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4 Reasons Fantasy Basketball Is More Fun Than Fantasy Football | News, Scores, Highlights, Stats, and Rumors
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Bob Bajek@bobbajekTwitter LogoAnalyst IIIDecember 28, 2011
4 Reasons Fantasy Basketball Is More Fun Than Fantasy Football
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With the NBA in full swing, fantasy basketball leagues are beginning to pop up.
People are a bit more familiar with fantasy football, but many don't know that fantasy basketball is a really fun thing to get into, as you own players like LeBron James and Dwyane Wade to beat your buddies for bragging rights or a possible cash prize.
Here are four reasons why fantasy basketball sacks fantasy football.
Fantasy Basketball Is More Challenging
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Fantasy basketball is a longer season with more roster adjustments to make than football.![]()
The NFL has 16 regular season games as opposed to the NBA's 82.
An NBA week consists of multiple games every day that affect your standings, while the NFL is once a week.
A fantasy basketball owner has to be more involved than a fantasy football owner in order to have an edge over his or her opponents.
If you're looking for a more challenging experience with constant roster moves, fantasy basketball will tickle your fancy.
Fantasy Basketball Places More Importance on Starters
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In a standard fantasy basketball league, a roster consists of 13 players with 10 being starters.
Conversely, with fantasy football, a roster will have 16 players and nine starters.
Fantasy basketball has a higher reliance on its bench, with three reserves to fantasy football's seven.
Picking who one's starters are is crucial for the fantasy basketball general manager, as these players will make or break a roster.
Fantasy Basketball Players Can More Directly Affect a Game
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Basketball is a more versatile and fluid sport than football, so the real players affect the fantasy points more than football players.
An NBA player has to play both offense and defense in a matter of seconds. While Kevin Durant is not known for his defense, he could get steals and blocks to add to his offensive totals. A good defensive game by Durant could notch a fantasy owner a key win that night.
In football, players are either defensive or offensive. They can affect just one aspect of the game.
Plus, the star players have the ball in their hands more because there are less teammates on the court, as opposed to 11 on the football field. A star player can rely more on himself if he has to, which NFL players cannot do.
This fluidity and opportunism in basketball can rack up ridiculous points for your fantasy team while adding a nice element of unpredictability.
Fantasy Basketball Trash Talking Is More Fun
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While trash-talking is big in football and all sports, basketball is where the concept is necessary to the culture.
Whether it's rubbing it in to your friends that you blocked their booty or just broke their ankles, the sport's fluidity and one-on-one play increases the opportunities to talk trash.
In the NBA, trash-talking is king, as Josh Smith doesn't shut up and Kevin Garnett is the reigning king of "yo mama" remarks.
With fantasy basketball, players can link up to the Internet and trash-talk each other during a game as it is playing out. And, you could do this every day during the fantasy season, as games are always going on.
Fantasy football players can talk trash as well, but not as frequently as fantasy ballers.
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Guide to Fantasy Basketball | The GIST
WTF is fantasy basketball?
So glad you asked! Fantasy basketball is all about building the best (imaginary) basketball team with real NBA players and competing against the other teams in your league to prove who’s best.
Not entirely clear? Let’s compare this to Hollywood then, because we’re suckers for pop culture and why the heck not. We want you to picture your favorite actors.
Next, imagine if all of your favorite actors were to suddenly team up and join a movie that YOU have full creative control over. The actors are real, their ability to deliver lines is real, but YOU select who’s on the cast, what parts they play, and how they will be directed.
For this exercise, replace Ryan Gosling with LeBron James, replace the movie set with a court, and replace line delivery skills with bball skills in your mind. That is fantasy basketball. You have control of your players and your players have control of the game and their ability to produce results.
Sounds fun, how do I play?
To play this fun AF game, you first need to join a league. Your office may already have one in the works, so definitely ask around, but you can also join a league for free online! These websites are some of the best, and most popular out there:
- Yahoo (this is the most common)
- CBS Sports
- ESPN
- Fantrax
Once you join a league, a “Draft Day” will be set and scheduled by your league’s commissioner (fancy phrase for league organizer).
You should aim to do all of your prep work and research before your scheduled Draft Day, as this will be the day that you actually select your team. It’s a BFD.
Before we dive in, you should know that teams are mostly made up of six forwards (SF, PF, F), five guards (PG, SG, G), and two centers (C), for a total roster of 13 players (ten active players + three inactive bench players each day). There are 301 players in the NBA and you only need to pick 13 on Draft Day, so be sure to make your picks count.
