Halfway Home

I found some pretty useful stats I’d like to share with you all. You may have already seen these before, but if not, I think you’ll find great use for them now. It’s no surprise that many players in the NBA seem to only ‘put it together’ for half a year. They either have a strong first half or a strong second half, and fall off a bit elsewhere. Some players just keep it even keel throughout the season, never bouncing too high but also never dropping off. While the past is not always indicative of future results, given an even swap, wouldn’t you prefer to hold the player who usually finishes strong vs. the player who has a history of falling off the map?

One glaring example from the 2008 – 2009 season is Kevin Durant. A strong start to the 2008 season had this former Rookie of the Year dominating across the board. Indeed his PPG and FG% numbers were simply outstanding. However, only owners of Durant last year, and particularly those who owned him either for the full season or traded for him post all-star break, know that his production dropped of significantly after the AS break. So much so in fact that his fantasy rank plummeted from 6^th overall pre break to 30^th overall post break. It wasn’t just in one area too, he saw a drop in FG%, in PPG, in Boards, in Blocks, and even a small drop in dimes.

Now I’m not saying that you need to fire sell Durant right now for whatever you can get. Nor am I saying that he will indeed have a terrible second half of the season. But let me ask you a question, who would you rather have going forward given this knowledge? Dirk Nowitzki or Kevin Durant? Seeing as how they are both pretty even in value right now. Let me add in another tidbit, during the 2007 season, Nowitzki went from 14^th overall pre break to 15^th overall post break. During the 2008 season, he went from 9^th overall to 10^th overall post break. Seems pretty resilient to me!

This is just another reason to take heed of the Buy Low, Sell High mentality. We have a whole second half of the season left to play, and this is where the winners truly separate from the losers. This is where you’re skills have to be sharp, your decisions on the mark.

Here are a couple of other points to note. During the 2008 season, post all-star break, Dwyane Wade was the number one fantasy player overall. Above both CP3 and LBJ (he was 3^rd pre-break). 5^th overall was Troy Murphy, 6^th overall was Deron Williams and 19^th overall was Brandon Roy, who was ranked 34^th overall for the first half.

Anyway, you can find all this information here. I encourage you to look through the numbers and see how your expectations differ from what actually happened. I would not try to draw any conclusions from those players who moved up in the rankings significantly. It’s not indicative of future outperformance. What I would draw a conclusion on are those players that stay roughly the same pre and post break. Remember from my morning post yesterday, there’s a high premium to stability, consistency and reliability. Our goal is to sell high on the volatile players when they swing high, buy low on the volatile players when they swing low, and try to get our hands on as many top notch reliable and consistent players as we can.