REVEALED: 9-Cat Rankings MISLEAD Most Fantasy Owners

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:01]We're going to take a look at rankings and how they can be misleading. Who are the biggest misleaders for this season?

[00:00:07]Michael Bolton, you would never lead us astray. Thanks, Josh. It's Michael Bolton here, and it's time for another episode of the Locked On Fantasy Basketball Podcast. Let's get to it.

[00:00:20]>> Let's get to it. Indeed.

[00:00:23]You are Locked On Fantasy, your daily NBA fantasy podcast, part of the Locked On Podcast Network. Your team, every day.

[00:00:34]Hello and welcome to the Locked On Fantasy Basketball Podcast brought to you by Basketball Monster. My name is Josh Lloyd, and no, Zach Levine is not the worst number one overall pick of all time.

[00:00:45]>> [music] >> What are we talking about? We're talking about rankings. We've gone through over the last four shows the times or or the players that I had too high and too low and told you were too high or too low and hits and misses, right? Enough chance to self-flagellate and self-flagellate, but in a good way.

[00:01:02]So, that part's done. We've looked at that. What I wanted to do now is again, it's something I've talked about a lot.

[00:01:07]You've heard me speak a lot about things like rankings and the misleading nature that they can uh imbue across the fantasy basketball landscape. So, I wanted to talk about the This is a category league um centric show. So, those of you points leagues, there's a little bit here because again, you will still have to hear people talk rankings, and you need to know how to interpret it.

[00:01:29]So, what we're going to do here is just go through outliers, weird things, what's the basis behind some of these rankings, and why they appear the way they are.

[00:01:38]So, we are trying to avoid the rankings trap. And why can it be a trap? Well, again, like I say plenty of times, no matter what sort of content you're taking in, you might be just reading something on a website, and you might click a player's profile and it says rank whatever.

[00:01:53]You might read a fantasy basketball article. You might see it on Reddit. And someone said, "Well, he's ranked blah blah blah." You might see uh a podcast from me or somebody else. A video from me or somebody else, and they reference a ranking.

[00:02:07]You got to know what they're talking about.

[00:02:09]You have to know what this ranking means and where they're coming from. What is the person who is providing information, where are they coming from?

[00:02:16]Are they a random Reddit user talking about their specific points league?

[00:02:19]Okay, understand that.

[00:02:21]Are they a fantasy basketball analyst, creator, who plays exclusively rotisserie leagues?

[00:02:28]Understand that.

[00:02:31]Are they someone who plays exclusively points leagues? Understand that.

[00:02:35]Are they someone who and I I try I try to be this, but gives specifics about where each sort of player fits in each specific scenario?

[00:02:44]Because it's all really important.

[00:02:46]If you're playing in a nine-cat league on Yahoo, and you go in and have a look at a player, it will give you multiple different ranking numbers depending on how it's defaulted out. And a lot of the time, if you go to a rankings page, it will just go in and give you the nine-cat total rankings.

[00:03:02]Like when you go into the Yahoo page and you click on your team that exists there now, you'll see there's a little tab that sits up the top that says like stats, projected stats, average stats, and there's a the tab that says ranks.

[00:03:13]And there's a column that says rankings preseason, which again is not preseason.

[00:03:17]It's definitely not preseason. I don't know what that number is they got.

[00:03:19]That's not preseason. But the next column says season, and it gives you a rank.

[00:03:23]But that rank is a nine-category totals rank for the season.

[00:03:28]And it is incredibly misleading.

[00:03:30]I'm going to talk about that stuff now.

[00:03:32]So, like let's do a bit of basics. You hear me talk about my ranking system, Durant.

[00:03:36]And if you're unaware, Durant stands for I'll get the exact word dynamic, meaning it changes every day when new data comes in, unbiased, and it's not there's not a subjective part of this.

[00:03:47]Dynamic unbiased rankings applying normalized transformations. So, it's my attempt to make fantasy basketball ranks make sense for the majority of people playing fantasy basketball. Category leagues, points leagues, very easy. The guy that averages 30 points is ranked ahead of the guy that's averages 29.9 points. Incredibly easy, right? There's no debates on that.

[00:04:07]That's easy. That's done.

[00:04:09]There's nuance around all the whatever, but that's easy. So, I created Durant for this reason. So, what do the traditional nine-cat ranks and like I said, the the totals, which is the default display you see on Yahoo, what does it actually mean? Well, the first rotisserie fantasy game was baseball, fantasy baseball, which I'm playing at the moment. One of my teams is kind of okay. The other one, not so good, but we'll see. We'll see how we go with that. Um but it's based on on fantasy baseball, which is a very heavy rotisserie format.

[00:04:40]If you haven't played a roto league, I'm not going to go into the details of it, but it's a very different scenario of head-to-head. You're not playing weekly matchups. You're accumulating stats over the course of an entire season.

