The Fantasy Basketball Simulator

Executive Summary

Purpose

The Fantasy Basketball Simulator was created to help owners of fantasy basketball teams to optimize their teams and lineups in order to give them a competitive advantage over other teams in their leagues and save them countless hours of analysis.

Overview

Fantasy Basketball is a competition where participants own, manage, and coach imaginary teams and compete with other participants to achieve the highest scores based on statistics generated by actual players of the National Basketball Association. This specific program was designed to be used in Head-to-Head leagues, where each week teams are scheduled to compete against another team in the league based on seven statistics: points, field goal percentage, rebounds, assists, blocks, turnovers, and steals. Teams consist of 12 players but are limited to only 7 players which are allowed to compete in any given week. A team wins the weekly matchup when its players outperform its opponent’s players on at least 4 of the 7 previously mentioned statistics during the week.

There are three main steps for owners as they seek the effectively use the program:

1. Input Data – The user must input the names of the players on their roster into column C and their opponent’s roster into column I as well the number of games each player has during the week being analyzed into columns E and K.

2. Select Lineups – The user clicks the Simulate button after which a message box will come up prompting the user to select the seven players on each team which will compete for the specific week.

3. Analyze Results – The results of the simulation will be printed in the Simulation Results box. The user can then analyze these results and make adjustments to the lineup to optimize his or her team.

Practical Uses

The Fantasy Basketball Simulator is intended to be used as an aid to fantasy basketball team owners in decision making for their teams. There are three main decisions the program can assist with:

1. Optimizing Lineups – Owners can predict their opponent’s team and then simulate several variations of their own team in order to find the combination of players that has the highest probability of winning for that specific week.

2. Analyzing Trades and Free Agents Pickups – Owners can replace players from their current roster with players that they can potentially acquire via trades or free agency to find the combination of players that has the highest probability of winning.

3. Drafting Players – Owners can simulate teams with players they intend to target in the league’s draft to determine value added to the team and optimal team combinations.

Project Write-Up: http://files.gove.net/shares/files/11w/colinrr/Fantasy_Basketball_Project_Write-Up.pdf

Fantasy Basketball Simulator: http://files.gove.net/shares/files/11w/colinrr/Fantasy_Basketball_VBA_Project.xlsm