Evaluate My Fantasy Basketball Team

What the grid is measuring

Each cell is your starters' summed z-score in one category, next to the average starting lineup's total. A z-score is a player's distance from the middle of the projected pool in that category, in standard deviations, so a lineup total of plus six in rebounds means your starters are, together, six standard deviations of rebounding above the middle of the pool. The two percentage columns are weighted by attempts, so a high-volume shooter moves them more than a low-volume one, and turnovers are turned so that every column reads up-is-good. The league average is the same sum over every starting seat in the league, divided by the number of teams. It sits above zero in every column, because starters are better than the pool they are drawn from, which is why a lineup can be above zero and still below average. The difference between the two is the number that matters, and the tint follows the rank: green for a column you would expect to win most weeks, red for one you would expect to lose.

The rank is an estimate, and says so

No page can read your real league without a login, so the rank is judged against a synthetic one. The league's projected starters are dealt out into as many lineups as your league has teams, in snake order of value, the way a sensible draft would distribute them, and your total is placed among those lineups' totals. It is an estimate of where a lineup like yours stands in a league like yours, never a reading of the actual teams you play, which is why the page says "about 3rd of 12" and not "3rd". A real league has managers who reached for centers and managers who punted free throws, and the synthetic one is smoother than that. Read the rank as a direction and the difference as the size.

Seating a roster with two positions per player

Most basketball players carry two positions, and every roster has guard, forward and utility seats that take anyone in the group, so seating a roster is a puzzle in a way it is not in other sports. The page seats your best player first, into the narrowest seat he can fill, a dedicated point guard seat before the guard seat before utility, and works down the list, so the utility seats are kept for the players nobody else can seat. A pure center in a league with two center seats is seated at center; a third center goes to a forward seat if he is forward-eligible and to utility if he is not; a fourth may end up on the bench with a better stat line than a starting guard, which is exactly the problem a real roster has on a night with three centers and two seats. The roster panel shows every seat the way the host would, and the open ones.

Punting as a plan, not an accident

A roster that is last in free-throw percentage and turnovers is not necessarily a bad roster; it may be a big-man roster that should stop pretending. Punting is the core category strategy in basketball, and the classic builds are named after the column they concede: punt free throws with the dominant bigs who miss them, punt assists with a wing-heavy roster, punt field-goal percentage with the high-volume guards. The punt suggestion names the two weakest columns, and the punt toggle in the picker lets you concede them: the columns stay in the grid, greyed, and leave the lineup total and the gap list, and the roster is re-seated on the values that remain, so the rest of the page reads the team you are actually building. Whether to punt is your call; the page only says where the weakness is and what the roster looks like without it.

Games this week, and the back-to-back

Lineups in basketball are daily and clubs play between two and five games in a fantasy week, so a roster's output in any given week is as much about the calendar as the players. The games card counts how many of your starters play four or more times, three times, or fewer this week, adds the games up and compares the total with what the average lineup gets. A roster three games short of the average is starting the week behind before a ball is tipped, and the names listed under two games are the ones to bench for a streamer with a fuller slate, inside the adds your league allows in a week. The back-to-back line names the starters whose club plays on consecutive nights, because that is where a veteran on a load-management plan is likeliest to sit and a daily lineup needs a body ready. The schedule planner lays the whole week out by club, and the streamers page ranks the pickups for the light nights.

The injured list is a seat, not a footnote

Every host gives a roster injured-list seats, three on the default shape, and a player listed out can sit in one without costing a bench seat. The card lists every player on your roster whose status keeps him out of a lineup, says how many injured-list seats your roster rule carries, and flags the case that costs real games: an out player the page has seated in a starting slot because the numbers say he belongs there. The projection behind him is a season line and does not know he is out this week, so the grid counts him; your lineup on Tuesday cannot. Move him to the injured list, fill the seat, and the games card is the one that changes.

The gaps and the names that fix them

The three lowest-ranked columns are the gaps, and under each are the three players outside your roster who move that column most among the players a waiver claim could reach: those rostered in fewer than half of leagues, by the roster share the draft market publishes. A player at 30 per cent rostered with a deep green blocks cell is the kind of pickup that turns a last-place column into a middling one for nothing, and the seats he can fill are shown beside him so you can see which of your players he would have to replace. Whether he is actually available in your league the page cannot know, which is why it says free-agent-shaped and not free agent. When no roster share is published the list falls back to the players the league board leaves unseated, and says so.

What it never claims

The page is redraft only, on season projections. It never claims a specific player is available in your league, that a player will suit up on a given night, or that the synthetic rank is your standing. A player our sources have not projected cannot be scored and is taken off the list with a note, never counted as zero. Under the points format the grid is empty and the lineup total stands in for it, read the same way against the average lineup; the best-game formats, where only each starter's single best game of the week counts, are not modelled here at all. For the pick-by-pick decisions that build a roster in the first place, the category board and the printable cheat sheet rank the pool in the same categories.