FBA 102 : Techniques For Building An Unbeatable Fantasy Team

Jet here,

Today I'm looking at some simple principles that can help turn a good team into a dominant one. If you haven't read my first FBA post, "The Foundations of a Winning Team," you should go back and check that out.

Again, when I talk Fantasy Basketball, my discussion is framed around Head-To-Head, Re-Draft, Daily-Transaction type leagues.

All right, let's say you've drafted a solid fantasy basketball team by avoiding risky picks in the early rounds and choosing consistent players who usually avoid major injuries. What are the steps that one can take towards improving this team? I'll introduce some extremely simple techniques for honing a squad. Most of them involve trades - it's very difficult to make serious changes to your team any other way. Also - I'm not going to waste your time with the obvious advice to "buy low, sell high" - I hope you've picked up that strategic mantra already, and probably well before you even knew what Fantasy Basketball was..

Technique #1 : Concentrate Your Core

What is the "core" of a fantasy basketball team? Simply put, it's the best players on your team (for most sized teams, say around 6-7 players), and the ones that you'll usually start when they have games scheduled. The core is what forms the personality of a team : its strengths and weaknesses. Since these are dominant players, the true cream of the crop, their stats will influence the team's overall stats to the greatest degree (also, you'll be playing them whenever you get a chance, with perhaps a few exceptions). Let's take an example - let's say you've got Gilbert Arenas. Arenas is a dominant player that you absolutely can't sit, but he's going to bring certain advantages (points and threes) and drawbacks (lower FG% and turnovers) to the table along with him.

Ok, so what does it meant to concentrate a core? As you might surmise, this means turning deals that trade away quantity in your mid-tier and lower valued players in order to bring in increasingly dominant players at the top. In fact, you can think of this as "concentrating the top" of your core (if you visualize your team vertically).

The only way that you can bend your team and achieve this effect is to make trades (usually, a whole series of trades.. it can take a whole fantasy season). Managers have to master two kinds of deals : "The 2:1 (the short hand stands for "two for one:)" and "Best Player Deals". The former is much more effective, but harder to swing. The latter takes finesse, but even savvy opponents can be talked into a statistically even deal where you get the best player if the conditions are right. In both cases, you'll often be taking a short term loss in order to cash in down the road. Let's go ahead and call out these two key categories for trades and give them short definitions:

The 2:1 Deal :

Actually, it doesn't have to be a 2:1 (again, this means "two for one" - as in two players for one player). The trade can be 3 players for 2 players. You get the idea, it's swapping quantity for quality. You're giving up an extra player, so the total value equals out. However, you're taking back the better players in the deal. The assumption is that you'll be able to "make up" the depth later by making waiver wire adds. This always works in the long term as long as you've got the moves to add players. Always. There will eventually be a player available from the wire that will, when added to the players you took back in the trade, make your side of the deal better. Master these trades and look for opportunities to pull them!

Best Player Deals :

Self-describing. These are deals involving multiple players, perhaps 2:2 or 3:3 trades. Overall, the value is probably even (unless you managed to pull the wool over someone's eyes). However, you're getting the best overall player in the trade. Against experienced opponents, this is often the only way that you can concentrate your core. Perhaps everyone else in the league can't even recognize that this is a Best Player Trade. Certain players get hyped, or maybe a player had an extremely inflated pre-draft value and you've recognized that ahead of everyone else. If you pull a best player deal and everyone is convinced you lost it - only to find out later that you won handily (maybe when you're holding the trophy)... you're good.

Technique #2 : Build Teams On Shooting Percentages

There's several categories in any Fantasy League Format. Almost every league worth talking about counts FG% and FT%. Some go on to include 3PT%. Still, percentages usually constitute at most a third of the total categories to be won. So why single them out?

The most consistent teams are those that win percentages. Why is that? The remaining categories, which I'll term "cumulative categories," are dependent on the total games played by your players in a week. As you probably know, that varies widely from week to week. Injuries or "short weeks" (like the Holiday week or All-Star week) can make those variations even more extreme. Percentages, however, are less dependent on total games. If your players shoot the ball well (think: Steve Nash - ah yes, perhaps the ultimate weapon in percentages!), you can continue to win those categories even if you have a huge deficit of total games with respect to your opponent that week. Over the course of an entire season, this is a monster advantage.

I really should have introduced this idea before discussing the draft, since it obviously helps if you draft based on this principle if you're planning to collect a whole team of players with good percentages. Luckily, the most consistent players (consistency was one of our three foundations, if you remember) also have good percentages. Even if you ended up with some "percentage anchors," you can still make a key trade to get yourself out from under them. Make it a priority!

That's it for now, keeping it simple with this post. I'll expand on these principles later, and add some more complexity (such as how to best pull the category of deals that we just defined).

- Jet out

Images - Steve Nash: Jonathan Daniel, AFP, Shawn Marion: Nathaniel Butler, NBAE (via Getty Images)