Top 50 Rosters - 1/5

If you're trying to gain ground on teams ahead of you, it can help to know who's on their rosters. If your team looks too much like the other teams, then it will be tough to catch them. Similarly, if you're near the top, you may want to mimic your closest contenders to hedge your lead.

Ever wondered what the composite rosters of the top 50 worldwide teams looked like? Using the teams rankings as of 1/5, I counted the number of times each player appeared in a top 50 roster. Those tallies are shown below. I also segmented out the count for just the top 20 teams.

There aren't many surprises here, although there are a few things that I found interesting, both on an absolute basis, as well as in comparison with the previous analysis (12/17).

1) There are only 38 different players on the top 50 teams. The top 20 have only 29 different players. In mid-December, the corresponding numbers were 55 and 41. It seems as though the leaders are converging to more similar rosters.

2) David Robinson appears on 100% of the top 20, and also 84% of the top 50. Grant Hill was the previous frontrunner. (I guess that french fry weakness is scaring some managers away!)

3) 21 players disappeared since the last list. The "disappearee" who was on the most rosters previously (13) is Tony Battie.

4) Brevin Knight showed the largest decline, dropping from 25 rosters to only 7.

5) Shaq showed the largest increase, moving from 7 rosters to 29. Of course, he was still injured in mid-December. Among players who were active both times, Kevin Garnett increased the most, from 21 to 32 rosters.

6) There are four new players on this list. The most significant is Shawn Bradley (21). The other new players are Terrell Brandon, Isaiah Rider, and Lorenzen Wright.

Here's the table. I'll update this again in another few weeks.