We’ve made it another month into the NBA season, and we’re fast approaching the All Star Game and trade deadline. Postponements and health/safety protocols due to COVID-19 have made lineup setting quite a daunting task for fantasy managers, and while we in the fantasy hoops community continue to bang our heads against the wall figuring out how to strategize, we can take some solace in the fact that dynasty fantasy basketball can take our minds to a brighter future. We can take stock of our teams and determine how to build for years to come. In this spirit of planning ahead, I wanted to make an easy to use, quick comparison tool for dynasty valuation. That’s where the Dynasty Trade Value Chart comes in.
So, how were these values calculated? My initial attempt focused on:
- Number of years remaining
- Top-10 seasons remaining
- Top-30 seasons remaining
- Top-50 seasons remaining
- Top-100 seasons remaining
There’s no way to know these things in advance, so I did my best guess work based on past success, current situation, age, skillset, and potential. After sharing these rankings with a couple of friends who really know their basketball, it was pointed out to me that I had failed to take current elite performance into account.
So, I used the initial criteria outlined above and added one more:
- Top-10 seasons within the next three years
This helped to close the gap between older guys who will put up elite numbers now (James Harden, Stephen Curry, Damian Lillard) and guys who will hit their primes after that. Each of these criteria were given a points value, totaled, and then divided by 2.5 so the final values weren’t astronomical. The value of a top-10 season is worth more than the value of a top-30 season, and so on.
Remaining seasons was also something I had to play with a bit. I settled on subtracting players’ ages from 35 — a roundabout age that might be reasonable for players to retire. Some guys had to be tweaked to account for skills like excellent shooting (Curry) and lack of extensive injury history (LeBron James) that would lend themselves to years played beyond the age of 35. There was no exact science here, but to keep things fair, the baseline retirement age was 35.
Last month, we had just one chart for overall value, but after looking at it, I decided that wasn’t enough. Not all dynasty teams are created equal. If you’re in third place and want to make a move to go for the title this year, you’ll value players producing at an elite level right now more highly. If you’re in dead last and looking to rebuild for future success, elite producers this season can be flipped for high-upside prospects, rookies, or younger talent. That’s why we have three different charts in this month’s installment, and that’s what you’ll get moving forward.
The first chart is what you got last month – an overall dynasty chart that takes win-now and future values into consideration and combines those values. Our second chart is designed for teams in the hunt for a championship right now, and this one is called “Win-Now.” This chart weights current production much higher than future production. Finally, we have a chart for those teams looking to rebuild and compete in the future. This is the “Under 25” chart and, as the name suggests, only lists players who are 25 years old and younger.
If you want to see the entire process, you can check out the entire spreadsheet with all of this methodology: Link to Dynasty Trade Chart Google Doc
So without further adieu, let’s get to the chart. Players are listed by position, team, age, and value, but you can sort and search any way you’d like. I’ll be updating the chart the first week of each month, so if you want to know how the value of a particular player has changed since the last update, be sure to check it out.
If you have any questions or comments, please hit me up on Twitter @ZaktheMonster.
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This the overall trade value chart, which takes into account a player’s age, ceiling, ability to win now, and future performance.
This chart weights the value of top-10 and top-30 seasons within the next three seasons even more than in the Overall Trade Value Chart.
This chart is made up of players who are 25 years old and younger and is designed to act as a guide for rebuilding teams.
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Zachary Hanshew is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Zachary, check out his archive and follow him @zakthemonster.