[00:04:49]So, the nine-cat rankings, which is the same as the five-by-five rankings on fantasy baseball, it's it's geared towards roto leagues.

[00:05:00]From my poll numbers over the last three to four years of doing this stuff, roto leagues account for maybe 4% maybe 4% of fantasy basketball leagues.

[00:05:09]Because you've got head-to-head categories and head-to-head points, and there's let's say generous 10%.

[00:05:15]Yet the default rankings are based on applications of strategy from roto leagues.

[00:05:21]So, there's already a a big failure there.

[00:05:24]The nine-category rankings use Z-scores, or Z-scores, or standard scores to try and provide the value of like, okay, so points are obviously a bigger number than steals. How do we put them on the same plane to evaluate them?

[00:05:38]In theory, standard scores works okay.

[00:05:41]Now, I don't know how this actually applies in baseball cuz A, not my job, and B, haven't gone to look at it.

[00:05:48]Right? But it puts the things on the same sort of playing field. So, the idea is that like in a standard 12-team league, someone averaging 17 points per game, 18 points per game, that's an average marker.

[00:06:00]And an average marker in steals is 1.1.

[00:06:03]An average marker in blocks is 0.8. An average marker in assists is like 3.7.

[00:06:08]And in rebounds, it's like 5.8.

[00:06:10]So, if you average 5.8 rebounds, you're giving the same value in that category as someone who's giving you 3.7 assists in that category.

[00:06:17]Okay, that that idea makes some makes sense, correct? Yes. So, we've got to put it on the same sort of playing field because obviously 5.7, 3.8 are very different numbers. So, we standardize them to standard scores, and those average numbers will give you a zero in a standard score.

[00:06:32]It's based on standard deviations and averages.

[00:06:35]The percentages in these categories get weighted for volume because someone shooting three of four for 75% is very useful, but someone shooting 15 of 20 is way better because you're providing a larger um uh denominator, making it more stable at that higher number, harder for other worse shooting performances to drag it down. So, those numbers get weighted.

[00:07:02]The problem with this is again, I don't know how it applies to baseball, but I do know how it applies to basketball, is that Z-scores and standardizing scores has the assumption there is a normal distribution.

[00:07:14]Normal distribution, the old bell curve.

[00:07:17]That you know, 67% of all outcomes are within one standard deviation either side of the mean. I believe that's off the top, yeah, off the top of my head, and then it's 99.7 that within three standard deviations.

[00:07:31]That assumes a normal bell curve distribution.

[00:07:34]But NBA stats are not a bell curve at all. They are all right-tailed.

[00:07:39]They're all right-tailed, meaning there's a there's a the the lump, the hump in the middle is pushed to the left of the graph, and then it tails off to the right. So, already we're working at a disadvantage.

[00:07:50]What this leads to is an over- and under-valuing of outliers. For example, Giannis, we already know he's a punt free throw guy.

[00:07:57]A a minus three in a Z-score should be in 99.7 should be in 99.7% of people should be within minus three. Right? So, that's a small amount.

[00:08:06]Uh so, basically everyone should be within that mark. Giannis' free throw percentage number this season was -4.62.

[00:08:13]Forget the fact that in a counting stat or a counting category, points, rebounds, assists, steals, blocks, you can't really go negative to that degree, which again makes Giannis appear like why why is he the Why is he going to pick four? Is he the 70th best player?

[00:08:26]Yeah, because the rankings are wrong.

[00:08:28]But a -4.62 in a normal distribution implies that that happens one it's a one in 525,000 occurrence.

[00:08:38]I don't know about you, but Giannis did that this season. He did it last season. He did the year before.

[00:08:45]He did it the year before. He did it the year before. And in the past, we had DeAndre Jordan and Andre Drummond.

[00:08:49]And we have 500 players play in a season.

[00:08:53]So, if that's happening every year, two in every thousand over the last two years, at least, they might be in some of it's in that same margin, it's not one in 525,000.

[00:09:04]So, it's telling you that Giannis is this bad at this category, but he's not.

[00:09:08]Like he's not, and it leads to disturbed and misdistributed rankings.

[00:09:14]I don't want to get too heavily into this part.

[00:09:16]The Durant rankings, the number one thing, part of the dynamic unbiased rankings applying normalized transformations, is we try and transform the stats to become normally distributed so then we can apply standardization.

[00:09:28]And I use a a method called the Yeo-Johnson transformation. You don't need to know about this, but you can look at it if you want. Yeo-Johnson.

[00:09:34]Which adjusts the stats to normalize them so that standard scores appear to make more sense. So, that the right tail is eliminated, we get a better distribution so that the outcomes actually make sense based on reality.