Fantasy basketball is generally structured in a VERY similar way to fantasy hockey – if you have not yet checked out our Fantasy Hockey Guide, then we strongly recommend you take a quick jump over and read all about the wonderful world of fantasy sports and the small nuances that come with it.
Let’s return really quickly to Draft Day, as this day is absolutely critical to your success. There are two types of drafts – the snake draft, by far the most common, and the auction draft.
Just like hockey, a snake draft is when each team in the league is assigned a predetermined draft number and selects a player (from the remaining available players) to join their roster on their respective turn. If there are ten teams in your league, then you will draft somewhere between first and tenth, with the tenth drafter also selecting the eleventh pick because the order flips after each round. It will look something like this:
The whole point of Draft Day is to build your team using the best players available to you. Whether you pick the known high performers or take a gamble on a potential breakout star (aka sleeper pick), Draft Day is all about what you decide. There’s some strategy to this, y’all! But, don’t fret, your picks are not set in stone; you’ll get the chance to make trades or pick up undrafted players during the season to mix your roster up and chase after a baller you couldn’t/didn’t nab in the draft. As always though, beware the buyer as a big trade could require you to give something big up in return…
If you haven’t a clue what to do, most websites offer ADP (Average Draft Position) for each player to help a sister/mister/GISTer out.
The ADP is the average spot that the player was taken across all of the drafts run on that website – the higher the ADP, the more in demand that player is, which is a big clue that they might be pretty friggin’ good.
As an owner after the draft, you set up your squad every day and select which players get to play Like Mike and hit the bball court and who gets to sit on the bench. Most often, you’ll play against another team in your league each week in a head-to-head format to see who’s team does the best in a variety of categories – points, threes, rebounds, assists, and steals are some of the most common categories, but it can vary depending on what your commissioner has decided.
The team who outscores their opponent in each of the league’s categories at the end of every week will earn a point; for example, if Team A had 36 total rebounds for the week and Team B had 32, Team A would earn a point. The team with the most points in their “head-to-head” matchup will earn the dub (win because dub is short form for W) for the week and this will go towards their overall standing in the league.:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/13128999/KELDON_JOHNSON_MBB2018_01_CW_600x900.jpg)
Rinse and repeat this process until playoffs and there you have it, a regular-season of fantasy basketball.
Wanna get good? Here are some draft tips to get you started
À la Elle Woods & her iconic orange Mac laptop in the 2001 classic Legally Blonde, you’re gonna have to sit down, do some homework, and take some notes in order to slay your fantasy league. So hit the Google and check out these resources:
- https://www.thescore.com/nba/news
- https://old.reddit.com/r/fantasybball/
- http://www.rotoworld.com/playernews/nba/basketball-player-news
- https://bleacherreport.com/fantasy-basketball
3 Tips for Winning Daily Fantasy Basketball
Daily fantasy sports pro player Peter "DraftCheat" Christensen gives 3 top tips for beginners on how to start winning at daily fantasy basketball.
Before we get into the NBA Daily Fantasy winning strategies, let me tell you how interesting and exciting it all is.
Two years ago, I would have had to work hard to name 30 NBA players. Now I can shoot out the roster of every NBA team, and now it's my favorite fantasy sport. The feeling of fighting for the big prize in the GPP, when you have Stephen Curry in your roster, who literally starts pouring three-pointers and dragging you to victory, is simply indescribable. Add to this the significant edge that can be gained in daily fantasy basketball (if you know what you're doing), and you have a recipe for a very interesting and profitable activity. Or rather: an activity that becomes profitable.
1. Trust the bookies
Have you ever been to Las Vegas? Have you been to these huge, posh casinos? These monsters were built by smart people who knew what they were doing. One of the first steps to success in NBA daily fantasy (and even fantasy sports in general) is checking NBA quotes at bookmakers. You should aim for games with high Total Over and Total Under, which are predicted to be even games.
If you have starters on your roster from a game that is far from being played by the end of the match, it is much more likely that your guys will play in those minutes.
If one team is beaten by another, you will often see starters going to the bench early to rest for the next game. Games predicted by the bookmaker to have a high total are likely to score more fantasy points as this is based on the teams' pace of play. High Total games tend to not only earn more points for your players, but also more rebounds, assists, blocks and steals, and more possession time. Finally, in a tied game there is always the potential to get bonus minutes in overtime. Owning players who have played in overtime can be a big advantage in big-field tournaments in the NBA's Daily Fantasy.
