I normally run my leagues through Yahoo because they do such a good job with the user-interface and the ability to customize a league to taste.

They provide an excellent number of stats — so many stats, in fact, that even an amateur could scan through the players’ stats and pick up players that will help them out in all of the categories that they need and even, dare I say, win a league. (I know because based off of stats alone I am leading my Fantasy Football League and I don’t even watch the NFL — the last one I saw had San Francisco winning a superbowl.) I can invite a few novices into my league, and they stand a good chance of competing based off of Yahoo’s picks alone.

However…

Their O-Rank leaves much to be desired.

I could probably leave it at that, but I will illustrate.

O-Rank is short for Overall Rank. To translate, that means that Yahoo gives a player a rank based on a number of years of good play rather than just the last year (before the season starts) or the current year (after the season has begun). It also means that they are allowed to slide a player up based on potentially good play for the current season — you will often see this most with younger players, especially rookies.

Anybody that follows College Football knows that the pre-season rankings are a bunch of hooey, and that they are the reason why the top conferences stay on top, and that the same 10 teams are playing for Championships every year. Top conferences are given the top picks, so they are always playing top 25 teams.

Why did I bring up the College Football tangent, you might ask?

Overall rank has the same problem. You can’t move a player up in the list even though they have never played that well in their life just because some commentator thinks they might be good this year. I’ll allow you a slight bump, but not a big one. As an example, Yao Ming every year is a top 25 O-Rank player, and he never does better than 40. Never! How can a player have an O-Rank that far exceeds anything that player has done so far? Could he be a top 25 O-Rank player this year? Maybe. But, I doubt it. He has been hovering around the 4th and 5th rounds for 3 years in a row, and I don’t plan on him changing much now.

Another huge problem is that some players are living off of old stats. As another example, Tracy McGrady had a couple of very, very good years a few years back. He is constantly bumped way up in the rankings even though his back hasn’t allowed him to play much at all in years. Will he do well this year? Maybe. But he hasn’t been good for years, so I wouldn’t count on it. Let someone else risk picking him up.

The other problem that sometimes comes into play is that some players play well every year, but they get bumped down just because someone doesn’t think that they can possibly be that good again. Chauncey Billups is the biggest example of this. Finally, this year, Yahoo has stopped knocking him down a couple of rounds, much to my chagrin. Boy, has he been a steal the last 2 years in Yahoo leagues. You’ll find a few more of these type of players if you look hard enough. Shane Battier is usually another one.

So that now we know why some of the problems exist, how can they be solved?

The first thing I always look at is last year’s rank. Yahoo provides this right next to the O-Rank. Now, it is based off of normal stat categories, so if your league uses different ones than most, you’ll have to take that into account. If they use the standard 9 categories, you are in good shape.

Players usually improve a little off of the previous year’s rankings, or they decline a little bit from the previous year’s rankings. There really are no huge surprises, except where there are no supporting NBA stats (i.e. rookies). The only huge jumps that non-rookies ever can make is of a change in minutes. Those can be summed up in two categories — injury (or recovery from an injury) or a move to or from a starting lineup.

That’s really it.

If you’ve read my previous blogs, then I don’t have to remind you that picking up guys that help you in all of the categories is of the utmost importance, but if you need a good indicator of how a player will perform this year, do three things:

1. Check out the player’s previous year ranking
2. Check out the injury reports (and don’t believe that Tracy McGrady or Grant Hill might be healthy this year)
3. Check out who has moved into or out of a starting lineup.