A good percentage of sports fans play fantasy football, but their less-popular sibling in fantasy basketball gets nowhere near the love that football does. Fantasy sports give the average sports fan a reason to root for obscure players that they wouldn’t care for regularly. Fantasy basketball is a great way to get yourself immersed into the NBA season. If you’ve never played before, you’re in the right place to learn. Welcome to your introduction to fantasy basketball.
Scoring
In fantasy basketball, scoring is a little tricky because certain stats are more important than others. Steals and blocks are important because they give the player three points. Players that can give defensive stats while being a good scorer are always preferred.
Points are exact. If a player scores 15 points, he will have 15 fantasy points. Rebounds are worth 1.2 fantasy points. Assists are worth 1.5 fantasy points. Steals and blocks are worth 3 fantasy points. Turnovers are a penalty of –1 fantasy point. Three pointers are worth .5 fantasy points.
How is it played?
Fantasy basketball works in a weekly head-to-head format. NBA teams play anywhere from three to four games per week. The objective is to have as many players play per week as possible. Players are able to be added from free agency, though most leagues lock the number at four per week. It’s important to use your allocated adds efficiently. If a player that is expendable plays on Monday and doesn’t play again until Friday, drop them on Tuesday for a player that has multiple games for the rest of the week. Always make sure that you have as many games as possible per week. Anybody can overcome a better team as long as they have enough games. For example, four games from an average player is better than two from LeBron James.
Draft strategy
The best ability is availability. The number one rule when drafting is to pick players that you know will play. Players like Luka Doncic, Nikola Jokic and Russell Westbrook are players that try their heart out in the regular season while being triple double machines.
In the 2020-2021 season, the top 17 players were active in at least 61 of 72 games. Unless the player is a superstar, they’re unlikely to return the investment of where they were drafted. Load management, when a player sits out of their back-to-back games due to rest, is something that has struck the NBA like an epidemic. If a player only has three games in a week with a back-to-back in that same week, the odds are they’re going to play just two games. Most good players get load managed, so in that case, that “rest” could result in missing out on 50 or so points. Draft players that you know will play.
