## Fantasy Basketball For ~~Weebs~~ Dummies^^love ^^you ^^guys ^^really (Part 1)

### Introduction:

In this post, I will cover the format and general understanding of fantasy basketball, as well as some general strategy for drafting/team making.

Really, this is all for fun, so don't let anything I write scare you away. Fantasy basketball is just a fun way of interacting with a sport that we enjoy.

I will post a Part 2 after the draft that explains how to use the fantasy platform (like what all the buttons do).

Hope this all helps!

### How does fantasy basketball work:

Well, first, basically there's a draft. The draft usually consists of thirteen rounds, which follows a snake format. [A snake format means that the draft order flips every round (sample image here).](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yWsHYhCfZRs/Uc5xYp-E4XI/AAAAAAAABB0/LC9H5ttBWvY/s1600/Fantasy+Football+Snake+Draft+Breakdown.png)

After you have drafted your thirteen players (just like in the NBA), you will compete for having the best regular season record, which determines playoff seeding. The real "bragging rights" are the post-season playoffs which follow an elimination bracket format.

Now, you might be wondering how wins and losses are determined. In this case, we will be playing a format called 9 Category Head-To-Head, which I will explain below.

### 9-Category Head-To-Head

Basically, the head-to-head part means that, over a ~20 week schedule, you will be assigned a weekly "matchup" with another team.

The 9-Category part means that, to win the matchup, you need to win the majority of the nine categories available (best of nine).

The categories are:

* Points (PTS)
* Rebounds (REB)
* Assists (AST)
* 3 Pointers Made (3PM)
* Field Goal Percentage (FG%)
* Free Throw Percentage (FT%)
* Steals (STL)
* Blocks (BLK)
* Turnovers (TOS)

It's pretty simple: **you want a higher number in all categories possible**, as it will lead to a higher chance of winning that category matchup against your opponent. **The only exception to this is turnovers, where you want a *smaller* number than your opponent.**

These category totals are calculated by adding up your daily totals for a week together. You can set a group of active players daily and the active players will contribute to your daily totals. I will cover more of this in Part 2, as it isn't really important as a primer.

### Drafting

Having explained the format, now we can come back to looking at drafting. Of course, we can just draft our favourite players or players that we know, but fantasy is also about numerics.

When drafting, ideally, you will want to be drafting to win the greatest number of categories as possible. Having all the points in the world doesn't mean much in this format, so you will want to round out your team as much as possible.

Alternatively, you can also look at it this way: you only need to win the majority of the nine categories. This means you can completely ignore having negative impact players in certain categories if you forego them.

For example, drafting Dwight Howard or DeAndre Jordan sort of defeats the purpose of drafting good free throw shooters, as they're so bad at them and shoot such a large volume of them that it is hard to balance them out. Ignoring FT% here would be the logical thing to do.

In opposite fashion, suppose you draft a great free throw shooter like James Harden, it would not make sense to pair him with a later draft pick of DeAndre Jordan and a better pairing would be Marc Gasol.

Hopefully that makes sense and isn't too dense to read and these are the numerical considerations that you will want to consider when drafting.

**But what if I don't really follow the NBA and don't know who's good at what? Well, you're in luck. Read on.**

### Fantasy NBA Resources

I have picked out a few basic sites that are handy for new players:

* [Razzball's Top 150 Fantasy Basketball Players](http://basketball.razzball.com/category/2017-fantasy-basketball-rankings): This site provides rankings and explanations for why they have ranked players where they have. There is also a projected stats section for each player.

* [Rotoworld Basketball](http://www.rotoworld.com/sports/nba/basketball): This has all your news about players, from who is hot/cold right now or who is injured. **They also have a few mock writers/analysts drafts floating around [from July](http://www.rotoworld.com/articles/nba/73159/47/fantasy-basketball-mock-draft) and [from June](http://www.rotoworld.com/articles/nba/72671/47/june-nba-fantasy-mock-draft) that follow the same format as ours, so it may be worth scanning to see which players they like and so on.

* [**Basketball Monster**](https://basketballmonster.com/PlayerRankings.aspx): You can find last year's rankings statistically broken down here, according to the same 9-CAT format that we play. Literally all the information is here. Green boxes indicate positive influence and red boxes show negative influence. Colour opacity shows how big of an impact they were statistically. This isn't much different from RES vote weights. **This year's projections and stats are for paying users only, however, after the season starts, they will be available for anyone to view.**

### FYI

If you need any help with anything, you can reach me by tagging me, over PM, or Discord (S. Serendipity ♡#9964 or S. Ahiru ♡#9964 -- I change my username sometimes).

I will put out a Part 2 with more information regarding the fantasy platform and how to use ESPN--like what their buttons do and stuff--after draft day.