People ask me all the time for tips on how to win their fantasy basketball leagues. I love having those conversations, and I’ll typically go as far as someone wants as far as the level of advice.
What I tell my father-in-law or my children on how to get into fantasy leagues is a lot different than what I’d tell someone that’s been playing fantasy hoops every year for 20 years and is looking for Jedi-level tricks to get that little bit of edge.
For this space, I’ll address the group of people that lives in the middle of those two extremes. But if you’re the latter, and want to dive deep and/or get specific about your questions for your specific league… definitely hit me up on Twitter @ProfessorDrz.
The Draft
The draft is one of the most fun parts of fantasy sports, and it’s also how you set your team up for success. Is it still possible to win a league if you had a bad draft? Yes, it is. But man, a great draft makes it so much easier to win if you start off with the type of strong foundation you can get through the draft.
The first advice I’d give for drafting is make sure to take some time to prepare. I’ve been playing in fantasy leagues for decades, and I’ll have draft-day conversations all the time with friends that say, “Hey. I haven’t looked at this league much, yet. You got rankings or something I can look at?”
The answer is, of course, yes — I’ve got rankings for you to look at. These days, those rankings are on ESPN. Which means that literally everyone in the league has those same rankings to work off. Don’t get me wrong, it’s important to have rankings. But, it’d be even better if you had a good idea about why players are ranked where they are, so you can decide if you agree with the rankings and adjust accordingly.
To do that, you’d need to be paying attention to NBA offseason coverage. What players have moved in free agency and offseason trades, and what were the fantasy ramifications of those moves? Which young players finished last season much stronger than their season averages and seem likely to make a leap this season? Who were the most impressive rookies coming out of the NBA Draft, or even better, coming out of the NBA Las Vegas Summer League?
Answering these questions are key to your draft prep. They should also be fun to answer, because it just means that you learn more about what’s going on in the hoops world….
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