Fantasy basketball strategy doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Some decisions are easy – if they offer you James Harden for your Aaron Gordon, you take it and run, you don’t need anyone to tell you that. Most trade offers and waiver decisions are not that black and white however, and the answer is very context dependent – it’s hard to give an answer without a big picture look at your team and your league first.

Each week we will be taking a team from one of you – our readers – and doing a statistically driven analysis of the team compared to the rest of your league. We will look at the strengths and weaknesses of the team, at where they sit in the standings and what the expectations are going forward should be. We’ll then focus on what kind of moves can help this team position itself better to succeed in their league. Our goal is to show our readers how to assess those “Should I take this trade?” and “Should I pick up this player?” that don’t fall neatly into a yes/no answer.

If you would like your team to be featured on Roster Doctor, please tweet me @KentShen_RB and I will follow up with you.

Team of the Week

Our team of the week comes from Filip P., from Serbia:

Team Name: Crne Vrane

Current Record and Position: 26-27-1, Fifth Place

League Settings: 10-team Snake Daily, 4-team playoffs, Standard 9-Cat, PG/SG/G/SF/PF/F/C/C/Util/Util

Current Roster:

Z-score stats courtesy of www.basketballmonster.com

Diagnostic:

Let’s just start off by saying Filip’s team is excellent. Even for a 10-team league, Filip’s team is fairly above-average across the board while being near elite in blocks and the percentage categories. He drafted his punt assists strategy extremely well and has 10 players projected to return better than 6^th round value within his build, which is really above par.

Filip made one trade, sending Elfrid Payton for Rondae Hollis-Jefferson in a move that may look like a loss on the surface, but actually works to get a player that fits better in his build for his team. Payton is an awkward fit in a punt assists build, and it’s hard pressed to justify swallowing his poor FT% when you are punting his best category, and RHJ fits his team much better.

Despite how great Filip’s team looks on paper, his 5^th place standing can be attributed to a couple of things. Firstly, Filip missed on a couple of picks in the early rounds that he needed to cut bait on, and they contributed to some of his team’s under-performance early in the season. The two big ones were Jonas Valanciunis and George Hill.

Valanciunis seemed like an excellent fit in a punt assists build to start the year, providing great percentages to go along with elite rebounding numbers, but coach Dwayne Casey’s evident disdain for him--stemming from his poor defense--has cut into the big man’s playing time to the point where he is a drop in 10-team leagues like Filip’s. George Hill also represented a perfect late round guard for a punt assists build, but his inconsistent play for a tire fire of a Kings team has seen his value evaporate. Both of those guys were smart drops by Filip, and having replaced them with better players will help his season outlook.

Secondly, Filip is considerably underutilizing streaming spots in spots where he can steal categories in a given week with a little planning. With just 13 moves on the year in a daily lineup changes league, Filip is only using 1 out of 4 weekly moves allowed by his league on average, and this has left wins on the table in multiple weeks where streaming could have stolen him a few categories. He should be targeting back-to-backs and pseudo back-to-backs in categories that look to be close in certain week to maximize his number of games played per week, especially since his team naturally is very strong in the percentage categories.

Opponents:

Z-score stats courtesy of www.basketballmonster.com

Our matchups are already pretty good across the board against the 4 top projected teams. We look like fairly good locks for blocks, turnovers and the percentages against every team except FT% against DIrkovci 2. Rebounds is the most contestable category, as we have a cluster of teams hovering around slightly below to above average there, and is probably the category we should pay most attention to going forward.

Since our team is already great, we should think about streaming strategy rather than making changes to the core of our team. That is what we will focus on with the gameplan.

Gameplan:

The focus for our team here is to figure out which categories we should target vs which teams for streaming. Again, our core is excellent and we should hold on to most of the key pieces, but we know which categories will be easy to contest based on matchups.

Let’s look at a game plan:

Determine droppable players to free up streaming spots: Since we are in a 10-team league, we can be a bit more liberal with who would be droppable, as guys who would be holds in 12-team leagues are not worth holding on if they are blocking a streaming spot. The two guys I would get rid of are Markieff Morris and Marcin Gortat.

Morris has seen his production drop off a bit compared to last season, as his minutes have been held under 25 versus the 31 he saw a year ago. The drop in minutes combined with Morris’ flat statistical spread has turned him from a player who is near average across the board to one who is below average instead. He doesn’t help us in any of our matchups and his roster spot should be marked for streaming.

Gortat is a low-upside guy who looks to see his role diminish even further as the year goes on. He’s already showing that the usage drop to 15 last season was real, and he doesn’t provide enough to warrant a permanent roster spot in a 10-team league. Gortat can be streamed as a rebound specialist when needed but we can designate his spot for streaming as well.

Figure out which categories to attack in which matchups:  Now, we need to figure out which categories we want to target specific to our matchups:

Mamba Mentality: Rebounds and steals are the categories we want to target here in a regular season matchup, but in the playoffs, I would look to reinforce 3s and steals as we are large favorites in blocks, the percentages and turnovers.

DIrkovci 2: We could theoretically target points, 3s, rebounds or steals in this matchup. FT% looks to be close as well but it is probably the hardest category to stream so we should look at the volume stats instead. I would wait till later in the week and see how the first 2-3 days play out before committing to a streaming strategy against this team.

Strahinja’s Team: Rebounds and points look to be the best choices as these are the two that are fairly close.

Trust the Process: Threes and rebounds would be the categories to target here, with points being reinforced as well by streaming the other stats.

Have some stream options in mind: Now that we know which categories make for good stream targets, we should look on the wire and keep in mind some streamers to use when they have back-to-backs or play on days where we are short on games. Rebounds seems like something we want to be streaming in all of these matchups, and some good targets for that cat available on our wire are Larry Nance, JaMychal Green, Willie Cauley-Stein, and Dwayne Dedmon. For threes, we can look to Josh Richardson, Buddy Hield, Malcolm Brogdon, or Garrett Temple. For steals, Larry Nance, Josh Richardson, or Danny Green are great choices.

Outlook:

Filip has a great team and is mired in 5^th place due to a combination of bad luck and not utilizing the weapon of streaming to its fullest extent. I expect Filip to make the playoffs and contend for his league’s title, and the proper use of streaming will unlock the full potential of Filip’s excellent core.
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