How to draft on espn fantasy basketball

ESPN Fantasy Basketball 101 - How to play

Sep 26, 2022

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You love basketball. You follow the NBA, root for your favorite team and watched in amazement as Stephen Curry led the Golden State Warriors to another championship.

And you still haven't played fantasy basketball?!

If that sounds a lot like you, this is the perfect season to give it a try -- there is just so much exciting stuff happening around the league. Giannis Antetokounmpo and Nikola Jokic can do everything on the court. Luka Doncic and Trae Young have moved into the MVP discussion. Zion Williamson is coming back from a missed season. And superstars LeBron James and Kevin Durant continue to put their teams on their backs like they did 10 years ago.

There has never been a better time to jump right into the fantasy game.

Create or join an ESPN Fantasy Basketball league today and draft your league any time before the first game tips off every Monday. Your league starts fresh with 0-0 records for the new matchup period.

Sign up for free!

Imagine having Curry on your team when he gets on a roll from 3-point land and carries you to victory. Or what it feels like to have LaMelo Ball on your squad when he stuffs the stat sheet in his third NBA season.

These are the moments you remember as a fantasy manager!

In fact, many of those who've played fantasy basketball over the years can recall specific games that certain players had for them. An epic scoring night by James Harden or Damian Lillard, or maybe a timely triple-double by Russell Westbrook.

So fun. So, so fun!

If you're not an expert, don't worry -- we have everything you need to know about how to enter a league and draft a winning team. Even if you're a total beginner, you will still have the tools to experience the joy of fantasy basketball like millions do every year.

Make the league your own

Every fantasy basketball league is different. While there are basic rules and settings that apply across the board (you will learn about those below), each league takes on its own identity based on settings like roster size, injury spots, stat categories and other specifics.

We encourage you to join or start a league that fits what you're looking for. If you want to be more casual and set your lineups once a week, find a league that uses weekly lineup changes. If you're a little bit more diehard with all this and want to be able to add and drop players and craft new lineups on a daily basis, that's the type of league you should enter.

The bottom line is to do what's fun for you. Find a league that keeps you tuning in to watch your players every night.

With that in mind, we've put together ESPN Fantasy Basketball 101 to give you an overview of how to get started, how to prepare for your draft and how to play during the season.

Now it's time for you to sign up and join the fun!

ESPN Fantasy Basketball FAQ

Click here for a quick reference for basic game-related questions.

How to sign up on the ESPN Fantasy app

Were you invited to an ESPN Fantasy Basketball league? Do you want to create your own as a League Manager? We have complete instructions for you right here.

How to sign up online

Whether you were invited to join an already-existing league or want to create your own as a League Manager, you'll find everything you need to do so right here.

League settings

If you created your own league, you'll need to make sure all of your league's rules and settings -- including roster size, scoring, regular-season schedules and playoff schedules -- are to your liking. We have all of the details of how to do that right here. Note: This season

You've signed up, now what?

Check out your league and team pages

It's time to learn more about your league and team pages, so you know where everything is. We've got you covered with a detailed tour right here.

Know your rules

This might seem incredibly basic, but even veteran fantasy basketball players often assume they know their league rules even when they don't. The result of overlooking a rule can be costly, so be sure you know the rules before your draft.

Go to your fantasy basketball league page, click on League, then Settings. Here, you'll be able to find all the rules that are in place for your league this season. This includes roster construction, scoring, schedule, playoff structure and more.

Take the time to carefully go over every section. To make sure you understand the thinking behind each rule, check out our League Settings overview.

Draft prep

A good draft will put you in position to have a successful season, and taking time to prepare beforehand is key. That includes formulating strategies and printing out rankings that reflect your league's scoring format.

Don't worry, we have you covered with customized expert rankings and draft strategies in the ESPN Fantasy Basketball draft kit.

Autodraft prep

If you don't plan to take part in a live draft, that's OK. Our system will automatically draft for you.

Still, you have the option of guiding how our system will draft your team. Go to your Team page and click "Edit Autopick Strategy." Here, you can decide which player positions you'd like to pick in which parts of the draft and how many players at each position you want to select overall.

Mock drafts

Mock drafts are simply practice drafts that don't count for anything. It's a terrific way to get used to the ESPN draft software, make sure you know how everything works and test out different strategies. For example, that might mean drafting a point guard in the first round versus drafting a small forward in Round 1 and waiting on a point guard until the fourth round.

These practice drafts also let you see which players are going higher than expected and which are routinely slipping down a round or two (or more). This is extremely useful knowledge that you can take with you in your real draft and use to your advantage, avoiding those "sliding" players until later rounds when you have a good idea that they will still be available.

For an overview of how everything in the ESPN draft room works, click on this link.

