Fantasy Basketball

Fantasy basketball was born in the mid 1990s after Internet began sweeping the world by storm and also after fantasy football and fantasy baseball had gained astounding success. In fantasy basketball, like football and baseball, there are two types of leagues, Rotisserie and Head to Head. The more popular scoring method is Head to Head, in which each team plays against a single opponent each week, and at the end of the year the team with the best win-loss record wins the league.

Each fantasy basketball league usually consist of 10-12 owners and players are obtained through drafts. In the draft format, the draft order is randomly picked and the draft goes in a snake style, meaning the owner with the last pick in the first round gets the first pick of the second round and the owner with the first pick in the first round gets the last pick of the second round.

Fantasy basketball leagues usually have 8 categories: points, assists, rebounds, blocks, steals, field goal percentage, three-point percentage, and free throw percentage. Some leagues may have more stats or sometimes less but those are the most commonly used statistical format used in fantasy basketball leagues.

Fantasy basketball rosters usually consist of 10 players. The most commonly used starting lineups are nearly identical to that of a real basketball team. There is a point guard, a shooting guard, a small forward, a power forward, a center, and a utility player. The best players in fantasy basketball are often the more well-rounded players. The players who do well in all facets of the game are more valuable than players who dominate in 1 or 2 categories but are unproductive in the rest of the categories.

When setting your fantasy basketball roster each day, there are multiple factors to take into consideration. Style of play is the biggest factor. In today's NBA, half the teams play a slow-down style of basketball that are usually more physical and low-scoring and half the teams play run-and-gun style in which it is fast paced and the scoring is off the charts. When selecting the lineup for your fantasy basketball team, it is important to see what type of team your players will be facing. Another factor is schedule, the NBA season is long and sometimes teams will be playing 4 games in 4 nights in 4 cities. A lot of players go through stretches where they are clearly fatigued and their statistics prove it.

Fantasy basketball is a relatively easy fantasy sport to play because the players are easy to predict. Unlike football and baseball where scoring is hard to come by, basketball is non-stop and that makes for a fun league to play in. Fantasy basketball leagues can be found on ESPN, Yahoo, CBS.Sportsline, and NBA.com.