[00:09:49]Also, Durant is a per game metric.

[00:09:51]Totals are less important in head-to-head. I know you'll say, "Well, duh, cuz you've got to have the guy all season." But that's actually not true.

[00:09:58]Because totals if someone misses 20 games, it doesn't tell you if they missed 20 in November or 20 in March and February in your fantasy playoffs.

[00:10:07]It tells you nothing about that.

[00:10:09]And it also ignores the fact that when somebody's hurt you can just drop them and you can add somebody else in.

[00:10:18]Or you can stash them in IR and you can bring somebody else in.

[00:10:21]Or you're rotating through your bench.

[00:10:24]It's Yeah, someone who becomes the And we're talking about this later, like the 60th best player through totals, but every one of his categories is a below average category, is not valuable.

[00:10:34]Because the players that you can find off the waiver wire through hot streaks or injury opportunities of their own step up and provide more than just holding on to that one player all season.

[00:10:44]It's a flawed way of looking at it.

[00:10:46]So, with Durant, I make it per game. Cuz again, I think part of what we want to do We can tell the story of the season.

[00:10:53]All right, that's fine. But what we ideally want to do is we want to tell what happened, but transform it into what will happen.

[00:11:00]And a total ranking doesn't tell you what will happen.

[00:11:04]It's already flawed in terms of what did happen, but it doesn't tell you what will happen.

[00:11:07]And then I added a weighting system.

[00:11:11]Because stats and if again if the idea of rankings and projections is to project and build a team we have to understand that there is variance game to game. There is variance week to week. There is variance year on year in stats.

[00:11:27]So, I've done all the studies on figuring out which ones are the most consistent and where the high variance is.

[00:11:34]Because if a stat is high variance and you just treat it normally or use steals as an example.

[00:11:41]If you just treat it like every other stat, but it's high variance, someone might get five steals in one week.

[00:11:47]They get zero in the next week.

[00:11:51]So, that's 2.5 per week. Let's just say they played three games through that time.

[00:11:56]Um All right, that's that's your point nine steals per game, point eight steals per game.

[00:12:02]All right, which is a below average number. But the five steal week, unbelievably good.

[00:12:08]The zero steal week, terrible.

[00:12:11]So you can't rely upon that player to give you those numbers.

[00:12:16]But sometimes they will, sometimes they won't. So, when you're doing your projections and building your team that level of variance and the impact it has on the ranking and the formula needs to be tamped down. So, the variance stats, like the percentages steals and blocks even threes well, threes are a little bit more stable.

[00:12:34]They need to come down. Plus the accessibility of a stat off the waiver wire.

[00:12:39]We can standardize points and standardize threes, for example.

[00:12:43]But I can't find 20 point per game scorers on the waiver wire which is marginally above average.

[00:12:49]I can find 30 blocks hitting two and a half threes on the waiver wire.

[00:12:53]Yet they'd both have a Z score about the same number.

[00:12:56]But that doesn't reflect reality.

[00:12:59]Like that's all well and good that those numbers exist and they somehow contribute and and look at the players together.

[00:13:08]But if I can go and find 1.4 steals guys off the waiver wire, which would be the equivalent of a 27 point per game scorer like it obviously means that overvaluing steals is not a good idea cuz we can just go and find those guys.

[00:13:24]Whereas I can't do it for points. I can't find a five and a half assist guy most of the time off the waiver wire.

[00:13:29]But I can find three threes. I can find 1.4 steals.

[00:13:33]Yet a blank Z score tells you they're all about the same.

[00:13:37]Which is not true. So, that is the difference between Durant and a NICAT ranking.

[00:13:42]I will come back and talk now about some of the players and the traps we need to avoid. I hope that was a a decent enough explanation. It's really It is quite basic the explanation I gave there, but that's the idea behind it.

[00:13:55]I want you to cut through the chaos.

[00:13:58]Because the deadlines are stacking up.

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[00:15:52]These shows are like my uh flu game cuz I'm uh doing all these shows while um recovering from surgery and I'm on the uh I'm taking oxycodone for pain relief.

[00:16:00]So, I'm not actually sure what I'm saying. I hope it comes out okay and not completely deranged.

[00:16:07]But, you know the grind must continue.

[00:16:10]Um So I want to give you seven of the guys who when you go into your Yahoo teams, when you look at the Yahoo ranks on the sides or you hear references that people give to ranks because not not not not offending people who are saying, "Oh Maybe I am. Sorry if I'm offending, but I'm very staunch on this.

[00:16:28]If someone just comes in and says this player was ranked this because they just went to Yahoo and looked at the number, you're not getting the full story.

[00:16:33]And you will see insane numbers that do not reflect the reality of what that player did.

[00:16:40]For example Jay James Huff.

