Today’s Matchup: Ray Allen vs Paul Pierce
Just a reminder, when you're talking about anything fantasy it's important to communicate how the scoring structure of your league works.
For our purposes, I'm going to assume we're talking about rotisserie using Yahoo Fantasy Sport's default scoring system…the stat cats being points, rebounds, assists, 3's made, blocks, steals, fg%, ft% and to's.
In roto, you're looking to compare players stat-by-stat, since roto is really designed to level the playing field of statistics (for instance, by roto standards if a player gets about 2 steals per game, it's the equivalent in steals of a player scoring about 20-25 points per game).
Anyway, let’s compare statistics, shall we? I’m using the 2005-2006 statistics. It’s too early to use 2006-2007 stats.
Points Per game
Ray Allen 25.1
Paul Pierce 26.8
Rebounds Per Game
Ray Allen 4.3
Paul Pierce 6.7
Assists Per Game
Ray Allen 3.7
Paul Pierce 4.8
Blocks Per Game
Ray Allen 0.2
Paul Pierce 0.4
Steals Per Game
Ray Allen 1.4
Paul Pierce 1.4
3s Made Per Game
Ray Allen 3.5
Paul Pierce 1.4
FG% (and FG's attempted per game)
Ray Allen 45.2% (19.2 attempts per game)
Paul Pierce 47.1% (18.5 attempts per game)
FT% (and FT's attempted per game)
Ray Allen 90.3% / (4.2 attempts per game)
Paul Pierce 77.2% / (7.9 attempts per game)
Turnovers Per Game
Ray Allen 2.4
Paul Pierce 3.5
Games Played in ’05-’06
Ray Allen 78
Paul Pierce 79
The Verdict
Ray Allen wins.
This is another close race. Paul Pierce has a slight edge in most of the flashier stats, like points, boards and assists. If you’re in a 5 STAT CAT league, Pierce might be a better option.
The biggest difference is three pointers and turnovers and that makes all the difference. Ray Allen set an NBA record last season for the most threes in a season and his 1.1 fewer turnovers a game is a big gap in 9 STAT CAT leagues where turnovers are factored.
So far we’re only about 7-10 games into the 2006-2007 season and Ray Allen’s got a slight edge over Pierce. His FT% is up to 91.7% and he’s increased his attempts to about 6 per contest. Also, he’s increased his steals to 1.7 early on, his turnovers remain at 2.4 and his scoring is up slightly to 26.8 ppg. His threes are down a bit, though, at 2.8 per game.
Pierce is off to a solid start as well, averaging 27.9 ppg to go along with 9.4 rbpg. His threes are also up at 2.1 per contest, but he still gets a bunch more of those pesky turnovers (3.4).
I give the nod to Ray Allen, but I’m sure others might disagree.
A common argument about turnovers is that it’s inevitable for the top scorers to get them because they typically handle the ball more often. This is absolutely true, but I think it only strengthens the case for Allen because he’s able to produce at such a high volume, yet doesn’t cost you many turnovers.
