2025 CelticsBlog Fantasy Draft: '05-'25 Edition

[Roy H.]

I love Dirk.  I'd be fascinated to see what he would do today, when guys are taking 10 3PAs per game.

[Moranis]

This draft has mostly not gone like I thought it would. A couple of guys still on board that are surprising as well.

[Celtic Fan Forever]

Not a fan of the Harden pick, but AD is a good pairing with him.

[Roy H.]

This draft has mostly not gone like I thought it would. A couple of guys still on board that are surprising as well.

Yeah, my #6 and #8 guys haven't gone yet.

[Roy H.]

Not a fan of the Harden pick, but AD is a good pairing with him.

Harden is a hard player for me to rank.  He's a great player in terms of efficiency, and he's always going to rack up huge stats.  He put up 36 points per game on a .616 TS%, along with 11 assists per game.  Those are video game numbers.

But, because he never won, and because he forced trades multiple times, he's also going to have that stink on him.

[Celtic Fan Forever]

Not a fan of the Harden pick, but AD is a good pairing with him.

Harden is a hard player for me to rank.  He's a great player in terms of efficiency, and he's always going to rack up huge stats.  He put up 36 points per game on a .616 TS%, along with 11 assists per game.  Those are video game numbers.

But, because he never won, and because he forced trades multiple times, he's also going to have that stink on him.

Agreed, no denying the offensive output. But I think in terms of both voting and the sim, the ball dominance and lack of defense will hurt him.

[Moranis]

I have 2 guys i really want. Hoping at least one drops to me, but both would be fantastic (since I have back to back picks at end of next round and start of 3rd).

[Jvalin]

Was having a quick look at how the whatif algorithm works. Turns out there is a penalty if using multiple high usage players at the same time. Here's a quote I found. Feel free to take it with a grain of salt.

Usage - How do I use this stat to build teams?

Usage is one of the most complex stats in this sim and is one of the things I see asked about most often. Even people who think they have a good handle on it often have the wrong idea. So let's start with the first question most people ask when they come to this site:

What is Usage%?

From the knowledgebase:

    Usage% is the player's possessions (FGA + FTA * 0.44 + Turnovers) per minute as a percentage of his real-life team's possessions per minute. This value indicates how often a player either shot the ball, drew a foul, or turned the ball over. The SimEngine uses this value in relation to the other 4 players on his team to determine how often each player gets the ball.

So, with this in mind, the higher the usage of a player, the greater the CHANCE your team's possession in this sim will end with that player making a FG attempt, getting fouled or turning the ball over. With that in mind, you probably want to make sure your highest usage players are your most efficient offensive players (shoot a high fg%, get to the line a lot, and don't turn the ball over as much. Example: 89-90 Michael Jordan or 12-13 Lebron James).

Also keep in mind that there will only be so many possessions in a basketball game. It is a flat-out waste to draft way more possessions than you can ever use in a game, so you're better off spending some of that money on lower usage guys who specialize in other areas (rebounds!) that can help you.

So how much usage is too much? How much do you need?

The first thing you have to realize is that there are two penalties to avoid, and you need to use different strategies to get by both of them.

The first is the team possession penalty. Here, total usage% means absolutely nothing. You can't just add up the five players on the floor's usage and have it right. Usage is broken up into different tiers that give different point values. Here is that table:

    Tier 1: Usg% >= 32.5 = 8 points
    Tier 2: Usg% 27.2 To 32.5 = 6 points
    Tier 3: Usg% 22.1 To 27.2 = 4 points
    Tier 4: Usg% 17.5 To 22.1 = 2 points
    Tier 5: Usg% 13.7 To 17.5 = 1 point
    Tier 6: Usg% < 13.7 = 0.5 points

That table will be extremely useful to you when building your own teams and analyzing other teams. It's a good idea to just memorize it. Now here's how to use it: Take your five players on the floor and find out which tier they fall into. Add up the POINTS. This is what's important. You need 10 points on the floor to avoid the team possession penalty.

Now before I go any further, let me go into more detail about the possession penalty is and why it's bad. As I said before, there are two kinds of possession penalties: Team & Individual. When a team gets into a possession penalty situation, their players don't shoot as good and they turn the ball over more often. The same thing happens to a player when they get into the individual possession penalty. Obviously you can see that you want to avoid this as much as possible.

The team possession penalty is the easier penalty to avoid. All you need is 10 usage points on the floor to avoid it. That's it. So you can literally have one guy with 32.5% usage or higher on the floor with 4 specialists who have a usage of 13.7% or lower and not hit the team possession penalty. If you add that up, you'll see that number is less than 100%. That's one reason why you can't rely on what I dub cumulative usage (or adding the usage up of all five players on the floor). You can actually have 100% or more usage on the floor and below the possession penalty. How? Let's say you have four guys with 21 usage & a fifth with 17. That adds up to 101 usage... but only 9 usage points. This team will hit the team possession penalty. That's bad. Don't do that!

Now... you've got the team penalty & how to avoid it down, right? Just get 10+ usage points. But what about the individual possession penalty? How do you avoid that? That's where cumulative usage comes into play.

