You're in a weekly transaction league, and you need to decide by Monday evening who your starting lineup will be for the week. Should you consider sitting usual impact starters like Trae Young, Paul George or De'Aaron Fox? Or perhaps starting someone like Josh Hart or Miles Bridges, who might generally be on your bench, perhaps even your waiver wire? Let's take a look at next week's schedules, and some player news, to help quantitatively answer these questions for these players, and many others.
Matchup ratings are based on a scale from 1 (poor matchup) to 10 (excellent matchup). These are calculated using a formula that evaluates the team's season-to-date and past-10-games statistics, opponents' numbers in those categories and performance in home/road games, depending on where the game is to be played. The column to the left lists the team's total number of games scheduled, as well as home games, and lists the overall rating from 1-10 for that team's weekly schedule.
The week ahead
There are 11 teams with four games this week, 16 with three games, and three with only two games. This resulted in some pretty big extremes in the rankings, with nine teams posting Forecaster ratings of 8 or higher and six teams posting scores of 3 or lower.
The Houston Rockets scored a perfect 10 on the Forecaster with four games this week, and both the Charlotte Hornets and Los Angeles Lakers chimed in with scores of 9 in four games. The Indiana Pacers, New Orleans Pelicans, Utah Jazz and Washington Wizards all play four games and scored 8 on the Forecaster, while the Golden State Warriors and Philadelphia 76ers managed Forecaster scores of 8 in only three games.
On the other side of the coin, the Sacramento Kings scored only a 1 on the Forecaster in two games. The Denver Nuggets scored a 2 with their two games, while each of the Atlanta Hawks and Memphis Grizzlies scored a 2 with their three games. The New York Knicks and Orlando Magic both scored 3 on the Forecaster in three games. The Oklahoma City Thunder also only have two games but managed a Forecaster score of 4.
Potentially startable players
Potentially sittable players
I populated the potentially startable and potentially sittable lists using the following general guidelines, per the result of my Forecaster and season projection calculations. Assuming league sizes of 10 teams with 10 starters per team, players ranked below 80 would generally be questionable to start. Similarly, even for 12-team leagues with 10 starters, players ranked below 120 would generally not be expected to start.
Thus, the potentially startable list is comprised of players ranked below 80th in my season-long points rankings who ended up among the top 100 projected players for this week, utilizing the Forecaster. Conversely, the potentially sittable list is comprised of players ranked in the top 100 of the season-long points rankings who ended up outside of the top 120 projected players for this week, utilizing the Forecaster.