[00:16:45]I wouldn't say that Jay Huff was a big surprise this season.

[00:16:48]Cuz we didn't really know exactly what Indiana was going to do.

[00:16:51]Would it be Isaiah Jackson? Would it be Huff? It started off as Jackson.

[00:16:56]But Huff jumped into the starting lineup, but we had tons of inconsistency. We had games of 3 minutes, 0 minutes, 28 minutes, 19 minutes.

[00:17:03]Overall Huff was the 45th ranked player according to NICAT totals.

[00:17:09]45th ranked player according to NICAT totals.

[00:17:14]Jay Huff played every single game.

[00:17:16]Some of them were, like I said, 15 minutes, 16 minutes. There was a 2-minute game, a 4-minute game.

[00:17:21]And then he went from 24 to 31 to 12 to 25 to 23 to 30 to 24. He's all over the place. His numbers are okay.

[00:17:28]But they're not good.

[00:17:31]45th suggests, again in a 12-man league, that is a fourth round player.

[00:17:36]He averaged nine and a half points with four rebounds.

[00:17:38]And you could say he was a blocks and threes guy. He didn't hit many threes.

[00:17:42]One and a half.

[00:17:43]One and a half assists, half a steal.

[00:17:44]1.9 blocks, very good.

[00:17:47]48 from the field below average.

[00:17:50]83 from the line, pretty good. But volume, really low.

[00:17:54]So again, the debate on this is, like if you had James Huff on your team that you had a fourth round player and you could have just rolled him out there every week and been happy with it.

[00:18:06]Which is not true.

[00:18:09]One of the things you'll find that with standard NICAT rankings, well, obviously totals get influenced heavily by games played, obviously.

[00:18:16]But NICAT rankings will very much boost up the high block players.

[00:18:21]It'll very much drop down the the outlier outlier bad free throws and field goal guys.

[00:18:30]And it will also bump, I believe, the high field goal low volume players a lot, which is Yeah, Huff has obviously got the blocks there, but you're talking about a guy with honestly one above average category.

[00:18:40]That's not true. Free throws are a bang average, 82. That's bang average. But one above average category and that's blocks.

[00:18:48]If you're heading into next season and they don't make any changes and Huff is a starting center and you pick him in round four just just just piss on your money. It's done. It's you're out. You're finished.

[00:18:57]He's not that player.

[00:19:00]He was 199th in Durant. 184th in points leagues.

[00:19:04]The blocks are useful. He was one of the league leaders in blocks. He might have even been number one in total blocks. I think it was Wembanyama, but yeah, he had a lot of blocks.

[00:19:10]But all right.

[00:19:13]What about everything else?

[00:19:15]That is not a top 50 player.

[00:19:19]What about Julian Champagnie?

[00:19:21]Bubbles.

[00:19:22]Ranked the season as not quite a top 50 player.

[00:19:26]Pretty close, though.

[00:19:28]53rd.

[00:19:29]Durant had him 158th. He had played 28 minutes a night. 15% usage. He averaged 11 points with six rebounds.

[00:19:35]One and a half assists. The 2.4 threes are nice.

[00:19:39]But point eight steals, point five blocks, both bad numbers.

[00:19:41]44 from the field, bad.

[00:19:43]84 from the line, pretty good.

[00:19:45]This is the 53rd ranked player.

[00:19:47]53rd.

[00:19:49]He was not rosterable for most of the season.

[00:19:51]Maybe maybe that's unfair, but when De'Aaron Fox came back like what are we doing here? A low usage player who wasn't a good shooter, had good free throws on no attempts, one and a half a game, 1.6 per game.

[00:20:07]What did he give you above average?

[00:20:10]Rebounds? Yes.

[00:20:11]Marginally. Threes? Yes.

[00:20:14]Marginally.

[00:20:16]Free throws? Yes. Marginally.

[00:20:19]That's not a fifth round player.

[00:20:22]And again, because he was out there and he played every game, it looks better than it is, but it's not that good.

[00:20:30]That's another example of the guys that are going to be absolutely inflated.

[00:20:35]This guy was rostered in leagues all season for no reason.

[00:20:39]The Hong Kong Mattress, Cason Wallace.

[00:20:41]Now again, you'll say, "Well, what about my punt build, Josh?"

[00:20:43]And he had a lot of steals. He did, he was excellent at steals, Cason Wallace.

[00:20:47]He averaged 1.9 steals per game. That's a very high number.

[00:20:50]I'm not sure if that leads the league, but I probably should look at that, but it's it's close.

[00:20:55]Like it's right up there.

[00:20:58]But another low usage player with a nine cat total rank of 57.

[00:21:03]Durant had him at 154, points leagues 199.