The draft

Draft day is the most exciting day of the season, because it's when your team goes from a plan to a reality. It's when you finally get the chance to assemble the group of players you get to root for all season. Of course, you can always add and drop players throughout the year, but the draft is still the most fundamental part of your roster and you want to make sure you don't miss on your top players.

If you have prepared for your draft by reading up on players and strategies, and by participating in several mock drafts, you're on the path to success. Believe in your hunches and don't look back.

To make everything go as smoothly as possible, be sure to follow these handy rules.

The season is starting, let the fun begin!

Trading

In most leagues, there are at least a few managers who enjoy the art of the deal. If you're one of those people, trading is going to be one of the most fun aspects of fantasy basketball. When done well, it's a great opportunity to improve your roster while unloading someone you perhaps no longer want or need.

There are several important factors to keep in mind. You must look at the roster of the team you're trading with and understand which, if any players, that manager might be willing to part with. For example, it'd be unwise to make a trade offer for a point guard on a team that is battling injuries and down to one healthy point guard. Also, while you may never want to send your best trade offer with your first proposal, be careful not to offer up too little. That can be offensive to the other manager and can lead to that person not only declining your offer but ending all future trade talks with you.

In-season strategies

Beyond trading, there are other factors to consider during the season like how to manage your games played in roto leagues, how to approach head-to-head playoffs, and how best to work the waiver wire. Check out the in-season strategies section of our draft kit.

Fantasy basketball etiquette

Every few years, no matter what type of league you're in, you'll run into someone who causes problems. Sometimes it name-calling on the message board and being a bully. Other times it is a constant stream of wild trade offers and questionable transactions. Whether you are in a hyper-competitive league or just trying to have some casual fun, you want to avoid being this way or having others in your league who conduct themselves like this.

Generally speaking, that just means following the golden rule: Treat others the way you'd want to be treated in your league.

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Oct 18, 2022

Version 8.4.1

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Editors’ Notes

If you want to play fantasy sports, there are—ahem—leagues of apps to choose from. But we think ESPN Fantasy might be the MVP. Its minimal interface stays out of our way so we can focus on draft picks, trades, and managing our lineup. But the best part? ESPN’s got mini-stories on all of the hot prospects. So the more time we spend actually using the app, the better our team ends up.

Football position expansion

I think that there should be a Punt and Kick Returner position in football, and perhaps a punter too, my idea is however many net yards there is on a punt, punt yards-return yards should be .1 points. And then kick/ punt returners having .1 per yard and 15 for a touchdown because of how rare a TD on a punt or kick return is. Another position that is a bit less likely but may work is an O line, hear me out. Maybe a scoring system could be just however many rushing yards their team has, but there would also be minuses for sacks, negative yards, and penalties like holding, false start and ineligible receiver downfield. One last thing but this one is about a new league game, golf. There are many websites to do this with, but what I am thinking is instead of having occasional games for Streak or betting, you can have an actual league game, you draft 20 golfers, and each tournament the players you draft will play, and if some of your players don’t make the cut or withdraw from the tournament then you can pick some players with a budget of around 1000 coins or points or whatever and the better players have a higher cost. This might be hard but It would be cool to have, thanks.

Was amazing! Small changes have made it worse

I really hope someone that works on the app actually sees this and takes it to heart because I use the app every single day. My 2 biggest issues stem from changes that were made to the app in the prior months and the first of the 2 is the inability to uphold trades as an LM from the app. This used to be possible from the activity screen but it is no longer an option and forces LM’s to have to go on the website and uphold trades from there. The second issue is the “Interested In” section of all free agent waiver pools in each fantasy sport shows everyone how many people are interested in a player. I used this feature to track players that I was in fact, interested in, but I can no longer do that and have to keep a notes section open in my phone just so that other members of my league don’t see that someone else is interested in said waiver player. This was never an issue before but an update changed this so all I ask is for this to be changed back! Other than these 2 things this app is amazing and it is so easy to manage all fantasy sports in one place, please make these 2 changes it would mean a lot! Thank you!

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NBA ESPN Sports Brothers 2019-2020.

Greetings to the GMChicks in the new season 2019-2020, beautiful and exciting as never before. It’s clear that I’m talking about the situation in the real NBA, and not in our utterly predictable league) We will play the 6th season, we have it every year, like the last one, so we just chill and don’t drive it)

Thank you all for the draft, the tires are strong they didn’t pull, for me personally the first 6 peaks generally flew by, like one instant.

