How to use the Punting Tool

Our punting tool is (hopefully) relatively straightforward. It does do a few things that are unusual for fantasy basketball, however, so I want to unpack those choices first. If you're less interested in the 'what' and instead want to learn more about the 'how', feel free to skip down a few paragraphs.

That disclaimer made, the what:

Our punting tool is actually two different tools packed into one.

Tool 1:

- First, we've created ranked each player's predicted output for individual categories. James Harden, for example, has the rank "1" under his point category because he's predicted to lead the league in scoring. Anthony Davis being ranked as "185" in 3 pointers made means he's predicted to be quite poor at making 3s relative to the league, and is expected to be 185th best.

- Second, we've reflected the 'average' rank of how well players do across the board, in the far left column, "rank." Think of this score not as a pure rank, but instead a representation of how good a player is, mixed with how evenly distributed that player's value is spread across different categories. This score likes players that do well across the board (like Towns and Otto Porter, for example) more than players that derive the majority of their value from one category (like Mitchell Robinson, for example).

Tool 2:

- Using these ranks, we can turn off certain categories to derive punting value. If we ignore a category, like blocks, for example, the new score (reflected in "punt rank") represents the same value (how good a player is, mixed with how evenly distributed the player's value is across different categories) but ignores the punted category.

- This provides both a new rank and also a percent change. All important information for any team that wants to punt particular categories.

An important note, before we get to how to use the tool: the numbers here ARE NOT straight ranks (for our predicted rankings, head over to our Rank of Ranks). Instead, these values represent a combination of how good a player is in fantasy and how evenly distributed that player's value is across categories.

Now, the how:

Using the punt tool is easy. To punt a category, simply toggle from "On" to "Punt" in the drop down menu. Both the punt rank and the percent change will update automatically.

If you want to sort by a different category than the default, which is the far left column, "rank," just click the down arrow on the particular header you want to sort by. So, for example, if you want to sort by "punt rank" just click on the arrow and choose sort ascending (usually) or descending. All categories are sortable, so feel free to take a look at data by position or specific category.