Simple plus/minus system for fantasy basketball

When I was inspired -- pretty much impulsively -- to join a fantasy basketball league, I wondered whether the plus/minus system I use as a rough guideline who's playing well would work to evaluate players for fantasy basketball. The thinking was that we know who are the scorers, but when we're trying to accumulate a mashup of statistics for a Rotisserie (R)-style scoring system, the choices aren't so obvious. By looking at a typical expanded box score for a game -- or a season to date -- we can come up with numerical plus/minus figures for any player. That number shows whether players do more good or bad things for their team. Take the positive -- shots made, rebounds, assists, steals and blocks -- and deduct the negative -- missed shots, turnovers and fouls. For this study, I took the top group of five or six players in the positive stats -- scoring, rebounds, assists, steals and blocks. That provides somewhat of a cross section of player types -- shooters, point guards, rebounders, defenders. In all, I compared the totals for 25 of those category leaders, some in more than one category, and one mistake (Mason Plumlee, whose numbers through Nov. 19 I looked up instead of Miles Plumlee's). I think this plus-minus assessment is a reasonable guideline. It includes just 26 of the 450 players on NBA rosters (6%), but if you consider that maybe nine players from each team could even be considered for fantasy purposes, that's more like 10%. The players in the study that we'd expect to be early fantasy draft picks are on top of this list. Keep in mind that these aren't the top 25 or 26 players in the league. Some acknowledged stars, such as Chris Bosh and Dirk Nowitzki, weren's included in the study. Here's the list: Kevin Love, Minnesota 220 Chris Paul, LA Clippers 199 Anthony Davis, New Orleans 181 LeBron James, Miami 164 Kevin Durant, Oklahoma City 162 Dwight Howard, Houston 152 Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan, LA Clippers 147 Nikola Vucevic, Orlando 140 Andre Drummond, Detroit 133 Ty Lawson, Denver 125 Ricky Rubio, Minnesota 122 Roy Hibbert, Indiana 114 James Harden, Houston 112 John Wall, Washington 104 Jeff Teague, Atlanta 101 Evan Turner, Philadelphia 95 Stephen Curry, Golden State, and Brook Lopez, Brooklyn 91 Carmelo Anthony, New York 83 Dwyane Wade, Miami, and Miles Plumlee, Phoenix 72 Eric Gordon, New Orleans 59 Trevor Ariza, Washington 41 Deron Williams, Brooklyn 30 Mason Plumlee, Brooklyn 19 A couple of notes here. Unless you have a specific need in a category, it's best to avoid players whose value is mostly in one area, such as assists of blocks. That would be like having Juan Pierre on your fantasy baseball team and expecting him to hit for power. Subtracting missed field goals and missed free throws can point out where a scorer or some other specialist can help you in the shooting percentage categories. Examples: Anthony is -33 and point guards Wall -44 and Rubio -30 on field goals; big man Drummond is -11 at the foul line. Of Durant's +162 total, 98 are from his free throw margin. That also shows that he gets to the line a lot. James is +39 from the field, which tells me that he could be a little less selective and still score more points.