Really dumb questions about fantasy basketball

Originally posted by TheFunkyChicken:
My friend at work and I just started a fantasy basketball league. We've played fantasy football but this our first time trying basketball.

So, I wanted to ask really, really basic questions since I know very little about how this works.

Is head to head good? We like that about FF and so we went with that.

How many teams do we want in the league? Is it like FF? I was thinking that 8 or 10 would be good so it's not too hard to get players (since we're all noobs). But that's based on FF leagues. Not sure how many is good for FB.

We're just using default settings in yahoo. Are there any settings, or rules that aren't always default that people here like?

Anything else I should know?

Thanks for any feedback. Like I said, I'm a noob at this.

Head to Head is really the best way to go about it. In the past it was Roto. But H2H is a great way to get the feel for it.

10 teams is a great way to get started. 12 teams is better assuming that managers really know their s**t, but 10 is a good benchmark to start at.

Yahoo Default is the best way.

Included are TurnOvers (TOs) that greatly affect you. The more a player handles the ball (PGs and stars) the more likely they are to turning the ball over. Keep this in mind and look for players that rarely turn the ball over. But, if you dont draft point guards, it greatly affects your assists, 3pts, ft% stats, so it is wise to draft them, but they do turn it over alot, I wouldnt worry about it, and draft a couple of great pgs, because they do help in those three categories, as compared to the one in TO's.

Hope this helps!

That's great stuff, Lifer. Thank you.

Right now we have 8 guys in the league. We're looking to get 2 others in.

This is, again, kind of a dumb question, but what players are good fantasy players in the NBA? I feel like there's probably a lot of guys that are great to have that I wouldn't think of.

Fantasy basketball is different because you need to seriously worry about guys who will destroy a certain category for you every week.


If you draft Dwight Howard, you will never win the FT% category and he'll probably kill your turnover category as well. He's the perfect example of a guy who is much better in real life than he is in fantasy basketball. Most fantasy basketball players avoid Dwight Howard like the plague.


What you need to understand with regards to free throw percentage and field goal percentage is that the number of attempts a player takes is very important. Dwight Howard shoots 59% FT AND he shoots 11 free throws per game. Thus his free throw percentage affects you far more negatively than Andris Biedrins who shoots only 32.3%, but only shoots 0.5 free throws per game, and has entire games where Biedrins doesn't even get to the free throw line.



You should avoid guys who shoot below 42% FG as well. Let someone else reach for a guy like Brandon Jennings, who shouldn't even be drafted until after the 10th round. Maybe not even then.



Start with this website.

http://basketballmonster.com/PlayerRankings.aspx


You can list all the top players from the 2010-2011 season and filter by position, by per game stats, or cumulative stats, etc.


Account for player ages. Guys like Tim Duncan will fall off this year. You want to try to draft young up and coming players. Although this is more important if you're playing in a keeper league.



Also you need to be very wary of the team situations that players are in. Just like with fantasy football. In fantasy football, if Wes Welker were playing for the Niners, he would be worth a lot less fantasy wise, while he's a stud with the Patriots because of his QB situation.

Similarly, Chris Bosh is the third option on offense on the Miami Heat, so he doesn't have the fantasy impact that he did when he was in Toronto. That's not to say Chris Bosh could not provide you with value if you drafted him after the 40th overall pick though.

Crzy and Lifer covered most of it, so I'll just add one more thing.

Fantasy basketball is different than football in the respect that you have to set your lineups every day. You can set them for the whole week at the beginning of the week, or track it every day, but it still requires a lot more attention than FF does. As a result, I think the number of teams that you have should be determined by the amount of people who are really into it. It's a real bummer when half of the league doesn't bother to set their lineups, and that happens more than you might think in FB.

Originally posted by LA9erFan:
Crzy and Lifer covered most of it, so I'll just add one more thing.

Fantasy basketball is different than football in the respect that you have to set your lineups every day. You can set them for the whole week at the beginning of the week, or track it every day, but it still requires a lot more attention than FF does. As a result, I think the number of teams that you have should be determined by the amount of people who are really into it. It's a real bummer when half of the league doesn't bother to set their lineups, and that happens more than you might think in FB.

And on that note, to make it easier for everyone, set your lineup for the entire week on Sunday night, it takes 5 minutes, and it avoids uneccesary work to set your lineups daily, unless there are injuries.

Also make sure you restrict the number of transactions that each team can make.

Because of the nature of fantasy basketball being a daily thing, that means that if you don't restrict the number of transactiosn that a team can make, that one guy paying attention every day could add and drop as many players as he/she wants and get an unfair advantage for that week.

In our league, we have 80 total transactions that each team can make throughout the 20 week season. That way you can save up your transactions and use them when necesssary.

Other leagues have restrictions where you can only make 4 max moves per week, for instance.

Originally posted by crzy:
Also make sure you restrict the number of transactions that each team can make.

