Fantasy Astrology Basketball?

I’ve been seeing a lot of commercials for the NBA Conference Finals lately, where the Boston Celtics defeated the Miami Heat in a thrilling Game 7 two nights ago. That means Jayson Tatum and the Celtics will face off against Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors in the final round of the playoffs on Thursday. The fact that both of the above-mentioned superstars happen to be Pisces got me thinking whether I could apply the principles of Fantasy Astrology to the NBA in the same way that I do for the MLB.

I did some digging and found a breakdown of the Small World Fantasy Points system that I played back in my high school years. Players earn one point per point scored, 1.5 points per rebound, 2 points for an assist, and 2.5 points each for steals and blocks. On the other hand, each missed field goal costs -0.5 points, and a player loses one point each for missed free throws and turnovers. Easy enough to plug into an Excel spreadsheet, and I soon had a full database for the 2021-22 NBA season.

The results are that the NBA’s highest point scorers amass much greater totals than the top scorers in MLB. For example, 11 NBA players eclipsed 3,000 points (with one even reaching the coveted 4,000-point plateau), while no MLB player broke 2,800 – excluding of course Shohei Ohtani’s combined batting and pitching points. This makes sense, considering there are only five players on the court at a time per NBA team, as opposed to nine in MLB. Basketball also provides for a more uniform comparison between players, since there is no separation between offense (hitters) and defense (pitchers).

After tallying the fantasy points totals for all NBA players with at least 1,200 minutes played in the last season, it’s clear that Pisces emerges as the unquestioned leader with 16,281 total points among their top five qualified players. (For the purposes of these lineups, I’m requiring two guards, two forwards, and a center, rather than distinguishing between all five positions on the court.) No other team even broke 15k points, with Virgo in second place at 14,532.5 points, and Leo (13,012.5) the top Positive Conference sign.

Going position-by-position for the Fish, we start out with one of the sport’s brightest stars in point guard Steph Curry (2,637 points / 41.2 points-per-game), who will be leading the Warriors in this year’s championship matchup. Actually, going by total points on the season, Tyrese Haliburton (2,892.5 / 37.6) would get the nod at the “one” spot. According to Basketball Reference’s Play-by-Play data, the second-year spent 63% of the last season at shooting guard and 33% at the point – it appears he moved from SG to PG upon being traded from Sacramento to Indiana midway through the season.

The reason we wouldn’t simply move Haliburton to the two spot is that Pisces also has Luke Dončić (3,352 / 51.6), another player who can handle either position on the backcourt. The 6’7” Slovenian with otherworldly talent was one of only five players to average more than 50 PPG, so he’ll be in the lineup no matter what. The top forward in the Pisces player pool is Jayson Tatum (3,223.5 / 42.4), who had about a 2/3 to 1/3 split between small forward and power forward for the Boston Celtics. It’ll be fun to see these two sign-mates facing off in the finals.

I’m skipping the second forward spot for now, in favor of gushing about the top two Pisces centers. Remember how only five players averaged 50+ PPG last season? Well, two of them played the “five” spot for the Fish. 4,000-point scoring Serbian Nikola Jokić (4,487 / 60.6) led the NBA in Win Shares (an estimated amount of wins contributed by a player) for the second consecutive year, en route to the league MVP award. Meanwhile Joel Embiid (3,584 / 52.7), who hails from Cameroon, led the league in points-per-game… the REAL kind, not fantasy points. I don’t know too much about the nuances of basketball positions, but there’s no way you don’t have both of these two MVP-caliber players in your starting five, right?

Looking at Jokić’s career play-by-play, he did spend some time at power forward in his first three years in the league, topping out at 20% in the 2017-18 season. If we go by strict positional eligibility, Embiid would sit on the bench in favor of legit forward Zach LaVine (2,326.5 / 34.7), who had a decent season playing both forward spots for the Bulls (Chicago, not Taurus). The top primary power forward is veteran Draymond Green (1,535.5 / 33.4), who might have taken the top forward spot if he could have played a full season.

Next time, I’ll return to my reverse-chronological trip through Fantasy Astrology BASEBALL history, with the historic 1974 season!