Using Basketball Monster & The Difference Between Rankings & Projections

I see the same questions cropping up a fair bit in player comments, on my Twitter feed, and in the forums, so I thought I would put out a quick article explaining how the projections/rankings page works.

First things first, you need to set up your league on the league settings page. Here is where you put in your league ID, whether your league is roto or H2H, categories or points, and what scoring is used for your league. You put in how many teams and the size of the roster and importantly, if you are running an auction league, you need to enter how many dollars you have in your auction budget, so we can display the value of players.

Next, our rankings page shows you past performance. It is not a ranking list to draft off or showings anything that will happen in the future. It is for past performance.

If you are looking for projections, then it’s our projections page to head to. This projects all NBA players in the categories you have set up in league settings and determines the standard score for each category based on your league sample size, allowing the players to be put into some sort of order. If you are in a points league, the order in which the players are displayed on this page shows you highest to lowest fantasy points per game projections and can almost be used as a draft list, although, with per-game numbers, it isn’t taking into consideration injuries and absences. Those can somewhat be figured out by selecting the ‘Use Replacement Players’ check box.

In a category league, though, you mustn’t view players on the projection page to be listed in an absolute order which converts into ‘rankings’ for your draft. Heading into a draft with a straight list to draft off will lead to sure failure. The projections and the values attached to players are there to guide you, along with categorical scarcity and dynamic value, which can be seen in the draft tracker. If you just take the player at the top of the draft tracker or projections page, you will lose. 

You need to be looking at what particular positions and categories you need and whether or not those can be found in later rounds or if they are drying up right now.

So, while it may seem a bit overwhelming, it is imperative that you don’t view Basketball Monster as a site that provides a cookie-cutter rankings list to draft off, checking off names as you go down the list.