[00:21:06]This is what I talk about where we look at points leagues and you want to talk about is this applicable? Cuz you will hear people off the cuff, "Oh, Cason was the 57th ranked player for the season."

[00:21:13]You go, "I don't think he was that He wasn't that good for my league, was he?"

[00:21:16]No, he wasn't, he was terrible in points leagues.

[00:21:18]199th.

[00:21:21]He averaged eight, three, and under three assists. The steals are good.

[00:21:25]But literally, what else was good?

[00:21:27]Not nothing.

[00:21:29]Nothing was good. Points were terrible, rebounds were terrible, and everything else was below average.

[00:21:36]That's not a fifth round player.

[00:21:37]That's not your fifth best guy at all.

[00:21:40]To me, he was a fringe player who was a steals specialist who when players were out, three of them were out, you'd get a usage bump with some good games.

[00:21:50]But this is This is again absolutely getting fluffed out of nowhere on value for nine cat.

[00:21:57]One category carrying him. He had a lot of steals.

[00:22:01]And this is where I talk about the basis of Z scores and rankings is based on roto because if you started him all year, you got his 152 steals, his 202 assists.

[00:22:10]And that all adds to the total.

[00:22:12]But for head-to-head leagues, when you can stream in, you got guys who are you got specific match-ups where you're trying to match up what categories you need, and he's costing you the other categories.

[00:22:24]It's not useful. Look, I have a I have two Durant formats. I got a Durant head-to-head format and a Durant roto format. Even the Durant roto format, like he's going to be pulled back down.

[00:22:33]Because that those outlier low volume variance categories, like steals, it's going to make a player look just significantly better than what they are.

[00:22:44]Cuz again, I would I know I know there'll be pushback on this show, I know this.

[00:22:49]But I know there'll be someone that would have Well, the whole season matters and this is what the math says.

[00:22:53]It actually doesn't though.

[00:22:55]The math doesn't say this. The math only says this if the math is misinterpreted.

[00:22:59]And I believe we have, as a community, as a game, misinterpreted the math for many years.

[00:23:06]Because the this there is nothing to suggest that Cason Wallace is this good.

[00:23:13]The math is based on normally distributed stats, which they are not.

[00:23:20]And then it's also based on totals, which again, not relevant.

[00:23:24]There's a there's a relevance to it.

[00:23:27]Playing more games is better, but there's the the concept of replacement level that has to be factored into that.

[00:23:36]And that's not accounted for with any of this.

[00:23:39]All right, the next guy that I want to talk about, Colby White, the old KOTD legend.

[00:23:45]Put up like he was a bench player, obviously.

[00:23:48]But then the Suns would be playing without three guards or wings basically all season. Jalen Green, multiple hamstrings. Devin Booker would get injured. Dillon Brooks broke his hand.

[00:23:58]Grayson Allen, knee injury.

[00:24:01]They were thr- Three of those guys were out for the majority of the games all season.

[00:24:06]They just alternating guys in and out.

[00:24:08]So, Gillespie was able to start and play a lot of games. But we also saw that when they came back, again, cuz context is important, and this is a part of it that's formula based, but also context based of why Gillespie is a huge huge trap.

[00:24:25]Is because if Green, Booker, Brooks just played 65 games each, Gillespie we'd never talk about. He'd play 24 minutes a night and he wouldn't have any usage or ball handling responsibilities.

[00:24:40]He ended up the season as the 42nd ranked player. Durant has him still as like 130, so actually somewhat rosterable.

[00:24:47]But a low usage player, he averaged 12, four, and five.

[00:24:51]The 1.2 steals is nice. He shot poorly, the free throws are good, doesn't get to line that much. Like his numbers are fine. They're not terrible.

[00:24:57]But there is a context behind it as to why he was able to get them.

[00:25:03]Throw in the fact again that totals is completely overvaluing him, telling you that, "Hey, if you take this guy in the fourth round, you would have done well."

[00:25:12]Again, I know you never would because his ADP was not even draftable and if you grabbed him in the last round or picked him up with waivers, you got a decent result.

[00:25:20]But you didn't get a fourth round player.

[00:25:23]You just didn't get a player of that value.

[00:25:27]Like you're talking about a 12, four, and five player. It's fine.

[00:25:32]It's fine.

[00:25:34]But the context behind it, as well as the mathematical anomalies, lead that to be prime um trap trap zone stuff.

[00:25:47]I got more names that I want to highlight and we'll get to them.

[00:25:50]Today's episode though is brought to you by GameTime. Basketball, the playoffs, they're live. We are in the middle of them. There are surprising results happening all over the place. Ime Udoka fully on fraud watch. So, do you want to go watch in Houston to see them get cooked again? The intensity of the crowd, the rivalries, it's a completely different experience there when you're live.

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[00:27:00]All right.

