How to draft fantasy basketball team

Fantasy Basketball 2022-23: Tips and draft strategy for category format leagues

Jrue Holiday provides numbers — and therefore value — across multiple categories in fantasy basketball.

Special to Yahoo Sports

Whether it’s your first time playing fantasy sports or you’re a seasoned fantasy football player looking for a new challenge, this guide aims to educate you about how to approach a category-based fantasy basketball league. The tips and advice found here should help you construct a serviceable — and hopefully league-winning! — team, even if you haven’t been actively following the NBA or have never played fantasy before.

Almost all category leagues are either “8-cat” (eight default categories) or “9-cat” (nine default categories). The eight default categories are points, rebounds, assists, steals, blocks, 3s, FG% and FT%. Turnovers are the ninth default, and they’re the only difference between 8-cat and 9-cat leagues. 9-cat is more common on Yahoo, but you can play either format depending on what you prefer.

A few themes to remember if you play in a 9-cat league: High-usage players are often turnover machines, and rookies tend to be particularly turnover prone, especially rookie ballhandlers. Catch-and-shoot specialists (think PJ Tucker) and big men who don’t pass (like Clint Capela) tend to see the biggest boosts in 9-cat value.

[Get in on the fun this fantasy hoops season: Create or join a league now!]

Occasionally, league commissioners experiment with some other category options. Some of the most common alternatives are double-doubles, triple-doubles, splitting offensive and defensive rebounds into two categories, or changing the way field goal efficiency is measured (i.e. counting made field goals, made free throws, eFG%, TS%, or some combination thereof). If you play in one of these leagues with atypical categories, the most important thing to remember is that most fantasy advice is not tailored for your leagues. There is still a lot to gain and a lot to be learned from articles, tweets, podcasts, etc, but remember that all of that advice assumes that you’re playing in either 8-cat or 9-cat.

This isn’t special to category-based leagues, but fantasy managers need to know whether they set lineups every day or once a week and whether they have an IR spot. Managers in weekly lineup leagues or leagues without an IR spot need to be more cautious on draft day. Someone like Kawhi Leonard, who is likely to miss games for “load management”, does more damage in a weekly lineups league than a daily lineups league — in a daily lineups league, you can insert a replacement for just that day. Injuries are also easier to wait out if your roster has an IR spot. That way, you can add a new player without dropping the injured one.

This is the big one. In an h3H (head-to-head) league, you face off against one team per week — your categories against your opponent’s. In h3H leagues, the teams with the best records qualify for the playoffs, and the champion is the winner of the playoff tournament. In roto (short for rotisserie), teams compete against the entire league over the course of the season. In a 12-team league, the leader in a given category gains 12 points, second place gets 11, third place gets 10, and so on until last place gets a single point. The champion is the team with the most cumulative points on the final day of the season.

The most important difference between h3H and roto is that punting (deliberately ignoring multiple categories, so that you can build an extra strong team in the remaining categories) usually leads to different results. In h3H, a well-crafted punt build is the optimal strategy. However, in roto, punting successfully is much harder and not rewarded as explicitly.

The reason you should punt in a head-to-head league is that you’re only trying to win a majority of the categories — it’s okay if you lose a few. For example, if you’re in a 9-cat league, you can effectively punt four categories in an attempt to win the other five. The more unusual build the better, as you’ll potentially be competing against other people who are punting, and you want to overlap as little as possible. Something strange like punting points, 3s, rebounds and assists will shift values, so you can reach to secure players who fit your build. Last season, that build — steals, blocks, FG%, FT% and TO — yielded increased value for players like Robert Williams, Herb Jones, Jaren Jackson and Mikal Bridges.

One other note on h3H category leagues: There are two types. The Yahoo standard counts each category as one game per week. So in a 9-cat league, a manager will receive a result in the standings for each category they win, loss or tie. Win five categories and lose four, you’ll be 5-4 that week.In “h3H One Win”, only one result is added to the W-L-T record per week, determined by which team wins the most categories.

Category Scarcity

Blocks and Assists

Blocks and assists are the scarcest categories. Most of the league’s assists come from the top point guards, with a few notable exceptions. All of the non-point-guard assists leaders are going to get drafted, and most of them will go in the first couple of rounds. When a point guard becomes worthy of acquisition off the waiver wire, they rarely are high-impact passers.

Similarly, there will be some shot-blocking big men who emerge off waivers as the season rolls along, but, as with assists, those players rarely block enough shots to make a major impact. As with assists, most of the best shotblockers will all get drafted in the first couple of rounds.

Rebounds and 3-pointers

Rebounds and 3-pointers are much easier to find. While the league’s elite rebounders stay pretty steady year over year, there are always several big men who emerge early in the season as reliable sources of boards. Furthermore, as big men get hurt, their backups usually step in and provide a decent facsimile of the starter’s rebounding load.