Think about what usage means (as defined earlier) a minute. If you have less than 100% usage on the floor, someone is going to end up with more possessions in the sim than the did IRL. That triggers the individual penalty. This occurs on a game by game basis, not the season total, so realize that at any point, sim randomness & outliers can and will screw you. To ensure that you will never hit the individual possession penalty, you would likely have to waste a great deal of salary by spending too much on usage, ending up with several players who won't get their RL possessions. But you can achieve a reasonable balance where it is unlikely that you will have too many players hit the individual possession penalty while not wasting too much of your salary on it.

By playing uptempo & working hard on the possession battle (boards, turnovers), most of your guys WILL end up with more shots than they did IRL. I've found great success recently in aiming to have more than 100% cumulative usage (but less than 115%) on the floor at all times. Starting on page 6 of this thread, I began a series of tests to determine what the right usage number was. Prior to these tests, I always tried to aim for a set number of usage points on the floor... I encouraged people to run 12-15 usage points. You still can do that, but you can end up with less than 100% usage on the floor with as much as 14.5 usage points (maybe more)... and that can create the possession penalty (which can lead to losses).

Conclusion:
I aim to have 10 usage points on the floor at all times (making sure my backups are in the same tier as the starter, or at least high enough that the lowest lineup I can run will have 10 usage points). I'm shooting for 105%-115% cumulative usage in my starting line-up with a minimum of 90% usage possible on the floor when backups are in the game. So far, this has led to much more consistent success than when relying on usage points alone.

Keep in mind that this sim is about getting the right balance between all of the necessary stats. Usage isn't the only thing you should worry about, but it might just be the first thing you should worry about. See my other thread for helpful tips on how to approach that balance of all the necessary stats to win.

https://www.whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx?topicID=445171&page=1

Almost picked a completely different player cause he has an uber efficient season at very low usage. I think we should clarify how the game will be decided. It seems like the simulator favors a very specific type of team building. For instance, Steph+Giannis is an amazing combo, but those two alone would surpass the 10 point cap of the simulator.

[Timdawgg]

Not a fan of the Harden pick, but AD is a good pairing with him.

Harden is a hard player for me to rank.  He's a great player in terms of efficiency, and he's always going to rack up huge stats.  He put up 36 points per game on a .616 TS%, along with 11 assists per game.  Those are video game numbers.

But, because he never won, and because he forced trades multiple times, he's also going to have that stink on him.

Agreed, no denying the offensive output. But I think in terms of both voting and the sim, the ball dominance and lack of defense will hurt him.

Agreed. I was thinking the pick is boom or bust. Not sure how the simulation will play out for him. I am very curious. I always stayed away from him in Fantasy drafts over the years because of percentages but I am hoping he performs well in simulation.

[Donoghus]

To be honest, I'm ignoring the sim altogether.  Going with gut picks and how I perceive fit & chemistry.  And guys I just tend to like.

[Roy H.]

To me, I don't care about the simulator, and have no real interest in how it works.  When building teams made out of the best 100 players of the last 20 years, I don't expect that there will be many low usage players taken unless they were absolutely dominant at a particular skill.

To that end, I'm not going to read up on the formula, or try to game my team to pick players that will fit the model.  My personal standard is, "what's the best team I can put together building around players I don't hate".

[smokeablount]

Durant makes a lot of sense. 

For what it's worth, my top six were, in no particular order:

Jokic
Lebron
Curry
Giannis
Durant
_._.

That said, if the board broke a different way, I was taking Duncan.

That was my same top 5, tho different order. Pick #14 is critical for me to try and keep up. #s 27 and 34 are too far off for me to even consider. Curious who?ll be there.

[smokeablount]

Was having a quick look at how the whatif algorithm works. Turns out there is a penalty if using multiple high usage players at the same time. Here's a quote I found. Feel free to take it with a grain of salt.

Usage - How do I use this stat to build teams?

Usage is one of the most complex stats in this sim and is one of the things I see asked about most often. Even people who think they have a good handle on it often have the wrong idea. So let's start with the first question most people ask when they come to this site:

What is Usage%?

From the knowledgebase:

    Usage% is the player's possessions (FGA + FTA * 0.44 + Turnovers) per minute as a percentage of his real-life team's possessions per minute. This value indicates how often a player either shot the ball, drew a foul, or turned the ball over. The SimEngine uses this value in relation to the other 4 players on his team to determine how often each player gets the ball.

So, with this in mind, the higher the usage of a player, the greater the CHANCE your team's possession in this sim will end with that player making a FG attempt, getting fouled or turning the ball over. With that in mind, you probably want to make sure your highest usage players are your most efficient offensive players (shoot a high fg%, get to the line a lot, and don't turn the ball over as much. Example: 89-90 Michael Jordan or 12-13 Lebron James).

Also keep in mind that there will only be so many possessions in a basketball game. It is a flat-out waste to draft way more possessions than you can ever use in a game, so you're better off spending some of that money on lower usage guys who specialize in other areas (rebounds!) that can help you.

