My Simple Guide for Fantasy Basketball Starters

Getting Started

Image courtesy of ESPN Sam Alipour

I just recently joined a fantasy basketball league this 2013-2014 NBA season and to think that I have been a fan for a long time. At first, I searched for some guides and read through the guidelines of ESPN Fantasy Basketball  (There is also a Yahoo! Edition for this). After a few months, I become familiar of the way how the games works and developed some strategies that I think will help me win in my league.
For now, just let me explain how to play Fantasy Basketball for us NBA fans to enjoy!


I will use the ESPN FBA League Manager Edition for this.

1. Invite some friends (or be invited) that would want to play fantasy basketball with you (and create a league) or just join a league in  the website.
         
      - your league can contain as many as 20 teams that you will compete with throughout the entire                       basketball season.

2. You will have a DRAFT DAY that would be set up at a specific time and date

       - There would be a different number of round per draft day. For example in my league there are 15 rounds of draft. Every round you will be asked to select a player that you like to have in your team.

Of course great players like LeBron James and Kevin Durant is drafted as early as the first round. There are a different number of rankings in the internet that will help you decide who to draft per round (ESPN has their own ranking that is also helpful)

Note: In my league which contains 12 players, I drafted Paul George as the No. 9 pick in the first round and LaMarcus Aldridge as the 16th pick. Both of them are MVP contenders this season :)

(You may want to read this first before item 2 so you will know the game works :-) )
3. Now we need to understand how the scoring works. There are different categories wherein the system will score you every day.

In the league which I belong to these are:
Points PTS. Rebounds REB. Assists AST. Steals STL. Blocks BLK. Three Points Made 3PM.
Turnovers TO. Field Goal Percentage FG%. Free throw Percentage FT%

You will get a score every time a player in your team scores, rebound, dish an assist to a teammate, steals a ball, block a shot, make a three-pointer and even turn the ball over. Their total field goal % and free throw % will also be accounted after the player's respective game. (Your league manager has the authority to remove other categories here such as TO)

The key here is that every day they would be totaled with your other player's respective stats.

Fig.  An example of my collective stats that are added at the bottom of the image (Courtesy of ESPN)

There are two kind of scoring systems for fantasy basketball and they are Roto and Head-to Head. The main difference is with Roto system, the total point you gather from every category is carried over week after week while for the Head-to-Head, you get a get clean slate every week since you battle other players from your league. Here is very good article to clearly understand the difference between the two scoring sytem as explained by Josh Whitling of ESPN.

It is up to you what kind of league you want to join though I suggest you try both of them so you will enjoy playing fantasy basketball. (and it is fun to have different player per different teams you own in other league)

I still have some things that I would like to share to you guys such as my opinion on the use of IRs and strategies I used on my head to head/roto league. As for now I am just enjoying basketball more than ever.