Threes are a slightly different story, but the results are the same. As the total number of 3s has increased, finding quality 3-point shooters later in drafts has become easier and easier. Every year, a few players emerge as semi-surprising additions to the 3s-per-game leaderboard. Perhaps more importantly, due to the streaky nature of long-range shooting, managers who remain active on the waiver wire can usually find a few players going through a hot streak and averaging several made 3s per game.

Points

Points are tricky. On the one hand, all the best scorers are going to get drafted early. Unless you are deliberately punting the category, you’ll probably need to draft at least one 20-plus-point scorer early to stay competitive.

On the other hand, points are often overvalued by fantasy managers. Low scorers often get drafted much later than they should. High scorers get picked up off waivers much quicker, even if they provide little value in the other categories. Furthermore, as NBA offenses have changed, there are more high scorers available in the later rounds of drafts than ever before.

Points do become available on waivers throughout the season, but most of the time, it’s only players who score between 13 and 18 points. Those guys can help, but, here too, waivers are unlikely to bail you out if you missed on this category on draft day.

Steals

Steals are always available on waivers. The problem? Most of those players don’t provide enough help in the other categories to be worth rostering. That means that managers in daily lineups leagues can get meaningful help off of waivers, especially late in the week in a close h3H matchup, but that managers in weekly lineups leagues will have a harder time using the waiver wire to bolster their rosters.

The best way to stay competitive in steals is to try to draft elite two-way players relatively early, like Chris Paul and Jrue Holiday, so you don’t have to reach late in drafts for players who have murky roles and are generally unreliable.

FG% and FT%

Players’ FG% and FT% are more variable than many counting stats, and therefore harder to predict, even if they stay in the same role on the same team.

For that reason, managers should remain careful when trying to build strength in these two categories. If you think your team is good, but not great, in either FG% or FT%, then remember that your margin for error may be small.

One last note — there are also some well-founded strategic arguments against punting either shooting efficiency category. Foremost among them, is that it is likely another manager in your league may attempt the same build, and that a punt-percentages team suffers more than other roster builds when their team has fewer games than their opponent in a given week.

If you’ve played in points leagues before, and this is your first time playing in a category-based league, make sure to compare last season’s final ranks in points leagues to last season’s final ranks in category leagues. This should help you get a good sense of which players make some pretty big jumps and which fall.

Remember that category scarcity is now much more important that positional scarcity. Positions still matter, but they matter a lot less.

Lastly, and this applies to points leagues as well as category leagues: remember that your last few picks are probably going to be dropped a few weeks later anyway. Take a few risks on upside, or focus on players who might fill some specific categorical weakness — there is no such thing as “reaching” at the end of a draft.

Fantasy: 5 tips to help you nail your basketball drafts

LeBron James and the Lakers will look to bounce back this season.

The NBA season starts next Tuesday, and if you’re like me, you will be knocking out your final fantasy drafts this weekend. Here are five tips below that will help you cram last minute and dominate your drafts!

Utilize Yahoo’s Draft Analysis Tool

Do you want to know where players are being drafted? The Draft Analysis tool is the easiest and best way to do so. By evaluating the Average Draft Position (ADP) for a particular player, Yahoo is essentially conducting a market analysis across their draft platform for when players are being selected. ADP is a valuable data point when constructing a fantasy team because you’ll want to make decisions based on the latest trends in the market. Which, at times, may be viewed as an overcorrection (an opportunity to capitalize on falling value) or a reaction to new information (such as LaMelo Ball’s recent ankle injury).

Rankings are not one-size-fits-all but similarly to ADP, they are another data point that can help fantasy managers come draft time. It’s impossible to predict the correct outcome for every player. However, you can get a feel for which players are higher or lower than the ADP. If I’m higher on a person, there’s a good chance I’ve mentioned them in my positional tiers articles, my guys, or sleepers columns.

These guys are the NBA insiders that you’ll want to follow for the latest NBA news that may impact your fantasy draft. From injuries to player absences, projected starting lineups and more, it’s critical to get an understanding of the latest news so that you can go into drafts with the most updated information as possible.

[Get in on the fun this fantasy hoops season: Create or join a league now!]

I prefer to evaluate players on their per-game value instead of their total value because injuries are, unfortunately, part of fantasy basketball. Players like Mikal Bridges are often ranked higher in head-to-head leagues because of their ability to play in a majority of games each season. Using Mikal Bridges as an example, he finished last season 24th in total value, but if you look under the hood, he finished outside of the top 50 (54th) in per-game value. So he got a significant boost by simply playing more games.

On the flip side, if you look at LeBron James from a season ago, he finished fourth in per-game value versus 16th in total value. You have to be somewhat optimistic and look at the ceiling before heading into drafts. Several players in the first three rounds of fantasy basketball drafts will be load managed this year, but that doesn’t mean they won’t produce. Availability is certainly something to consider, but don’t bypass a player’s upside. Basketball Monster is a great resource that allows you to toggle between the per-game and total values from last season.

