Why missing basketball stats should be N/A, never 0
Most stats sites fill gaps with zeros. A zero looks like information and quietly corrupts every average built on it. Here is what that costs a Fantasy manager, and how we handle missing data instead.
A zero is a claim, not a blank
When a stats site prints 0 blocks for a player, it is telling you he blocked nothing. If the game sheet never listed blocks, that statement is not something anyone knows. The honest value is missing, and missing has a name: N/A.
The difference matters because zeros do not stay in their cell. They flow into averages, into per minute rates, into rankings and into whatever projection sits on top. And unlike a gap, a zero is invisible: nothing in the interface tells you the number was invented.
What it costs a Fantasy manager
European basketball is where this hurts most, because coverage is genuinely uneven. Preseason friendlies, national cups and early-season tournaments are published by whoever felt like publishing them, in whatever format they chose. A player with four tabulated games and one zero-filled game carries an average roughly a fifth too low.
In a market where the gap between a bargain and a trap is about one point of PIR per credit, that is the whole decision. You will pass on a player who is fine, or buy one who is not, and you will never know why.
What we do instead
- Missing stays missing. If a source did not publish it, the cell reads N/A and no total is computed from it.
- Approximations are labelled. When only blocks against are missing, we compute PIR assuming zero and mark the value as approximate, so you can see exactly which numbers carry an assumption.
- Coverage is public. Each game says whether its sheet is complete, partial or not located, so you can weigh a sample instead of trusting it blindly.
- Sources are linked. Every line points back to the sheet it came from, and when the published PIR disagrees with our computed PIR, the game is flagged rather than silently reconciled.
The trade we accept
Honest data looks worse. A table full of N/A reads as an incomplete product next to a competitor whose grid is neatly full of numbers, some of which are fiction. FantaSheet takes that hit on purpose: missing data you can see beats missing data you cannot.
Frequently asked
- Why does FantaSheet show N/A instead of 0?
- Because a zero is a claim: it says the player did that thing zero times. If the source never published the number, we do not know that. N/A says what is true, which is that the number is missing.
- How much can a fake zero distort an average?
- A player with four games of data whose fifth game is filled with zeros loses a fifth of his average in one stroke. In a Fantasy market where players are separated by a point of PIR, that is enough to move someone from a buy to a pass.
- Which stats are most often missing?
- Blocks against are the usual gap: FIBA-style sheets, common in preseason friendlies, do not publish them. Offensive and defensive rebound splits are the next most frequent, and some sheets omit fouls drawn.
- How do I know which games are complete?
- Every game page states whether the sheet is complete, partial or not located, and each line links back to the source it came from.
See it on real games
Box scores for all 20 EuroLeague clubs, preseason included, with prices, projections and a fair price per player.
See what is inside