[00:27:02]Let's talk about rankings again and some of the guys that are going to appear to be much higher than what their value actually was.

[00:27:10]Donovan Clingan is going to be a huge over drafter. It happens basically every season.

[00:27:16]One random big man with either big rebounds, big field goals, and big blocks or a combination of those three gets overvalued.

[00:27:23]Jaren Jackson, Myles Turner, Walker Kessler, Chet Holmgren.

[00:27:29]And now it's going to be Clingan because his nine cat total ranking was number 21.

[00:27:33]21.

[00:27:34]Um his playoff performances have been uh putrid.

[00:27:39]Not that matters for fantasy, but it is important as to what level of player he is.

[00:27:44]I had him 83rd in Durant. I talked about him the other day about how I was I was too down on him. He exceeded my expectations. I was like, "I don't like picking him at this spot. I don't think you should do it." And he beat my expectations. But come on, 21?

[00:27:57]A second round player?

[00:27:59]A second round player.

[00:28:02]Donovan Clingan was a second round player according to those rankings.

[00:28:06]He averaged 12 points with 12 rebounds.

[00:28:08]12 rebounds, an excellent number.

[00:28:10]He hit a three a game. That's that's good from a big man. It's not It's not much though.

[00:28:14]I can find that from Tim Hardaway.

[00:28:18]I can find triple that from Tim Hardaway.

[00:28:20]Two assists, point six steals. The 1.7 blocks is good. It's not great.

[00:28:25]52% from the field? If you're a center and all you're doing is giving me rebounds, blocks, like I need 60, my guy.

[00:28:31]And terrible free throws. Yet he was the 21st ranked player.

[00:28:35]21st.

[00:28:37]Just for reference, I'll go through and tell you some guys that that is considered to be better than or that he was considered to be better than this season.

[00:28:45]Obviously, games played. He played 80.

[00:28:47]But like again, when you go onto that Yahoo page and you look at rankings Look at last season's rankings. Donovan Clingan's going to appear at 21.

[00:28:53]Cade Cunningham's going to appear at 24.

[00:28:55]Anthony Edwards is going to appear at 25.

[00:28:58]Bam Adebayo is going to appear at 29.

[00:29:01]Um LaMelo Ball is going to be at 32.

[00:29:04]Scoot Henderson is going to be at 36.

[00:29:06]Alperen Sengun is going to be at 39.

[00:29:09]Um Jaylen Brown is going to be at 44.

[00:29:13]Where else can I go with this? Um I think you get the picture, but Evan Mobley is going to be 58.

[00:29:18]Brandon Miller is going to be 59.

[00:29:22]Devin Booker is going to be 66.

[00:29:25]Like does that What What does that number tell you?

[00:29:28]21.

[00:29:29]Nothing apart from misleading you.

[00:29:33]Couple more that I want to go into a little bit more detail and then I've just got a raft of other names that are important, but this is one that I talked about all season. This man was not a rosterable player for the final probably two months of the season, Mikal Bridges.

[00:29:44]In Durant, he was 70th per game. He started off the season really well.

[00:29:48]He had a very low usage. But of course, he played all 82 games. Well, he played 81 games and then just stepped on the court for the 82nd, but you know, he played 82 games.

[00:29:56]His nine cat total ranking puts him as 16th.

[00:30:01]Not only is that a second round player, but that is in the top half of the second round.

[00:30:06]And again, may maybe I'm misinterpreting this, but if someone is ranked 16th, it suggests that if you were going back and doing a redraft of the season, that you would take Mikal Bridges in the middle of round two.

[00:30:19]And that would give you a better result than taking someone who was the 20th ranked or the 25th ranked player.

[00:30:26]And that's just that's just not accurate.

[00:30:29]It's just not.

[00:30:30]Bridges average 14 points, under two threes, four rebounds, under four rebounds, under four assists. The 1.3 steals, 1.8 blocks, pretty good. Pretty good.

[00:30:38]49 and 83, fine, but no volume.

[00:30:41]70th he was. 100 in Durant, 130th in points leagues.

[00:30:45]Not close to the 16th best player.

[00:30:49]He plays every game, but is it actually useful? Not No, it's not not to that degree. I mean, it's fine. He is fine enough. But he's also like 150th, whatever it was over the final month of the season.

[00:31:05]And you're holding on to someone because Oh, look at he's ranked 13th.

[00:31:09]Why would I drop the 13th ranked player?

[00:31:11]Well, because he's not the 13th ranked player.

[00:31:14]That's why you would do that.

[00:31:15]And that's why we talk about the misleading nature of these numbers.

[00:31:20]A lot of you can A lot of you can contextualize it, which is good. But some people can't. So, they'll just read a number and go, oh, I guess I guess Mikal's good with third round maybe next season. That's a bargain. He was actually 16th last season. I got him at 30. Wow, I'm flying. You're not, though.

