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| TIME TO DRAFT! |
Fantasy basketball is here.
And you know what, for the first time… it’s hard to identify
the best player of the bunch. I know, ESPN and Yahoo and some fantasy
basketball helper will tell you that Anthony Davis, James Harden, Giannis
Antetokoumnpo, Steph Curry, and others should be on your radar.
But here’s the thing –
It’s not the top stars you should be looking forward to.
It’s the mid-draft you need to check out.
So here are the Top 5 things you need to check out to
succeed or have a somewhat respectable fantasy basketball season.
1 | LEAGUE FORMAT
Fantasy basketball vets know this. Points leagues,
Head-to-Head leagues and Rotisserie leagues are different animals altogether.
Points league relies on the quantity of statistical categories while the latter two
depend on quality. Meanwhile, H2H leagues can select a player to the IR list
while in rotisserie this could spell early season doom.
I will always pick H2H – regardless of format because you
can bench injured guys and wait for them to get healthy and still have the
chance to get back in the game. As for daily versus weekly, I think Fantasy GMs
with multiple leagues will love mixing up with different formats. It will also
give them a bit of breathing room. Just imagine trying to change your lineup
inside an office with an automatic block with every website that has the word
“game” in it and trying to access your fantasy basketball site with slow and
limited mobile internet access.
2 | DRAFT
I am going to be very vague about this. Anywho, you need to
be comfortable where you’re picking. In points leagues, I like picking late
because you might have a top first pick but your second pick maybe a dud
(especially in snake formats). You also need to identify what you need to own.
ESPN gives away limited positions so you need to pick players with multiple
positions and at the same time, you need to pick the players that would hit a
lot of your categories. Yahoo is a bit easier (in one touch you can assign
which players to use) but at times it’s kind of buggy. Unlike in previous
seasons, a center can hit triples and have mediocre field goal selections. You
need to watch this as well.
You also need to set parameters on the players you need to
choose. If you will draft a point guard, what will be your ideal attribute?
Usually, the first and second-round picks are PG or PF/C. The SG spot is the
hardest position to get the best option but this is also the best place to grab
a dual-positioned player. The worst thing a fantasy GM could do is select three
top players of the same position without any dual attribute.
The fourth to sixth picks can be used to complete your
lineup, to check out the best players that your draft has missed out, and to
make a lineup flexible. Last season, I got flak for getting the services of
Jordan Clarkson in the fourth round in a 20-team league. Sure, I drafted him
extremely high… but I also like the fact that he plays a dual position in a team
that needed depth in the PG/SG spot.
Clarkson turned out to be a very integral player in my
third-place squad.
And one other thing – always check the injury history of the
player as well as his games played. Anthony Davis is again a top fantasy pick
candidate but for years he has been a letdown.
3 | FREE AGENCY
The best use for your free agency is by making it an
extension of your bench. With that said, fantasy basketballers need to be on
the lookout for potential signees and waiver acquisitions. If your acquisition
counter has limits, you need to weigh your options on whether or not to select
a fringe player or an injured player and keep him in your lineup. You also need
to know if you can select a player to prevent the other teams of using him
despite your abundance in that position. I am a fan of fantasy basketball
sabotage but you need to disrupt your target without hurting yourself.
You also need to check out players that could give you
something. Last season, I had Joe Harris coming in and out of my lineup. He is
a good enough player to use and if you drop him, he could still be available in
the future.
4 | PLAYOFFS
Like in the previous numbers, you really need to learn
everything about your league rules. There are some leagues that veer away from
playing the last week of regular season competition because this is usually the
time playoff-bound teams rest their stars. You need to identify the possible
handcuff options as well as the best possible free agents available. You also
need to know which players to cling on up until the end because these players
could make or break your squad.
Let me just give you an example. Last season, I have Andre
Drummond, LaMarcus Aldridge, Julius Randle and Paul Millsap in my lineup. I
played in a 20-man POINTS league and only the top twelve teams advance to the
playoffs. I drafted the first three names and then I got Millsap from the
waiver wire. Drummond is a C, Millsap is a PF, and Aldridge and Randle are good
for both PF and C slots. My league only has six starters (PG, SG, SF, PF, C,
UTIL) and I thought that in some ways I lost my chance to play in the finals
because I have four studs battling for three slots. Sure, I still ended up in
third place… but I would kill to exchange Millsap for an SG or SF but at the
same time… am I willing to put him in free agency where he could potentially
hurt me?
5 | CONTROVERSY
Lastly, you need to know the controversies that surrounded
your fantasy basketball season. If an inactive fantasy player is ruining your
road to the playoffs, call him out. If you see a bunch of teams conspiring, try
your best to break their alliance. With that said, if you can use a fantasy GM
for your bidding, then, by all means, get him. The thing about these leagues is
that the League GM is also a Fantasy GM so he’ll probably exploit his power to
get whatever he wants so you need a way to draw this to your favor.
In one of my leagues last season, the GMs agreed (I didn’t)
to skip the last week of the fantasy season because this is usually the time
where the stars rest. However, the teams that faced in the finals could have
had a better match if they played this on the last week. For starters, the
stars didn’t rest in the final week but instead, they chose to rest when their
teams played the non-playoff squads (Giannis is an example of this). Also, the
finalist lost the chance of reaping the benefits of Dwyane Wade’s 30-point last
hurrah game and more importantly, Russell Westbrook’s 20 points, 20 rebounds,
and 20 assists game (I know this isn’t the exact numbers but you get where I’m
getting at). It’s understandable for a fantasy team to lose because of
real-life DNPs but putting restrictions at the start of the draft is a
different story.
So yeah, I am still going to pound on this point because
this means some players play 78 games while others 76 games in total.
There you have it. Did I do well?
Did I miss anything?
END
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