If you want to win in fantasy basketball, I cannot stress enough how important it is to watch your players in action. Obviously, looking at the stats can give you a lot of what you need to know when it comes to a player, but unlike in baseball, there are a lot of unwritten roles that some players have which can only be seen from the naked eye. You do not need to watch games every night. A semi-frequent basis will do as you just need to see what exactly your players are doing on the floor. It will help you understand the depth chart and how your player fits on his team. The point of this guide is to teach you how to be a coach. If you see issues with your players on the court, you know their NBA Coach is seeing them as well.

Watching the games will also benefit you when trading and/or making transactions. Here are some of the things you should look to watch for when watching your players play. It will make a difference.

Offensive Weapons vs Screen Setters

While playing time is a great indicator for how much stock to put in a player, there are players on the court who are playing just to set up better offensive weapons. If you just look at the stat sheet, you may wonder why someone who plays 20-25 30 minutes per game is scoring very few fantasy points per week. Just like you need to balance YOUR fantasy lineups, NBA teams need to balance their lineups as well. Players who can spread the floor and keep up the ball movement are very beneficial for your NBA teams, but that may not translate to your fantasy teams. Last season, as the 76ers had no idea what to do with Nerlens Noel until late in the season, Noel would be taken out if he couldn’t find space inside. He was predominantly a screen setter and the pick-and-roll will not work the whole game.  After two easy trips down the lane, opposing teams will change up their defensive scheme to clog up the paint. This made Noel powerless at times and fantasy players would have to rely solely on his defense and hope that Noel could get enough rebounds against other rebounding machines in Jahlil Okafor and Robert Covington. It certainly would not benefit your team. Watching the games truly shows which players will and will not be involved in the offense.

Offensive Weapons vs Bailout Options

Just like with screen setters, some players are on the court keep moving the ball around, but serve as more of a floor general. In the 1990’s, the point guard was commonly used as the floor general in which their assist totals would be high, but not their scoring. If things got rough in the paint, the PG would just wait for the kick out to him to knock down the open three-pointer. With the game evolving in the last 20 years, you now see more point forward options in which there can be zero passes and that point forward bringing up the ball will go isolation and the guards would just serve as off-guards aka “Bailout Options”. BOTH point guards and shooting guards have been impacted by this style change and on paper you may see the your SG scoring 10 points per game, but they are not necessarily involved in the main offensive scheme. If your SG scores 18 points one game, and then 6 the next game, it may not have anything to do with that player’s ability. You need to see your players in action in order to determine whether or not they are truly involved. Bailout options do not get fed consistent shot opportunities.

Offensive Weapons vs Defensive Weapons

This entirely depends on your preference for roster composition. If you want your team to include offensive specialists AND defensive specialists, that’s fine. I’m not going to tell you to avoid drafting DeAndre Jordan. He’s arguably the best defensive big man in the NBA. I will tell you that on offense he is a liability and if he’s not receiving crisp alley-oop passes from Chris Paul, he struggles to get involved in the game. He can’t post up and he has a major issue hitting free throws. In close games, the Clippers may look to reduce his minutes if the final couple of minutes of games become a free-throw shooting contest. You should be watching these players who struggle in certain categories and whether teams will risk going to them late in games. You will see a pattern early on. If you want specialists, you can find better free throw shooting big men later in your draft or trade for them throughout the season. You need to watch your players to figure out what their specific roles are on both sides of the ball. I’m going to draft DeAndre Jordan, but I know what to expect and that is for him to be limited offensively.

Shot Selection

There are players who can score consistently with a consistent shot motion and there are others who get lucky and will be feast or famine scoring options. You want players who do not get fazed and do not try to alter their shot too much. Flashy players are overrated and they don’t win you titles despite making the game more enjoyable. It will be hard to tell early on how long of a leash some of these shooters (especially players who come off the bench will have) and by watching games, you not only get to study the shooting motion of your players, but you then find lesser-known players early in the season who have a solid shooting motion and you can grab them before they blow up.  Good shooters who are on a team with depth will stand out and you will see an increase in playing time. Get ahead of the game. Be a coach.