You're in a weekly transaction league, and you need to decide by Monday evening what your starting lineup will be for the week.
Should you consider sitting usual impact starters like Ben Simmons or Kyrie Irving who play only two games? Or perhaps start someone like E'Twuan Moore or Collin Sexton who might generally be on your bench, perhaps even your waiver wire?
Let's take a look at next week's schedules and some player news to help quantitatively answer these questions for these players and many others.
Matchup ratings are based upon a scale from 1 (poor matchup) to 10 (excellent matchup). These are calculated using a formula that evaluates the team's season-to-date and past-10-games statistics, opponents' numbers in those categories and performance in home/road games depending on where the game is to be played. The column to the left lists the team's total number of games scheduled, as well as home games, and lists the overall rating from 1-10 for that team's weekly schedule.
The week ahead
There are eight teams with four games, two with two games, and a whopping 20 teams with three games this week. This results in a very unique spread of Forecaster rankings, because there is such a heavy concentration of teams near the middle. As a result, game totals are even more important than usual in pushing teams to the outlier scores.
The New Orleans Pelicans and Toronto Raptors both scored perfect 10s on the Forecaster with four games this week. The Denver Nuggets scored a 9 and the Cleveland Cavaliers an 8, also with four games. The Golden State Warriors were the only team to score an outlier positive score of 9 on the Forecaster with only three games this week.
At the other end of the spectrum, the Boston Celtics and Philadelphia 76ers both scored 1s with only two games. The Chicago Bulls and Dallas Mavericks joined them with 1s, but in three games. The Orlando Magic, the other team with only two games, scored a 2 on the Forecaster. The Phoenix Suns scored a 2 with three games, while the Sacramento Kings and Utah Jazz each scored 3s with three games.
Potentially startable players
Potentially sittable players
Methodology
I populated the potentially startable and potentially sittable lists using the following general guidelines, per the result of my Forecaster and season projection calculations. Assuming league sizes of 10 teams with 10 starters per team, players ranked below 80 would generally be questionable to start. Similarly, even for 12-team leagues with 10 starters, players ranked below 120 would generally not be expected to start.
Thus, the potentially startable list is comprised of players ranked below 80th in my season-long points rankings who ended up among the top 100 projected players for this week, utilizing the Forecaster. Conversely, the potentially sittable list is comprised of players ranked in the top 100 of the season-long points rankings who ended up outside of the top 120 projected players for this week, utilizing the Forecaster.