[00:31:35]You're not.

[00:31:36]And that brings us to the last name on this sort of highlight list, and that is Superman, Caleb Martin.

[00:31:42]Really frustrating season if you had Martin.

[00:31:44]He is also an incredibly frustrating player as noticed by Erik Spoelstra and the Miami Heat. He is a stats guy that is a low impact player a lot of the time.

[00:31:55]He was a bench guy for big chunks of the season.

[00:31:59]But we're talking about a guy that ranked out as the 29th ranked player, a top 30 fantasy player for this season. Now, like come on.

[00:32:08]11 and 9 with 1.2 threes, under one assist, shout out Hassan Whiteside,.8 steals, and he only averaged 1.1 blocks.

[00:32:17]He shot 53 from the field, 75 from the line.

[00:32:20]He started off the season at about 48% from three. That obviously came down.

[00:32:24]But like what are we doing here?

[00:32:27]29th ranked player. Durant has him at 97th, which means rosterable sort of.

[00:32:32]But as we know, when he was playing 25 minutes a night, we were in on it.

[00:32:37]18 minutes a night, he was like outside the top 200.

[00:32:41]And the lack of confidence from Spoelstra and a lot of his damage, but so long as Caleb Martin was done when you have no Herro, no Wiggins, um there was someone else out at that same time as well, so they really had no choice.

[00:32:55]But let's also be incredibly for real here.

[00:32:58]Caleb Martin was not a top 30 player this season.

[00:33:01]He was he he just wasn't. His rebounds were very good.

[00:33:05]His blocks are fine.

[00:33:07]They're fine.

[00:33:09]His field goal percentage is pretty good.

[00:33:12]It's pretty good.

[00:33:15]But come on, man.

[00:33:17]No one can justify that he was a top 30 player.

[00:33:21]And I know that there will be people who be like, well, imagine Spoelstra actually starts him and realizes they fire Spo.

[00:33:27]He's so bad.

[00:33:29]And they start Martin, he's going to be a top five player.

[00:33:33]I mean, he he he won't be, though.

[00:33:36]I've got just a bunch of other names I want to run through.

[00:33:39]Some of the fluffies that when you hear their ranks, you'll be like, come on, bro.

[00:33:43]Javonte Green.

[00:33:45]You know Javonte Green. He was 107th ranked player in nine cat totals. 107th.

[00:33:49]Not only does that suggest a must roster player in standard leagues, it's a startable guy, not a bench guy. Durant had him 305th per game.

[00:33:56]Tim Hardaway Jr., 102nd.

[00:33:59]Durant had him 276. What about the guy that's absolutely cooking in the playoffs, the spiral Luke Kennard?

[00:34:05]He was 119th in nine cat totals.

[00:34:09]Like we again, be actually for real. Be FFR.

[00:34:14]Because there's no way in the world that anybody considered Luke Kennard a 12 team league guy.

[00:34:21]None.

[00:34:22]The horse, Al-Farouq Aminu, Keldon Johnson.

[00:34:25]232nd in Durant, 90th in nine cat totals.

[00:34:29]Really?

[00:34:31]Sam Hauser, 120th in nine cat, 282 in Durant.

[00:34:35]He was fine as a streamer, but 120 suggests again that you are starting on my team.

[00:34:40]Isaiah Joe, yeah, that guy. 118th in nine cat totals.

[00:34:44]266th in Durant.

[00:34:47]What about the old sir Duncan Robinson? Get up, sir.

[00:34:52]He was the 100th ranked player. Was he?

[00:34:55]I mean, he wasn't, but nine cat totals tell you he was. I had him 234th.

[00:35:00]The big sealant. Can you believe this?

[00:35:02]Ryan Kalkbrenner. Again, I This is I don't know which one is the most damning one. Is it Mikal Bridges at 16? Or is it the fact that Ryan Kalkbrenner ranked 99th for totals for the season?

[00:35:13]Like you couldn't have paid me to roster this bloke for the final four months of the season.

[00:35:18]And yet you're going to tell me he's a top 90 player averaging seven and five with 1.4 blocks. Yeah, the 75% is great on no attempts.

[00:35:26]99th.

[00:35:27]The pastel de nata, Usman Garuba.

[00:35:30]Huge surprise. Was he the 36th best player? Of course not. I had him 112th.

[00:35:35]Sandro Mamukelashvili, 66th.

[00:35:38]Hm?

[00:35:40]166th he was for me.

[00:35:42]The big ragu, I'd say it's a hugely disappointing season for Donte DiVincenzo. Not according to nine cat totals where he's 48th.

[00:35:48]I had him 133rd.

[00:35:51]I should take this one as a win for me cuz I had Payton Pritchard around this 55-60 mark. He ended up nine cat totals 35.

