Blogger's note: I made this blog for NBA Philippines last October 1, 2012.
In a couple of weeks, you will embark on a first. Never in your wildest dreams will you employ the best players in terms of chance and opportunity. For deep leagues, you will have a rather realistic roster but imagine the awesomeness of your lineup if you chose them ten-man deep league… or less. This is both cool and awesome… until you realize that you’re last in your league and you are about to give up your bragging rights to the eventual winner.
It’s a sick cycle. You will repeat this with the obsession of winning. But that’s how it is. For losers… you want to win. For winners… you want to retain. It is a crazy carousel. I know. But you just have to deal with it.
Welcome to NBA fantasy basketball.
I am going to use my vast NBA fantasy knowledge to help you win your leagues. I have participated in four leagues in the last two years and the highest seeding I got was first in my Yahoo NBA Fantasy league in my first year of playing the rotisserie format.
First of all, you need to know the league format you’ll be using. There are three major league formats – rotisserie, points system, and head-to-head. The rotisserie league is the most basic league format where GMs will need to rank first in the categories in contention. A good format for those GMs who want to relive the NBA-style showdowns is the head-to-head format. And for those who can’t forget PBFantasy (the PBA needs a fantasy league), you can format your league as such using the points system.
Also, daily leagues require a lot of urgency while weekly leagues require prediction. Weekly leagues, however, require less attention and one error will lead to self-destruction.
Knowing the league format is important in acquiring your players. Rajon Rondo is a good player to nab in points system formats but because of his trouble to hit free throws and three-pointers, he’s not a top player in rotisserie formats. The same goes for Dwight Howard who’ll fare less compared to Ryan Anderson because the latter is more all-around than Superman.
Whether the draft is in a bar with beer and pulutan or front of your computer… with beer and pulutan as well, you have to have your cheat sheet. A cheat sheet might be fabricated by ESPN or Yahoo or based on the computations of your league format. In almost any cheat sheet available, the top four players in no particular order are Lebron James, Kevin Durant, Kevin Love, and Chris Paul. If you qualify in the Top 4 then you are lucky. However oftentimes you’re stuck in the deep end of the deep leagues and you have to pray that a semblance of your top ten will still be available in time for your selection. A cheat sheet will also help you identify the draft sleepers and the draft steals. I know a lot of fantasy teams that had the top pick but lost because they failed to pick properly.
Draft orders are determined through luck (in determining the draft order)… and the two basic draft formats are – the snake format and the auction draft. In the snake draft, the first player to be picked in the first round is the last player to be selected in the second round. The auction draft is like the PBFantasy League where there are salary caps. The difference is that you will bet on the acquisition of that player. If your league’s maximum salary cap is 20 million imaginary dollars, will you use half of it to select Lebron James? The auction draft is dastardly… but the snake draft is quicker.
If you familiarized yourself with the league format and you did your research then you have to pray for your players to be healthy. Otherwise, you are ready to go.
Before I end this though, let me give you a lot of quick hit tips.
1 | GET A SHOOTING GUARD AS EARLY AS POSSIBLE OR DO NOT GET A GOOD SHOOTING GUARD AT ALL!
There are a lot of shooting guards in the NBA but none of them are as productive as Dwyane Wade. If you check out the Yahoo draft kit, you’ll find him, James Harden, and Paul George on top of the SG list. After these three, you’ll have Joe Johnson, Marcus Thornton, and Wesley Matthews. See the discrepancy here? And among those three, Wade is the only sure 18+ scorer who can rebound, assist, and steal. Kobe Bryant is there too but his field goal percentage could set people off… as is with Monta Ellis. If you can’t get Wade, Harden, and George, you need to check out the other positions and hope that Klay Thompson, Aaron Afflalo, or a top rookie SG hasn’t been drafted yet.
2 | DO NOT GET YOUR FAVORITE PLAYER!
My favorite player is Kevin Garnett. Do you think I’ll select him first? Hell… if he’s not a 60 or 70 pick… do you think I’ll select him at all? There are a lot of fantasy players that select familiarity over ability and this is not how fantasy basketball works. This is the same when you choose winners from losers. Players from winning teams tend to play fewer minutes while the best players from the weak teams are blatant do-it-alls. I had one friend who picked Austin Daye in the second round of our draft… and his first fantasy league didn’t end pretty.
3 | YOUR TEAM SUCKS?
Finally, before I close this article, let me just state this – injuries, bad games, and other intangibles will matter as the season progresses. Just when you think you have the best team, you’ll find out that your team is littered with injured superstars, your top pick is underperforming, and there are a lot of supposed weak players playing as if they are Michael Jordan’s incarnate. I had Amar’e Stoudemire as my first-round pick last year so you know what I speak of is true. The fact that Nikola Pekovic is playing better than Stat sends a shiver down my spine. Unless you find your team leading with zero competition in the last week of the regular season, then that’s when you can raise your hands in glee.
That’s it for the basics. Next week, let’s check out the advanced way of checking out NBA fantasy.
And finally, I leave you with an A.I.-generated image of Steph Curry feeding his pet crocodile.