So, let's go in order:

1. Dimitar18

Dima Kirov

Dimon is making incredible efforts to finally break into the playoff zone. The first pick was earned by my own mind, and the #2 pick was acquired with the help of our cat-smart rookie Vadim. In the off-season, Kawhi was dropped by Westbrook + picks. In short, at least in fantasy, Demetrius does not sit idly by. It is clear that after such a megahype, Dimka had no choice in Zion, even despite the injury of the top player right before the draft. And Zion thus fell into the galaxy of our glorious first-peakers, or, if you like, 33-peakers, along with Horf, Carmelo, Kemba and Mitchell.

About a month before the draft, we gave Dima another idea with Porz, he immediately caught fire and took it. Powerful, what can I say. But then the failure, as well as in the line (you won’t earn the first 2 so easily), and in point hits. In the case of Dimitar, they can even be called pinpoint misses. Collins, yes, is valued in the draft this year, but he is white. Herro and Hashimura sound great, but when they show themselves in the league, you can not wait. An unbalanced team (it is like that already at the stage of building a pair of keepers) did not particularly come to mind for this draft, although the selection of big guys is very impressive, "big" katas will be taken. There is only one recipe here: waver in the shoulders - and forward. In the field of searching for diamonds in a pile of black shit, it is Dimka who is considered our authority, good luck to him in finding stylish kids, there’s no way without a fifth kata.

ZBS Peak - Collins

shitpik - almost all of the 2nd

Vanga - first peak 2020

2. FAT_JOE

Yan Moscow 9000

9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 Here the draft is on a completely different level. For a padded jacket, well, just wonderful. The most important middle selections were worked out perfectly. Such cunts as Zhzhosh, Dinwiddy and Van Vliet were tidbits for me personally in these latitudes, although this may not be an indicator)) Looney and Redick are also great for their picks. But a dry handjob to Milesik Turner in such high peaks is not very clear to me (it doesn’t flog anything and the blocks are still not so much), Love was taken to get involved in rebounds, but then the lights out in this regard, and a bunch of Bridges is unlikely to survive for long, you don't have to be Nash Bridges to understand it. Keepers Kemba and Jimbo are quite a good couple these days, so you can look at this season with healthy optimism. Penalties and losses are elite, percentage from the game and rebounds in the sink, and the rest of the cuts in the game, Jan has not played differently in this league yet, and maybe he doesn’t know how.

ZBS peak - many

shitpik - Love, more than

Vanga - pilaf

3. Sir_antonio

Anton Krasnoyarsk

9000 9000 but the notes remain. According to the projections, Sirchik's team looks simply invincible, 5 of his usual katas are in a hard top. There is no doubt about 4 kata, but you will have to hunt for styles. Kirill finally proved last season in the paid league that this tactic can even bring a nut with the most nerdy approach, but still vigilance on the waver and perseverance is not the strongest feature of this GM, and this is putting it mildly. The choices in terms of the spirit of the game are quite understandable, but still clearly not accurate enough in terms of personalities, half of the blacks could be taken without fear, clearly lower, even taking into account the high degree of stupidity of this particular draft) And yet, it seems that this particular set of blacks is stronger than Anton's previous projects . So we're already afraid, guys - I'm quite serious.

ZBS Peak - Tucer

shitpik - Tadevush

Vanga - pilaf

4. Rogan Born

Andrey Khimki 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 all these years that we are happy to roll cotton wool in the fantasy field in our Palestinians, many GMs have developed their own corporate identity, which they try to adhere to from year to year. And not necessarily this will be due to the available pair of keepers. On the other hand, Roganchik, as a psychologist, could retort to me that this could be a sign of some kind of intellectual limitation and inorganicity. Perhaps this is so, I will not argue.

This time Andryusha assembled a fighting team, for Navolok one can even say a feast for the eyes! The sphincter of the breast this season will certainly not work in the usual economy mode for last season. This is not that dull Sirovskaya five (or even 3-4) ice rink, there is already a slightly different calico, as they say. There is already an application for 5 and a half strong cat, no less. According to the styloblocks, the team looks absolutely menacing, which always deliberately inspires fear in the opponent and, as a result, there are mistakes in moves, it is not guessed with spares. This factor should not be underestimated.

ZBS peak - in the seventh ten

shitpik - Joe Harris

Vanga - pilaf

5. STIR 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 Again, our beloved Volodya has a fusion of injuries, youth and experience in the roster. And, apparently, again without the playoffs, especially given the start without Zhorik. But it is gratifying that the top 10 of the Embiid league has appeared, in a healthy state, he will give odds to anyone. The team is neither one nor the other - and without frankly weak, but also without strong ones. This is always difficult. We will not bury, of course, suddenly 3Zh frankly drags or the veterans decide to make some noise this season. I am sure that even if everything does not go smoothly, Volodya will still not lose his presence of mind and will generate content, but what else do we need?