So how much usage is too much? How much do you need?

The first thing you have to realize is that there are two penalties to avoid, and you need to use different strategies to get by both of them.

The first is the team possession penalty. Here, total usage% means absolutely nothing. You can't just add up the five players on the floor's usage and have it right. Usage is broken up into different tiers that give different point values. Here is that table:

    Tier 1: Usg% >= 32.5 = 8 points
    Tier 2: Usg% 27.2 To 32.5 = 6 points
    Tier 3: Usg% 22.1 To 27.2 = 4 points
    Tier 4: Usg% 17.5 To 22.1 = 2 points
    Tier 5: Usg% 13.7 To 17.5 = 1 point
    Tier 6: Usg% < 13.7 = 0.5 points

That table will be extremely useful to you when building your own teams and analyzing other teams. It's a good idea to just memorize it. Now here's how to use it: Take your five players on the floor and find out which tier they fall into. Add up the POINTS. This is what's important. You need 10 points on the floor to avoid the team possession penalty.

Now before I go any further, let me go into more detail about the possession penalty is and why it's bad. As I said before, there are two kinds of possession penalties: Team & Individual. When a team gets into a possession penalty situation, their players don't shoot as good and they turn the ball over more often. The same thing happens to a player when they get into the individual possession penalty. Obviously you can see that you want to avoid this as much as possible.

The team possession penalty is the easier penalty to avoid. All you need is 10 usage points on the floor to avoid it. That's it. So you can literally have one guy with 32.5% usage or higher on the floor with 4 specialists who have a usage of 13.7% or lower and not hit the team possession penalty. If you add that up, you'll see that number is less than 100%. That's one reason why you can't rely on what I dub cumulative usage (or adding the usage up of all five players on the floor). You can actually have 100% or more usage on the floor and below the possession penalty. How? Let's say you have four guys with 21 usage & a fifth with 17. That adds up to 101 usage... but only 9 usage points. This team will hit the team possession penalty. That's bad. Don't do that!

Now... you've got the team penalty & how to avoid it down, right? Just get 10+ usage points. But what about the individual possession penalty? How do you avoid that? That's where cumulative usage comes into play.

Think about what usage means (as defined earlier) a minute. If you have less than 100% usage on the floor, someone is going to end up with more possessions in the sim than the did IRL. That triggers the individual penalty. This occurs on a game by game basis, not the season total, so realize that at any point, sim randomness & outliers can and will screw you. To ensure that you will never hit the individual possession penalty, you would likely have to waste a great deal of salary by spending too much on usage, ending up with several players who won't get their RL possessions. But you can achieve a reasonable balance where it is unlikely that you will have too many players hit the individual possession penalty while not wasting too much of your salary on it.

By playing uptempo & working hard on the possession battle (boards, turnovers), most of your guys WILL end up with more shots than they did IRL. I've found great success recently in aiming to have more than 100% cumulative usage (but less than 115%) on the floor at all times. Starting on page 6 of this thread, I began a series of tests to determine what the right usage number was. Prior to these tests, I always tried to aim for a set number of usage points on the floor... I encouraged people to run 12-15 usage points. You still can do that, but you can end up with less than 100% usage on the floor with as much as 14.5 usage points (maybe more)... and that can create the possession penalty (which can lead to losses).

Conclusion:
I aim to have 10 usage points on the floor at all times (making sure my backups are in the same tier as the starter, or at least high enough that the lowest lineup I can run will have 10 usage points). I'm shooting for 105%-115% cumulative usage in my starting line-up with a minimum of 90% usage possible on the floor when backups are in the game. So far, this has led to much more consistent success than when relying on usage points alone.

Keep in mind that this sim is about getting the right balance between all of the necessary stats. Usage isn't the only thing you should worry about, but it might just be the first thing you should worry about. See my other thread for helpful tips on how to approach that balance of all the necessary stats to win.

https://www.whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx?topicID=445171&page=1

Almost picked a completely different player cause he has an uber efficient season at very low usage. I think we should clarify how the game will be decided. It seems like the simulator favors a very specific type of team building. For instance, Steph+Giannis is an amazing combo, but those two alone would surpass the 10 point cap of the simulator.

 There is a usage penalty so to speak with a salary cap, because you are paying for usage you don?t use and it will cost you elsewhere.

We are uncapped and that won?t be an issue here. Just the highest usage guys will get the highest usage.

The penalties mentioned above are for being under usage. It?s unlikely that will occur here with such a deep draft of stars, since one 30% usage guy and one 24% usage guy on the court means you?re good no matter what, so I included only part of your post above in my sim notes to not overcomplicate things.

My only experience is playing in just under 2 dozen salary cap leagues where the cap is. 50% of what our teams will cost, but that is my understanding of it.

[Timdawgg]

Thanks for these comments...Not sure how these drafts go. Good to know some of you are more about going with gut/players you like. In reality I absolutely hate Hardens game...I feel safer going forward picking more players that I love/fit and less worried about the numbers. 

[Donoghus]

Now what the heck are we supposed to do the rest of the day?