What is fantasy value (FV)?
Fantasy value (FV) is one number for how much a player helped a fantasy basketball team in one game. It adds his scores in the 9 standard categories, and each score is measured against the league.
Which categories does FV use?
FV uses the 9 categories of a standard 9-category league. Every category has the same weight of 1. Turnovers count against the player.
- Points (PTS), rebounds (REB) and assists (AST).
- Steals (STL), blocks (BLK) and three-pointers made (3PM).
- Turnovers (TOV), field goal percentage (FG%) and free throw percentage (FT%).
How is each category measured?
Each category is a z-score against the league. A z-score shows how far a stat is from the league average, in standard deviations.
z = (player's stat − league mean) ÷ league standard deviation
The league is every player with 12 or more minutes a game who played at least a quarter of his team's games. Only regular-season games count.
Early in a season, the league numbers also use last season. The weight on this season grows evenly over the first 50 team games. Each game uses the numbers known before that game, so past scores do not change.
How do FG% and FT% count?
FG% and FT% are weighted by attempts. A good percentage on many shots helps more than the same percentage on few shots.
FG = 0.5 × z(FGM) + 0.5 × z(FGM − league FG% × FGA)
FT uses the same formula with free throws made and attempted. Half of the score comes from made shots, and half comes from efficiency.
Why is FV shown as 21.5 + 1.25 × raw?
The raw sum of z-scores is negative for most single games. So the site shows a scaled number that is easier to read.
FV = 21.5 + 1.25 × raw
In the 2025-26 season, single games scored from 8.4 to 52.4. The median game scored 20.0.
What is Value?
Value is a player's average FV over his last 5 games this season. If he played fewer than 5 games, Value uses the games he played. Value shows his current form.
What does change mean?
Change compares Value with the player's earlier games this season.
before = average FV of earlier games, topped up to 10 games with last season's average
change = Value − before
With 10 or more earlier games, last season is not used. A player with no last season uses only his earlier games. Change is in FV points, not percent, because percentages break near zero.
How are risers and fallers picked?
Risers are the 10 players with the highest change on a date. Fallers are the 10 players with the lowest change.
- A player needs 5 games, or 8 games if he has no last season.
- He needs 12 or more minutes a game in his last 5 games or in his earlier games.
- He must have played in the last 7 days, so injured players do not stay on the list.
- Only finished games count.
Most of a move fades over the next games. Risers and fallers show who is hot or cold now, not how the rest of the season will go.
What do % rostered and the calls mean?
% rostered is Yahoo's league-wide % rostered. It is copied by hand into a local file about once a week. The site does not store it.
The posts give each player one of these calls:
- Risers under 20% rostered: Deep add.
- Risers 20–49% rostered: Add.
- Risers 50–79% rostered: Trade target.
- Risers 80% or more rostered: listed as already rostered.
- Fallers 50% or more rostered with minutes down 3 or more: Trade away.
- Fallers 80% or more rostered with steady minutes: Hold.
- Fallers 50–79% rostered with steady minutes: Watch.
- Fallers under 50% rostered: Drop.
Where does the data come from?
The data is box scores from NBA.com. The site loads them after each night's games. The site shows the time of the last update.
How does AI help write the posts?
AI writes a draft of each post from the day's numbers, in this site's own voice. A check tool rejects any number in the text that is not in the day's data. A person reads every post before it is published.