[00:35:57]Durant had him at 102.

[00:35:59]Find me a single person who believes that Payton Pritchard was not a disappointment this season.

[00:36:04]Because that ranking suggests that you know, it was actually a steal. You got him at 70. You got a massive bargain.

[00:36:09]Again, not reality.

[00:36:13]Reed Sheppard. Speaking of Ime Udoka, what is this guy doing?

[00:36:16]Ime Udoka is so tied to being the defense guy that he doesn't care about anything else. And the way that he achieves his good defense is by not playing anybody who's might struggle at defense, so he can say, "Look how good my defense is."

[00:36:28]So, Reed Sheppard plays 10 minutes a game and they can't score.

[00:36:31]And he's actually not that bad of a defender.

[00:36:34]He's like but again, now it'll I thought Reed was worth taking a pick 100 when VanVleet went down cuz I thought they need someone to shoot and to score.

[00:36:42]But they didn't. They would play Josh Okogie or Jaden Davison. In the end, Reed was 92nd per game. That's fine.

[00:36:47]There were moments where he was rosterable and moments where he lost they lost faith.

[00:36:50]But the totals ranking has him 30th.

[00:36:53]Middle of the third round for Reed Sheppard.

[00:36:58]Kris Dunn was 78th on nine cat totals. I had him 160 76th. Brandin Podziemski, who was bad for most of the season, Jimmy Butler went down and then Steph went down and then he was he was good, but he was 55th.

[00:37:11]I had him 135th.

[00:37:13]This one, maybe this is the one. Cuz Jake LaRavia was the 93rd ranked player on nine cat totals.

[00:37:20]There was a period when Reaves and Doncic were out, where LaRavia was fine enough.

[00:37:26]But 93rd, like come on, man.

[00:37:29]Toumani Camara, who was a huge disappointment, ended up 63rd in nine cat totals. So, look, you picked him at 80, which is about where I had him.

[00:37:36]It turns out to be a W. It's clearly not cuz he was terrible until the final six weeks of the season, where he was very good.

[00:37:44]But you could if you held onto him for the first three and a half months, it would have been a real struggle. And depending on who else you had another injuries, you might not have been able to do that.

[00:37:53]The big snowman, Deandre Ayton. How good was he this season? 67th ranked player?

[00:37:56]Yeah, that sounds about right, doesn't it? That's that's that's that's spot on.

[00:38:01]He was just not rosterable for again most of the season.

[00:38:05]And I got six more names.

[00:38:07]The big Ariola.

[00:38:08]He was incredibly inconsistent actually, Onyeka Okongwu. I know that that is a controversial statement, but he ended up 23rd on nine cat totals.

[00:38:16]If any of you I'm going to be I'll be very aggressive with this. If any of you are even considering drafting Onyeka Okongwu in round two next season, I think there's something wrong with you.

[00:38:28]I I think.

[00:38:30]He was 66th in Durant per game. Now, he can improve, but 23rd is an insane number. How about Desmond Bane, who ended up 13th in nine cat totals?

[00:38:38]Basically a first round player.

[00:38:42]I I I know that's not what you think he was.

[00:38:45]I had him 44th.

[00:38:47]Wendell Carter Jr.

[00:38:48]Old Mr. Mid. 62nd for nine cat totals. Cam Spencer, 80th for nine cat totals.

[00:38:57]The Tasmanian, Royce O'Neale, 70th for nine cat totals.

[00:39:02]And the last one is Onyeka Okongwu, who was great.

[00:39:05]Beat his ADP, loved what he did, 60th per game, but he was 24th according to nine cat totals, a second round player.

[00:39:13]And I hope that all of those numbers, the description, the impassioned plea from me to you to not look at those numbers and not understand where they come from. Cuz I you got to know what people are referencing when they talk rankings, where those numbers come from, and how they apply.

[00:39:31]Because I gave you What did I give you there? Four, 24, like over 30 names and I could have done way more where the nine cat total rank makes you go absolutely not. That's not any accurate reflection. It tells us nothing even about what the season that was and it gives us no forward prediction or projection value.

[00:39:54]Again, I will get pushback on this. I know this.

[00:39:57]I will get a lot of pushback because the way of doing it has been this way.

[00:40:03]Nine-cat straight Z-score rankings through totals.

[00:40:06]But without actually exploring what they mean or why that's not correct.

[00:40:11]I feel very confident that the Durant ranking system is a better reflection for head-to-head category leagues and for roto leagues than those numbers that are presented that way.

[00:40:23]Guys, thumb up the video, double bang it. We are done here. Thank you so much for listening everyone. Shout out to Oxy.

[00:40:29]See you.

[00:40:32]>> [music] [music] [music]