Top 50 Rosters

Smallworld Hoops

Top 50 Rosters - 12/17

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 12/17, 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.
1) There are 55 different players on the top 50 teams. The top 20 include only 41 different players.
2) Grant Hill appears on 90% of the top 50, and also 90% of the top 20.
3) A few players seem disproportionately represented in the two groups.
Tim Duncan hasn't cracked a top 20 roster, but he is on 7 of the next 30
Ditto for Alonzo Mourning (zero and 5) - although that may change quickly
Michael Finley shows up on 3 of the top 20, but none of the next 30
I'll let you find other differences for yourself.

I wondered whether some of these differences in representation were attributable to differences in roster value. So I checked. The average roster value (including cash) for the top 50 teams is $114 million, and the range runs from a low of $97m to a high of $128m. Interestingly, the top twenty were virtually identical. Average value = $114.7, with a range from $102m to $125m. So, I guess that doesn't explain anything. Maybe the differences are no more than statistical noise resulting from a small sample size.

Here's the table. I won’t update this daily, but perhaps it would be fun to check on it every now and then.

Count of Players on Top 50 Rosters as of 12/17


Name                pos   top 50  top 20
Hill, Grant          F      45     18
Webber, Chris        C      42     19
Robinson, David      C      42     16
Malone, Karl         F      33     15
Williams, Brian      F      30     10
Strickland, Rod      G      29     13
Kidd, Jason          G      26     12
Knight, Brevin       G      25     13
Jackson, Bobby       G      25      7
Hardaway, Tim        G      25      7
Barkley, Charles     F      24     12
Garnett, Kevin       F      21      9
Payton, Gary         G      21      9
Jordan, Michael      G      21      7
Marshall, Donyell    F      19      7
Iverson, Allen       G      18      9
Marbury, Stephon     G      17      6
Walker, Antoine      F      14      4
Battie, Tony         F      13      7
Cassell, Sam         G      13      5
Grant, Brian         F       7      3
O'Neal, Shaquille    C       7      2
Duncan, Tim          F       7      0
Camby, Marcus        F       6      1
Gugliotta, Tom       F       5      4
Stoudamire, Damon    G       5      2
Smits, Rik           C       5      1
Mourning, Alonzo     C       5      0
Williams, Jayson     F       4      3
Dampier, Erick       C       4      3
Abdur-Rahim, Shareef F       4      1
Finley, Michael      F       3      3
Ewing, Patrick       C       3      2
Bryant, Kobe         G       3      1
Stockton, John       G       3      1
Schrempf, Detlef     F       3      0
Willis, Kevin        C       2      1
Person, Wesley       G       2      1
Drexler, Clyde       G       2      1
Barry, Brent         F       2      0
Horry, Robert        F       1      1
Howard, Juwan        F       1      1
Baker, Vin           F       1      1
McCarty, Walter      F       1      1
Henderson, Alan      F       1      1
Wallace, John        F       1      0
Mutombo, Dikembe     C       1      0
Anderson, Derek      F       1      0
Carr, Chris          G       1      0
Kukoc, Toni          F       1      0
Garrett, Dean        C       1      0
McGrady, Tracy       F       1      0
Anderson, Shandon    G       1      0
McDyess, Antonio     F       1      0
Smith, Steve         G       1      0

Guru Fantasy Sports is produced by Dave Hall (a.k.a. the Guru), an avid fantasy sports player. He is neither employed by nor compensated by any of the fantasy sports games discussed within this site, and all opinions expressed are solely his own. Questions or comments are welcome, and should be emailed to Guru<davehall@home.com>.