Basketball Matchup Planner

How a category total is built

Every player in our model carries a per-game line: points, rebounds, assists, steals, blocks, threes made, field goals made and attempted, free throws made and attempted, turnovers and minutes. A roster's projected total in a counting category is the sum, over every active player, of his rate times the games his club still has in the week, counted from today when the week is the current one and from Monday when it is a later one. A player on the injured list or the bench contributes nothing, and a player our injury feed lists as Out contributes nothing either, because an Out player in an active seat is the most common way a category is lost without anyone noticing. The two percentages are handled the way the platforms score them, not the way a spreadsheet averages them: makes are summed, attempts are summed, and the division happens once, so a centre who takes ten free throws a night moves your free-throw percentage far more than a guard who takes two, in either direction. Turnovers are judged the right way round, so the lower total leads.

Reading the grid

Each row is a category with your projected total on the left, your opponent's on the right, and the last column saying which way the race leans. Leading means clearly ahead, trailing means clearly behind, and a coin flip means the two totals sit within about six percent of each other for a count, or within a few thousandths for a percentage. The headline counts the races, leading five, trailing three, one too close to call, and that count is what a manager is really managing between Monday and Sunday. A race you lead comfortably needs no attention; a race you trail by a wide margin is not worth chasing, and chasing it is how a manager throws away the two races he was winning; the coin flips are where one add or one healthy scratch changes the week, and the page lists them on their own as the swing categories.

Punting shows up here as races you have already conceded

If your roster was built to punt, say free-throw percentage with a lineup of centres and slashers, the grid will show that race as trailing by a distance from the first day, and that is correct: the point of the punt is to spend nothing on that race and win the other eight. The mistake the grid protects you from is the accidental punt, a category you are losing narrowly because two of your players happen to sit on a light night, which a single well-chosen add fixes. Compare the swing list to your plan. A coin flip in a category you meant to win is where the week's one or two acquisitions belong; a coin flip in a category you meant to concede is a distraction.

Games each night and the weekly add cap

The per-night view shows the seven nights of the fantasy week with the league-wide game count under each date and how many of your active players have a game. Light nights, when five or fewer games are played, leave most rosters with empty seats, and on those nights any rotation player who dresses is worth more than a star who does not. Most category leagues cap adds at four a week, so the question is never whether a streamer is available but whether he is worth one of the four. The what-if row answers it directly: pick an unrostered player with games left in the week, optionally pick one of your own to drop, and the grid re-scores beside the original. When the new count is no better than the old, keep the add for a night that needs it. The streamers page ranks the whole slate for one night; this row ranks the week.

Where the numbers come from, and where they are weak

The per-game lines are our own projection model, the same one behind the category board and the player rater, built from game logs and an ageing curve; before the season opens they rest on last season alone, so a rookie, a player who changed clubs or a player whose role changed over the summer is projected from less than the rest. Minutes are the model's weakest number, and minutes drive everything else, so treat a projection for a player in a new rotation as a starting point rather than a verdict. The schedule and the game counts are our own feeds, refreshed daily. The roster, the seats and the category list come from your league through Front Office at its last sync; if you made a move this afternoon, re-sync there before you trust the seats here. The page does not read your league's weekly schedule yet, so you pick the opponent you face, and it does not know a late scratch or a rest night until the club announces one. A player it could not match to our directory is listed by the name your league gave and counted in nothing, which the roster says out loud rather than hiding. Without a linked league the page shows an example, two lineups dealt from the top of our projections and labelled as such, so the tool is visible before you connect anything.

The week, the opponent and any what-if add or drop are written into the address, so the link you copy opens the same plan for anyone in the group chat. A linked league is read only when you are signed in; nothing about it is shared through the link.