Jet here,I figure for a first content post, I would kick off a series that I'll call "FBA 101" (for lack of a better title, and it stands for "Fantasy Basketball Association 101" - you'll hear different acronyms thrown around out there for fantasy basketball, but this is one that stuck with me). The goal will be to start out with the simplest principles to use when building a winning fantasy basketball team, and then build towards more complex strategies. I'll introduce three "foundations" for success: Win Your Draft, Consistent Players Equal Consistent Wins, and Own Players Who Play.
Before I go any further, I want to qualify what I'm talking about specifically when I post on Fantasy Basketball. First of all, I specialize in Head-to-Head leagues. I find Rotisserie (or "Roto") to be extremely boring. I do fantasy leagues with friends, and the weekly matchups and playoffs that come with the Head-to-Head format make it infinitely more immersive than Roto (a format that continuously builds stats over an entire season, and has no weekly matchups or end-of-season playoffs). This topic turns into a religious war amongst some fantasy basketball luminaries, but it seems like a no-brainer to me. I think of college basketball versus college football - do you favor the excitement and the rush of March Madness or the "all-but-four-teams-are-usually-out-of-it by midseason" doldrums of NCAA football? Secondly, I'm not a believer in "keeper leagues," where teams flag players that they carry over into the next year. I'd rather start each year with a clean slate (this is dubbed "Redraft Leagues"), and it's hard to picture a keeper league over any substantial length of time that wouldn't deteriorate into 1 or 2 competitive "super teams" and a bunch of bored managers that are out of it. Finally, I'm going to frame my discussion in the context of "Daily Transaction Leagues" - that is, leagues where you can set your lineup day-by-day, rather than burn it in for an entire week.
Since we're starting from the ground up, I'm going to call this installment "The Foundations of a Winning Team."
Foundation #1 : Win Your Draft
Obviously, any fantasy basketball team begins with the draft, and it's the most important set of decisions that you'll make all year. Every year, I win my draft - and I do it against some individuals with a lot of basketball knowledge. I actually believe that many of the more prolific & followed fantasy basketball analysts out there do a disservice to their readers... These guys are scraping for anything novel to write about, and they invariably get into a bidding war of hyping players that are going to "break out." This makes for an interesting read when you're eagerly awaiting the basketball season, but draft participants always take the hype too far and "reach" with their picks. This is the opportunity for savvy owners to win in the early rounds - never take risks with your top 5 picks. Play it safe, and draft known commodities. I
might even widen this to the 6th or 7th round, depending on the size of your league. You get the point though - protect your draft by beating back the urge to "reach" with those early picks. In the middle rounds of your draft (a draft usually has 13-15 rounds), you should target underrated players that will slip. These are guys that should have gone in the 4th or 5th rounds, but that are flying under the radar. From experience, I can tell you that these players are commonly very consistent without loading up in the categories of three-pointers, steals, and/or blocks. These players are seen as "un-sexy," and should usually slip in a draft (examples: Andre Miller, Richard Hamilton, Zach Randolph). Finally, you should make very sure to win the late rounds of your draft. Familiarize yourself with the players that started for their teams during the preaseason. If there's a guy that's just won a starting job for the first time, and he's been passed up on, he should be a primary target for a late round pick.Foundation #2 : Consistent Players Equal Consistent Wins
Judging players by their stat totals or averages ignores important information that doesn't show up on the stat sheet. It doesn't take much digging to find out that some players are just more consistent than others (just open up their game logs). This should be very important to you as a fantasy manager, since you'll often have to make lineup decisions on nights where there are many games. This is difficult when you don't know what to expect from a player. When evaluating a player, take note of the way his stats deviate from one game to the next. Some players are extremely predictable in over 3 categories or more if you include shooting percentages (think: Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen) Others vary wildly week to week or even game to game (think Ben Gordon). Target the predictable guys. Especially in daily transaction leagues, where you might need to start a group of players based on the stats you need to pull out a win, you're going to want a roster of guys that don't pop a lot of surprises. Note: There are some sites on the Internet that track statistical consistency of players in a metric you can compare (also the consistency of the minutes that each player gets per game). For an example of this, take a look at basketballmonster.com.Foundation #3 : Own Players Who Play
Injuries are the wild card in any fantasy season. They can turn a dominant team into a non-contender in a matter of weeks if a manager is extremely unlucky. While there's never a way to predict injuries exactly, there are definitely players that do a better job of avoiding injuries or playing through them. If you're new to fantasy basketball, you can gauge this by looking at the total number of games that players have managed to play over the previous few seasons. Some players consistently get on the court 75+ times (or even 80+ games) nearly every year (think: Joe Johnson). These are the players you want to own. If you see a player that's played around 50 games in his recent seasons, stay away (e.g. Baron Davis).
That's it for now, I'll be back in future posts to revisit more complex practices that will help build consistent winners in fantasy basketball.
- Jet out
Images : Kevin Garnett (Greg Nelson/SI), Richard Hamilton (K.C. Alfred, Union Tribune), Ray Allen (AP Photo), Joe Johnson (AP Photo)
1 comment:
You made some key points in your discussion about ensuring you have a strong draft.
One of the most important things you can do is target players who are normally very consistent producers, but for some reason or another (usually as a result of an injury or trade) have taken a marked decline in their usual production the previous year. I'm not talking about perpetually injured players (e.g. Jamaal Tinsley, Jermaine O'Neal, Gerald Wallace, etc.), but rather those players who are normally very durable but happened to have had an off year due to one of the reasons mentioned. These players will normally be ranked much lower than their actual true value will be for the current year. These are the types of players that will slip to later rounds and the ones you will want to target as value picks.
Players with a lot of potential but who are also injured with high regularity have their place in fantasy drafts; however, you generally want to let others burn their higher draft picks on them and only want to take them if they slip to later rounds. There's nothing more damaging to the success of a fantasy team than having your players sit out random games in the middle of a crucial matchup. Consistent and reliable players are far more important to the success of a team than highly explosive and oft-injured players. You really want at most one or two of those types of players on your team.
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