Are you wondering who might be the Ja Morant of last season? Or who makes the All-Star leap? Well, I often use betting markets to determine those candidates. Evaluating the player award markets and their respective odds of winning provides another data point for consideration. The markets I’d be most interested in viewing would be most points, assists, rebounds, steals, blocks, most improved player, MVP, rookie of the year and defensive player of the year.

[Try Yahoo Fantasy Plus for free to get premium basketball tools]

It may seem trivial, but I’m confident you’ll see several of the names listed for those markets emerge as viable candidates to win their respective awards and be valuable fantasy assets this year.

NHL Rules - Fantasy

How to create a team?

Your team must consist of 17 hockey players - 2 goaltenders, 6 defenders and 9 forwards, the total value of which must not exceed 20,000.

You can select up to 2 players from one club.

How to manage a team?

Each game week 17 hockey players go on the ice and spend during this time (the week starts at 14:00 every Monday ) a different number of games. Try to take those hockey players who will play - there are no substitutions in the game.

The location of the players on the field does not matter - you can put the scorer in the third link, and the tough guy in the first; they will score exactly the same if you swap them.

How to make transfers?

After choosing a team, you can change the line-up using transfers. Up to 5 transfers can be made during each week. Before the start of the tournament, you can make an unlimited number of transfers.

Team changes can be made at any time during the week and they will take effect immediately.

Hockey player's cost changes after each match - and therefore the hockey player will be locked out for the transition one hour before the start of the game and will be unlocked after some time after it.

Along with the cost of hockey players, the budget of your team also changes. In the future, you can change the composition within the changed cost of the team.

How do players score points?

All points will be awarded within 24 hours of the end of the matches on the tour, according to the data Sports.ru receives from the statistics provider.

Scoring Rules

What are leagues?

The member automatically enters the club's fan league by indicating his favorite team when creating the team.

In order to compete with their friends, each participant can create their own league, and then invite their friends to it using a special league entry code. Having received such a code from another member, you can join a league created by another player.

What if I still have questions?

You can send your question to [email protected] or ask it in the conference.

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How to play fantasy league?

This season in the Parimatch Championship of the Nizhny Novgorod region, we are again waiting for the fantasy league, which has already managed to catch the fancy of many fans over the past year.

1) The user registers on fantione.com. You can register through Vkontakte with one click, or you can use an email address, but then the mail will need to be confirmed - without confirmation it will not be possible to play fantasy.

2) Then the user searches for the league he needs (the list of active leagues will be on the main page). In our case, this is the Major League of the Championship of the Nizhny Novgorod Region.

3) After selecting a league, the user goes to its page, clicks "Play" and becomes a member.

4) Next, you need to open the card sets to find out which players can be fielded on the upcoming fantasy tour. You will have 15 sets of cards. Each set contains 5 cards (for each position - point guard, attacking defender, small forward, heavy forward, center).

5) After opening all the cards, ideally, you need to look at what has fallen. There will almost certainly be duplicate cards - duplicates can be removed, leaving only 1 card of the same cards available. When deleted, the user receives points, which can then be exchanged for new sets of cards (1000 points for 1 set). Removal of a simple card - 100 points, removal of a silver card - 200 points, removal of a gold card - 500 points. The difference in the color of the card is the bonuses that are awarded for each useful action by the player. Regular cards have no bonuses, silver cards have 1 bonus, gold cards have 3 bonuses. Bonuses and which cards drop out are all randomly generated. There will always be 1 silver card in one set. Possibility of getting into the gold card set - 10%. You can delete not only duplicate cards, but also cards of players that, in the user's opinion, will not be useful in fantasy, and he will not put them on upcoming rounds. It is impossible to remove a previously played card in one of the rounds. It is also not recommended to delete everything in a row - a situation may occur that there is no player in the position, and then 0 fantasy points will be awarded to the user for this position.

6) When all the cards are open, you need to go to the selection of the composition in the menu. The choice of the composition is 5 players for the next games, one player for each position. You just need to scroll down and choose from among the available cards those that, in the opinion of the user, will be most useful in the next tour. The choice is simple - scroll down, find a card from the available ones, click on it, and it should automatically appear at the top. Click "Save", etc. no need. Everything is saved. Changes to the selected five can be made before the start of the first game in the upcoming round. You can replace an already issued card if the changes are not blocked yet.

7) After choosing the composition, you can go to the prediction league. The League of Predictions is an additional opportunity to earn points for new sets of cards. There you need to guess the outcomes of matches and some random events. Correct predictions go to the overall standings, as well as to the standings of points that can be sprayed.

At the end of all games, the results for the round are processed, and the site in the "Leaders" section displays user data with their five players by fantasy points. And in the section "Statistics" - indicators of fantasy-points of the players of our Championship. By default, summary indicators are opened, but you can switch to a specific tour.

Please note that one round in the Parimatch Championship of the Nizhny Novgorod region lasts 2 weeks, but in the fantasy league we play for a week, so points are calculated every Monday.

You can play the Fantasy League here - https://fantione.com/

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