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Read below for the fantasy basketball Forecaster
In weekly transaction leagues, the schedule is one of the most important factors in determining how to fill out your fantasy basketball lineups. All fantasy teams have a hierarchy of player calibers, with a set of "best players" surrounded by a cast of lesser but still productive players from which to draw your weekly starting lineup.
All things being equal, a manager would start their best players every week and fill out the rest of their lineup based on things such as matchups. However, all things aren't equal.
The schedule changes the bottom line, because teams can play a different number of games, against a different caliber of opponents, with different breakdowns of home vs. road, back-to-backs, rest nights, etc. All of these things matter, and as I've seen this season, they often matter more than a player's caliber.
For example, would you rather get two games of a great player at 35 minutes per night against tough competition, or four games of a lesser player at 30 minutes per night against high-paced, weak competition? When looking at it quantitatively, it's surprising (to me) how often the correct answer is actually the lesser player -- yes, based on schedules, sometimes even star players should sit for a week.
Thus, below, we have the Forecaster, which provides a scheduling and matchup tool to help you make better-informed lineup decisions for the upcoming week.
We also take your weekly prep to another level with my weekly projection rankings. Here, you'll find my top-150 weekly rankings, based on ESPN standard points league scoring, so you can compare players to determine which players to start, sit, stream or drop for the week ahead. I also provide several typical starters whom you might want to sit, and several bench/free agents whom you might want to stream.
Without further ado, let's check out the Forecaster.
In the Forecaster and this article, we have to treat the schedule as though it's fixed so we can evaluate. Clearly, at this time, the schedule is very fluid with games being regularly postponed due to COVID-19 absences. This Forecaster operates on the currently scheduled games, but it's an absolute necessity to check the latest information on schedules on Monday before the leagues lock for the week. We'll update the Forecaster to account for postponements as they happen.
This week is one of the busiest of the season, with a whopping 23 squads scheduled for four games. Only four teams have three games, and three teams have two games. The fallout of the schedule on the Forecaster is interesting. As expected, all the teams with scores of 8 or higher have four games. But, on the interesting side, only one of the teams with a score of 3 or under has fewer than four games. Clearly, team caliber and schedule difficulty had a larger impact on the scores this week than raw games played. Let's dig into it a bit.
The Utah Jazz lead the way with a perfect 10, followed by the Golden State Warriors with a 9. The Warriors are worth looking into further, since they're dealing with injuries to key players like Draymond Green while also working Klay Thompson into the lineup on a semi-regular basis. We'll discuss them further in the Weekly Rankings, which you should check out. The Brooklyn Nets, Memphis Grizzlies and Milwaukee Bucks also turned their four-game schedules into scores of 8, with the Nets as the team to look further into as to how their schedule might impact Kyrie Irving.
At the other end of the spectrum, the Detroit Pistons and Orlando Magic both scored 1s despite having four games. The Houston Rockets joined them with a 1, but they only have two games scheduled. The Oklahoma City Thunder and LA Clippers turned four games into 2s, while the Dallas Mavericks managed a 3 with four games.
As always, we recommend you checking out those weekly projection rankings to see our take on which players from may be worth starting or sitting, based on what we know currently of the combination of the schedule and injuries. Please check back on Monday, to see what team schedules may have changed ahead of Monday's roster lock.