Basketball Matchup Planner

Turning a per-game line into a weekly total

Our model gives every player a per-game line: points, rebounds, assists, steals, blocks, threes made, field goals and free throws made and attempted, turnovers and minutes. For a counting category, your projected total is that rate multiplied by the games remaining on his club's schedule, added up across everyone in an active seat. In the current week the count starts today; for a future week it starts on that Monday. Players in bench or injured-list seats add nothing, and neither does a player our injury feed lists as Out, because leaving an Out player in a starting seat is one of the quietest ways to drop a category by a hair. A player the model does not project is labelled that way on the roster and adds nothing to any race.

Why the percentages are built from makes and attempts

Field-goal and free-throw percentage are scored on team totals, not on an average of each player's rate, and the planner does the same: makes are added up, attempts are added up, and the division happens once. Volume therefore decides how hard a shooter pulls on the number. Picture a roster with two guards who each make 85 percent of four free throws a night and a centre who makes half of his ten. The three percentages average about 73, but the real figure is 11.8 makes on 18 attempts, roughly 66 percent, because the centre takes most of the shots. That is why one high-volume poor free-throw shooter can sink the category on his own, and why a pickup who rarely gets to the line barely moves it either way. Turnovers run backwards: the lower total wins that race.

What leading, trailing and coin flip mean

Each row of the grid is one category, with your projected total on the left, your opponent's on the right and a verdict at the end. A counting category is a coin flip when the two totals are within six percent of the larger one; field-goal percentage needs to be within six thousandths (0.006) and free-throw percentage within eight thousandths (0.008). Outside those bands the race reads as leading or trailing. The headline above the grid tallies the verdicts, and the swing list beneath picks out the three races closest to their coin-flip line, which are the ones a single roster move is most likely to change this week.

How you use that tally depends on your scoring setting. In a most-categories league you need a majority of the races, so the useful question each Monday is which five you can hold and which coin flips are cheapest to win. In an each-category league every race is its own win or loss in the standings, so a race you trail narrowly is worth chasing even when the majority already looks safe, and finishing a week 3-6 instead of 1-8 is a real gain. The grid is the same in both; the priorities you read from it are not.

Punts show up as races you meant to lose

A roster drafted to punt will show its conceded category as trailing, often by a distance, from the first night, and that is the plan working rather than a warning. If your frontcourt is built on bigs who live at the rim, expect to lose free-throw percentage, and spend your attention on everything else: whether the eight races you intended to contest are leading, trailing or close. The case the grid catches is the punt you never chose, a category you expected to win that is slipping because two of your players sit on the same light night. Line the swing list up against your build. A coin flip in a category you are built to win deserves one of your moves; a coin flip in a category you gave up does not.

Reading the nightly slate

Below the grid, the fantasy week is laid out one night at a time. Each day shows how many NBA games are on the schedule and how many of your active players have one. Lineups in most basketball leagues are set daily, so the slate tells you where your roster is crowded and where it is thin. On a heavy night, when most of the league is in action, you may already have more players with games than starting seats, and a pickup who plays that night might never reach your lineup. On a light night, five games or fewer, most rosters have empty seats, and anyone whose club plays fills a spot that would otherwise score nothing. That is where a streaming add earns the most. Nights already played are dimmed, so midweek the slate shows only what is still in front of you.

The what-if row and your weekly moves

Many leagues limit how many players you can add in a week. Yahoo's default, for instance, is four acquisitions per week, and commissioners often set their own number. A limit makes each add a decision, and the what-if row tests one before you make it. The Add list holds players nobody in your league rosters who still have games this week, ranked in your league's categories by our per-game model, with the share of leagues that roster each one beside his name. Choose one, and optionally one of your own to drop, and the grid scores the week again beside the original. If the new tally is no better, save the move for a night that needs it. The streamers page ranks the available players for a single night; this row judges one move against the opponent you actually face. In a points league the page totals projected fantasy points instead, listing each player's games, points per game and weekly total, and the what-if row works the same way.

What the projections know, and what they miss

The per-game lines come from our own projection model, built from game logs, pulled toward realistic rates where the sample is small, and adjusted for age. It is a different line from the consensus the category board ranks on, and the consensus page sets the two side by side. Before opening night they lean on last season, so rookies, players on new clubs and anyone whose role changed over the summer are projected from thinner evidence. Minutes are the softest number in any basketball projection, and every other stat rides on them, so treat a forecast for a player in an unsettled rotation as a starting point. Game counts come from our schedule feed, refreshed daily. Your roster, seats and categories come from Front Office as of your last sync, so if you made a move this afternoon, sync there first. The planner does not read your league's matchup schedule yet, which is why you choose the opponent yourself, and it cannot know about a rest night or a late scratch until the club announces it. A player it cannot match to our directory is listed by the name your league uses and counted in no total, and the roster says so plainly.

Without a linked league, the page deals two example lineups from the top of our projections, labelled as an example, so you can see the grid with real numbers before connecting anything.

Your choices travel in the link: the week, the opponent and any add or drop are saved in the page address, so the plan you copy opens the same way for whoever you send it to. Your league itself is only read while you are signed in, and none of it is shared through the link.