption under the table says which rule applies. If a percentage row is the one deciding your choice, switch to Season totals and see whether the winner holds.

Punt a category from its row

In a category format every row has a Punt button beside its label. Press it and the row stays on screen, greyed and struck through, but it stops deciding anything: the value on each card, the badge order and the verdict are worked out again without it. That is the check a punting manager needs. A team that has given up free-throw percentage should judge two big men with that row struck, and the order often flips once their trips to the line stop counting against them. A team punting assists can see whether the wing it wants still wins enough of the remaining rows. The 8-cat chip removes turnovers entirely, for leagues that do not count them. The Points chip folds every category into one projected total; the rows stay as the stat line behind the total, the figure decides each one, and there is nothing to punt.

The record: what has actually happened

Under the projection sits the record, per game across a window you choose: the whole season, or the last thirty, fourteen or seven days, built from the box scores. The games row comes first because a short window is a small sample. A week is usually three or four games, which is enough to notice a change and not enough to prove one. Minutes come last and deserve the most attention. When a starter goes down, the player who inherits his minutes often inherits his shots and assists too, and the fourteen-day window shows that bump before any season-long projection catches up. A veteran whose minutes slide for three straight weeks is often telling you something the box score has not yet shown. Before opening night every window covers the end of last season, and the caption says so, which means a player who changed clubs over the summer is measured on a role he no longer has.

The verdict, and where the draft room stands

The stamp names the player with the higher value on your format. It reads Too close to call when the gap is under half a z-score summed across every category, less than half of one category's spread, or in a points league when the two are within three percent of the leader's projected total. With two players the sentence beneath gives the margin and how many of the categories shown the leader takes; with three or four it lists the order and each player's gap to the leader. The line under that compares the draft room's opinion, taken from average draft position. When our value and the room point at different players, either the room is wrong or it knows something a projection cannot: a new role, a coach's minutes promise, a health question. That is a prompt to read the news before you act, not to override it.

Putting it to work

For a trade, compare on season totals with the categories you have punted struck, then look at each club's games in your playoff weeks on the schedule grid, and put the whole deal through the trade analyzer. For a waiver decision between two free agents, the last fourteen days and the games line on each card usually matter more than the season projection. For a draft-day coin flip, stay per game and let the categories your roster is short in decide. The players, the format, the punts, the figures and the window all travel in the address, so Copy link to this comparison sends exactly what you are looking at to anyone in your league chat, and Clear players starts a fresh one.

The projection updates with the category board, and the game logs are rebuilt every night from the box scores. If the pool cannot be priced, the page tells you instead of showing an old comparison. The methodology page explains how the values are made.