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.

Every day's a holiday

February is a short month, but I didn't realize until lately how many holidays are crammed into it.
It has Presidents' Day, which used to be the separate birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, two allegedly honest politicians who wouldn't stand a chance today.
There's the fake holiday of Valentine's Day.
Yesterday was another pretty fake holiday, Groundhog Day. Six more weeks of winter? Didn't you mean last winter. A year ago, everything here was frozen over for the week of the big game. At 4:30 this afternoon, depending on which thermometer you believe on T.L. Townsend Drive, it was either 73 or 71 degrees. A little bit of rain, but no ice in sight unless it was in Josh Hamilton's glass Monday. More later.
There's also sort of a holiday all month, Black History Month. These days, many -- maybe most -- black/African-American people would say about what Kevin Durant said in an interview Wednesday night, "I celebrate Black History Month all year."
That brings us to the really important holidays, which actually began Jan. 31.
That's the eve of the month in which pitchers and catchers report, so at the stroke of midnight, it is that month. One year when I was in college, my friend Tom and I took our gloves to a Friday or Saturday night party so we could play some catch at midnight to celebrate this holiday. Of course, all day Feb. 1 celebrates the holiday. And so do several consecutive days when one team or another has its pitchers and catchers report for PACR Day.
Back to Hamilton. Now that the Susan G. Komen Foundation has relented, Hamilton is reluctantly hogging the air waves as an even bigger story than the big game was last year. And speaking of Komen, even for non-profits, money talks.
The money that talks to Hamilton will be a lot quieter than anyone would have thought a week ago. Randy Galloway on DFW's ESPN Radio station speculated that Hamilton's relapse could knock his next contract down from 6 years and $120 million to 1 year for $20 million, with strings attached. I was thinking more along the lines of 3 voidable years at $15 million per season.
It is a sad story. Hamilton already has lost some productive years to his addictions. He might lose more, but right now it's impossible for his teammates, fans and major league teams to count on him.
That puts Hamilton's fantasy owners in a precarious position. Their expectations no doubt already were dampened by the amount of playing time he has missed even during the years when he has played. He could be a huge bust or an unbelievable bargain. Unquestionably, he is a big gamble.
You'd be perfectly justified in dropping him if he's a potential keeper. If he has the kind of contract year for you that other star players have had, good for you. But if he's a colossal bomb, you can't complain and say you weren't warned.
My recommendation would be not to expect anything more nor less than what he produced in 2011. Let the fantasy bidding or drafting stop there.