Basketball · Research

Forecasting NBA Player Fantasy Points

Active2025-26Updated Oct 14, 2025
Project Overview

A predictive modeling framework for forecasting season-average NBA player statistics using gradient boosting, allowing fantasy projections under any custom scoring system.

Problem & Objective

Commercial fantasy sports products forecast per-game statistics, which are highly volatile and prone to noise, making long-term roster construction and trade evaluation unreliable.

Analytical Approach

The team trained Gradient Boosting regressors on multi-season historical NBA box-score data to predict season-average totals across 12 statistical categories plus games played, then computed fantasy point projections across custom league scoring rules (e.g. ESPN, Yahoo, FanDuel).

Key Result & Impact

Showed significant reduction in prediction error compared to per-game forecasting baselines, serving both fantasy projections and front-office trade/draft evaluation.

Tech Stack & Tools
PythonJupyter NotebookGradient Boostingpandasscikit-learn