Okay, so I’ve been messing around with fantasy basketball for a while now, and this year I decided to really dive into how to rank players by category. It’s a whole different ball game, you know?

First off, I spent a good chunk of time just looking up those player rankings online. There are tons of them, and they basically tell you who’s expected to be a beast this season. I also read some articles about draft strategies and stuff.
Getting Started
Started with figuring out the categories in my league. We got your standard nine: points, rebounds, assists, steals, blocks, threes, field goal percentage, free throw percentage, and turnovers. Then, I started thinking about which categories are more important to me and which ones I might be willing to, well, punt.
Diving into Data
I started digging into the numbers for each player, like really looking at their averages from last year. I checked not only points, but also their field goal percentage, free throw percentage, etc. It was a bit overwhelming at first, to be honest, but I figured it out!
Rounds 1-3
I mostly focused on the first three rounds of the draft. In the first round, I noticed that centers were a hot commodity. You got your big names like Giannis, Jokic, and Embiid, who are always in the MVP conversation. But then, in the second and third rounds, it seemed like guards were way more valuable. There are some guards who can really light it up in scoring.
My Strategy
I decided to try and focus on players who are good scorers and three-point shooters. So I drafted some players whose scores and threes were good. But for other categories, such as rebounds and blocks, I noticed that they were not so good. So I just let go of the players who are good at rebounds and blocks. I am happy that my strategy works well so far.
Punting Strategy
I started noticing that turnovers and those percentages (FG% and FT%) are kinda tricky. They can really mess up your team if you’re not careful. So, I thought, maybe punting those categories could actually help me in others. Like, if I ignore field goal percentage, I might be able to grab more guys who are good at blocks or rebounds. And if I don’t worry about free throws, maybe I can get more players who make a lot of threes. Also, it seems like if you’re punting assists, you’ll probably end up with fewer turnovers, which is a good thing. It’s like a trade-off, you know?
Anyway, that’s what I’ve been up to. It’s been a lot of work, but it’s also been kinda fun. We’ll see how it all plays out this season. Hopefully, my team will be good and my strategy will work!