Fantasy: 2011-12 Second Half Stats

The top 30 by this measure (which we’ll call Fantasy Production, or FP) in the second half of last year is as follows:

Chris Paul, 7.39
Kevin Durant, 6.40
Lebron James, 6.08
Serge Ibaka, 5.90
Al Jefferson, 4.74
Ersan Ilyasova, 4.66
Kevin Love, 4.45
Kevin Garnett, 4.41
Danny Green, 4.24
Paul Millsap, 4.23
Kawhi Leonard, 4.05
Dirk Nowitzki, 3.63
Elton Brand, 3.50
Dwayne Wade, 3.49
Paul Pierce, 3.43
Tim Duncan, 3.26
Ryan Anderson, 3.10
James Harden, 2.93
Marcus Camby, 2.88
Ty Lawson, 2.84
Dorell Wright, 2.83
Andrew Bynum, 2.78
Goran Dragic, 2.70
Carmelo Anthony, 2.64
Kyrie Irving, 2.55
Marcus Thornton, 2.48
Kenneth Faried, 2.44
Danny Granger, 2.35
Joe Johnson, 2.27
Josh Smith, 2.18
Marcin Gortat, 2.17

I think you’ll agree with me that there are some interesting names in some interesting places in the list. Some other names of interest: Russell Westbrook was 44th and Pau Gasol 45th, Klay Thompson 54th, Deron Williams 61st, Kobe Bryant 63rd, Chris Bosh 83rd. Dwight Howard ranked 104th of the 198; if he could hit 77% of his free throws, Howard would have been 5th overall.

That last point emphasizes the fact that FP needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. Howard is a massive category-killer, we know that. However, the mere fact that Howard’s free-throw shooting is six standard deviations below that of the average of the guys in a typical league doesn’t mean it actually cancels out all the benefits he brings otherwise, or at least not necessarily. This is particularly true because in a fantasy league you’re not trying to be average. Nevertheless, it shows the balance problems that category-killers create. I’ll be using FP and its component measures in a later column to illustrate category champs and chumps.

Getting back to our aggregate FP stat, Jeremy Lin ranked 113th, Monta Ellis 121st, Nikola Pekovic 122nd, Tyreke Evans 134th, Steve Nash 135th, Blake Griffin 171st and Tristan Thompson was 198th and last. Those last six are all guys I have promoted as fantasy options of various potential this season, so you can see how much salt I am actually pinching here; FP is not a one-stop stat for fantasy evaluation. But especially for guys at the top of the list, it shows per-minute fantasy production well, across all categories together.