2. Minutes are everything
If you've never played Daily Fantasy Basketball, one lesson you'll quickly learn is that you should chase minutes. Given the nature of basketball, and the fact that only 5 people from each team can be on the court at a time, fantasy points are earned in almost every possession, be it through baskets, assists, rebounds, blocks or steals.
This means that in daily fantasy basketball you need a roster of players who are likely to be on the court for the majority of the game. It can be hard to predict at times, but in general you should target starters in games that are predicted to be even, and players from teams that have few players left. Perhaps this statement sounds strange to those who do not follow the NBA closely. But as the season progresses, teams inevitably pick up injuries and suspensions, and there's often a team or two that don't have a lot of players available to play at the moment. When the team drops to 8 or 9healthy players, you can almost be sure that regardless of the score, the starters in this game will get a lot of minutes. Choose such players and reap the rewards.
3. Who owns the information owns the world
One of the most important aspects of Daily Fantasy Basketball, which is unique in the NBA, is the need to be at the computer until the start of the competition. Unlike other sports, in NBA daily fantasy, a lot of important information pops up much more often before the game starts.
And if you play often enough, there will be times when you will frantically press the buttons, as a couple of your guys unexpectedly dropped out of the game a few minutes before the lineups closed. Even worse, if you ignore this news and end up drafting a player who will serve the entire game. You need to be vigilant and follow all NBA news on news sites and related sources on Twitter. Although it may sound complicated, if you know where to look and improve your information gathering process, it can really be a huge advantage in daily fantasy basketball and in the NBA in particular, as you are less likely to have zeros in their roasters.
Conclusion
There is much more to building winning rosters in Daily Fantasy Basketball. But the three points listed above are critical for those who are just starting out. Follow them and you will build a solid base to which you can add other profitable strategies and tools, such as individual matchup analysis. For starters, build a roster of high-scoring, tied-match players who are likely to play many minutes, and try to avoid dead players.
This is already half the battle. The rest will come with time and experience. Just start playing daily fantasy basketball.
Good luck!
Read more: Sites where you can play NBA fantasy
What is fantasy sports? The essence, history and principles of the game
Fantasy sports is an online game where participants (the so-called fantasy managers) assemble virtual teams of athletes whose prototypes are real professional players.
Teams compete with each other based on the performance of athletes in actual competitions.
For each goal, assist and other positive actions of an athlete in a real match, the fantasy manager receives points, and points are taken away for negative actions (for example, fouls, dangerous play), explains the sports publication SportClan.ru.
The participant with the most points wins.
This is how the famous Norwegian chess player Magnus Carlsen's fantasy football team looked like:
In English-speaking countries, variant names rotisserie or roto may be used to refer to fantasy sports.
Fantasy sports
Baseball and American football, which became the original main fantasy sports, have recently been significantly supplemented by various other sports, among which football is the most popular. However, modern offerings for fantasy managers are not limited to this only: there is also fantasy hockey, fantasy basketball, and even fantasy biathlon.
The essence of fantasy sports
1. Recruitment of players into a virtual team The game begins with the recruitment of a team by various athletes from real-life clubs. The process is complicated by the fact that the purchase of each player requires a certain amount of money, and the budget is limited.
2.Game process
Goals, passes, balls saved by goalkeepers and other effective actions that occur in real games of virtual team members bring credit points to fantasy managers in the game, while counterproductive actions (yellow and red cards, other violations, penalties) they are taken away.
The player whose team scores the most points wins the fantasy tournament.
3. Prize money
Recently, fantasy sports have been predominantly a game with cash prizes, which, combined with a significant degree of immersion in real sports, makes fantasy more and more popular. Prize pools in fantasy tournaments are growing every year, and players' winnings often reach six figures.
Seasonal and daily fantasy sports
Depending on the duration of the game, fantasy sports can be divided into seasonal (season) and daily (daily) competitions.
Long tournaments covering national or international competitions, which are divided into many rounds and require a certain game strategy from the fantasy manager, are called seasonal fantasy.
Competitions with one round or one-match tournaments, where there is a need to recruit a new line-up for each of the matches - this is daily fantasy.
Where can I play fantasy sports?
There are platforms for players from different regions and countries, including Russian speakers.
