Dyson Daniels is obviously good-like, really good. Nobody is debating that. But I think he’s in the rare position of not being under appreciated, but still being undervalued.
To understand why, let’s think about standard deviations. Standard deviations have become all the rage in fantasy basketball. The reason is obvious: at its core, standard deviations measure how impactful a player is in any category with respect to winning, adjusted for each category. It accounts for the fact that, for example, a player averaging one steal more than the league average is doing way more heavy lifting for your team than a player averaging one more point than the league average. So, one easy way to measure how valuable a player is, is to measure how many standard deviations they are above or below the league average in each category, then aggregate all of that value into one number. That’s how (at least a big part of) how a lot of the most popular fantasy basketball sites derive their rankings. Not only does this give you one composite value for a player, but it’s also still really easy to understand (and visualize) the categories that a player is good or bad at.
Going back to Dyson for a minute, he’s really, really good at getting steals. He’s like a million standard deviations above the league average when it comes to steals. Now, that seems like hyperbole, because it is. But by how much? (Or another way of looking at it-how many standard deviations away from the truth is my statement?) I’m exaggerating by a lot, but I think by a lot less than it would appear on the face of it. Standard deviations measure the degree to which a player impacts a category. But what if that level of impact is effectively infinite? In my 12-team league, taking Dyson off his owner’s team and putting him on the team that’s last in steals would catapult the last place team to effectively tied for first in steals (in terms of season totals, they would be two steals behind the league leader). If you put him on the second worst steals team in our league, that team would become the league leader in steals by a significant margin. Dyson is so impactful that he would make 11 of the 12 teams in the league the league leader in steals.
At that point, much of the reason for calculating standard deviations goes out the window. In my league at least, he eliminates the need to measure degree of impact for steals-he’ll just automatically make you the league leader (except for that one truly horrific team that’s dead last in steals).
So..how do you measure his value? I would argue that to understand Dyson’s value, you need to look at it from a different perspective and focus on what he does to your strategic options. People tend to focus less on this, maybe because it’s difficult to measure or maybe because the number of options available is so numerous it creates decision paralysis, but that doesn’t change how key it is to results. In my mind, there are two main strategic options Dyson gives you:
To me, and I find it pretty surprising that I haven’t seen this point raised elsewhere, Dyson’s greatest value is the flexibility he gives you in trading other pieces. Using my own team as an example, you have Jalen Suggs? You have Dennis Schroeder? Heck, you have Jalen Johnson? You can trade two of them and still win steals. That offers huge flexibility and a ton of value you can offer in trades-Suggs is 18th in steals per game (minimum 7 games played, or half the season), enough to do a lot to fix another owner’s steals shortfall. I’m not necessarily a proponent of this, but realistically a lot of the time completing trades does require sacrificing some value. Dyson lets you do that while minimizing or even eliminating the actual negative impact on your team. The flexibility to shuffle the rest of your roster is huge.
Secondly, he gives you the option of completely fixing one of another owner’s categories in one player. Dyson may not be one of one, but in the last two decades he’s extremely close to being unique in this. Remember in 2018-19 when Harden lead the league in scoring by a ridiculous 8 points per game? He scored 36.1, and second was 28; so Harden scored 22% more than the second leading scorer. Dyson is averaging 3.8, against 2.3 for Jordan Poole (seriously, where did that come from?), or 65% more than the second leading steals player (second leading thief?). He’ll flip the category for almost every team, but it’s the context that matters. In competitive leagues, a large majority of top teams are punting certain categories, because it’s just too hard to be good in every category. In standard nine-cat leagues, you only need to win five to be competitive, so flipping one is huge. Unless your draft was truly awful you should already be good in at least 2 categories, probably 3, so you only need two or worst case three more to contend for a championship. Dyson should represent half, worst case a third, of the gap between your team and a championship. That is incredibly rare for a player that requires trade capital equal to third round or less, assuming a standard 12-team league, to acquire-meaning you may be able to acquire him without sacrificing a truly core player of your team. It’ll be an important part, but not necessarily a core piece.
All that said, hey, caveats. I want to be objective. Dyson probably can’t keep up his current steals average, it’s just too high. Nobody has averaged even three steals a game since 1988-’89, when some guy named John Stockton did it. Nobody has ever averaged Dyson’s current 3.8 average in the NBA, though it did happen in the ABA way back in 1975-’76. It’s not going to happen. Easy bet. On top of that, it’s not like you can purely trade away the steals of your other players; you’re going to have to give up players or stats that you’d rather keep. And your league may not lean towards trades in general, so you may not be able to expect 100% value back. But these caveats are on the margins. Dyson won’t maintain his current steals rate, but he’s the odds-on favorite to lead the league in steals. You might have to take a small loss to complete the trade, but you should be able to get a lot back.
In the end, as long as Dyson maintains anywhere near this level of steals, he provides an overwhelming advantage in this category. It’s up to you if you decide to keep him and dominate the category, while giving you the flexibility to trade other players, or trade Dyson and strengthen the rest of your team. Either way, make sure his value is recognized, whether by other owners in your league trading for him, or by yourself in understanding the extent of his impact and the options he provides you with.