Because of the nature of fantasy basketball being a daily thing, that means that if you don't restrict the number of transactiosn that a team can make, that one guy paying attention every day could add and drop as many players as he/she wants and get an unfair advantage for that week.

In our league, we have 80 total transactions that each team can make throughout the 20 week season. That way you can save up your transactions and use them when necesssary.

Other leagues have restrictions where you can only make 4 max moves per week, for instance.

Yep. This is very important, TFC.

You guys are awesome. Thanks so much.

We started this on a whim and just about everyone in the league is really a football guy. But we thought it'd be fun to try something new. Sounds like it might be a little more work than we'd thought....

I think right now we have a 4 transaction per week limit. And I definitely want, for at least the first year, to try and structure things so that everyone can enjoy it, not feel like it's a second job.

It sounds like the biggest hurdle is just wrapping your head around the scoring. I'm so used to FF, where it's really straight forward. But this sounds like it takes a little more analysis.

Well, thanks again for all the input. I will probably post in here again soon as I try to understand this.

Cheers!

Originally posted by TheFunkyChicken:
You guys are awesome. Thanks so much.

We started this on a whim and just about everyone in the league is really a football guy. But we thought it'd be fun to try something new. Sounds like it might be a little more work than we'd thought....

I think right now we have a 4 transaction per week limit. And I definitely want, for at least the first year, to try and structure things so that everyone can enjoy it, not feel like it's a second job.

It sounds like the biggest hurdle is just wrapping your head around the scoring. I'm so used to FF, where it's really straight forward. But this sounds like it takes a little more analysis.

Well, thanks again for all the input. I will probably post in here again soon as I try to understand this.

Cheers!

Are you a big basketball fan?

Originally posted by crzy:

Originally posted by TheFunkyChicken:
You guys are awesome. Thanks so much.

We started this on a whim and just about everyone in the league is really a football guy. But we thought it'd be fun to try something new. Sounds like it might be a little more work than we'd thought....

I think right now we have a 4 transaction per week limit. And I definitely want, for at least the first year, to try and structure things so that everyone can enjoy it, not feel like it's a second job.

It sounds like the biggest hurdle is just wrapping your head around the scoring. I'm so used to FF, where it's really straight forward. But this sounds like it takes a little more analysis.

Well, thanks again for all the input. I will probably post in here again soon as I try to understand this.

Cheers!

Are you a big basketball fan?

Kind of, but not like I am with football. I watch Warrior's games when I can and follow them pretty closely. I watch NBA playoffs and NCAA championships (not all the games, but a fair amount). I go to Ws games every once in a while. I went to one of the playoff games (the one win against Utah).

But the idea of losing a season to lockout was way more horrifying for me with the NFL than it was with the NBA.

So I'd call myself a fan, but not a huge fan.

Okay, so I've got another question:

How do people like the H2H points format?

We're thinking about using this because it's the most like FF and seems like the easiest to digest. But it's not the most common and I'm sure there's a reason why. Still, with everyone either coming from FF or being new to fantasy it seemed like the best way to go. Thoughts?

nerds

Head 2 Head is better and it forces you to make weekly roster changes in order to compete against your opponent for that week.

In the roto leaagues I've played, there have been less transactions, less activity, and less trash-talk, less overall competitivness.


Roto fantasy basketball is the best reflection of fantasy basketball skill however. Because just like in fantasy football, head to head fantasy format is a bit more fluky.

Originally posted by crzy:
Head 2 Head is better and it forces you to make weekly roster changes in order to compete against your opponent for that week.

In the roto leaagues I've played, there have been less transactions, less activity, and less trash-talk, less overall competitivness.


Roto fantasy basketball is the best reflection of fantasy basketball skill however. Because just like in fantasy football, head to head fantasy format is a bit more fluky.

What do you think about H2H categories vs H2H points?

Points makes a lot more sense to me. Not sure if I'm missing something tho...

H2H Categories is the best way to play fantasy basketball.

All the advice I gave above was for H2H categories. Throw everything I said out of the window if you do H2H points.

Nobody does H2H points . I'm not even sure what points you would assign to which categories.

Points leagues work well for fantasy football. That is because there are 16 games. The games are weekly. Almost everyone plays with 10 rushing yards = 1 point, 10 receiving yards = 1 point, touchdowns = 6 points, etc. Those make sense.

Thereoretically you could do a point league for fantasy basketball but it would be very very complicated. I mean you'd need to assign a certain number of points for each rebound, steal, block, and make sure that the scoring system you designed is fair….that it doesn't value blocks more than steals or value centers more than point guards, and so on, so forth.

Head to head categories in fantasy basketball and fantasy baseball work well.

In fantasy baseball H2H categories, you build a team that trys to accumulate the most home runs, RBI's for the week, etc.

In fantasy basketball H2H categories, you build a team to accumulate the most steals, blocks, threes for the week.