Every season, the top 150 players in the player pool carry about 2,000 points of Player Rater value.

The distribution of those points fuels the dynamics of everything we discuss within this space.

In the end? We’re plumbing for scarcity.

Which categories and positions contained the most uneven distribution of value. It’s all Moneyball. If we roster players, positions and categories that were undervalued on draft day… we win. If our draft was governed by sources of overvaluation… we lose.

In fantasy, there are two basic ways to break down scarcity: by category and by position. Let’s examine positional scarcity, and where it’s headed going into the 2019-2020 campaign.

When I first began playing fantasy basketball (at the turn of the century) it was a simpler statistical time. Valuation by position was more regimented. There were far fewer players who qualified at multiple positions. Certain statistics were more weighted by position.china nike nfl jerseys cheap

Today, the lines demarking positions have been blurred. Take a look at the top 50 players on the Player Rater: 17 players qualify at multiple positions.

When you add up overall valuation by position? Across the top 150 players? Scarcity becomes harder to detect. Across the top 150 players, the prevalence of so many multipositional players has led to little to no differentiation in available Player Rater value by position.

When you add up the top 40 players at each position? There’s only about an 18-point swing between the positions in terms of Player Rater value (from small forward: 307 PR points to center: 325 PR points).

Once you get out of the top 40? The first four or so rounds of your draft? Positional scarcity disappears.

Conclusion: at that point, you can draft almost purely based on upside. Post-round four, look for the player at a position of need that has the most opportunity to outperform his ADP.

But if you’re drafting in the first four rounds? Pronounced scarcity still exists.cheap nfl jerseys china nike

The first four rounds are (naturally) the most important, because that’s where the lion’s share of Player Rater value is weighted. And the higher you go in the draft, the more weighted the positional scarcity. (If you really want to get technical about it, the majority of overall Player Rater value is concentrated in the top-32.)