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Three Burning Fantasy Basketball Questions (Mar. 23)
Every week, D.J. Foster will tackle three burning questions in the Fantasy Basketball world. Topics for today: Fixing fantasy basketball, the danger in chasing blocks and an early stab at next year's first round ADP.
1. How can we improve season-long fantasy basketball leagues?
Fantasy basketball ranks pretty low on the totem pole for fantasy sports. It's football first, then baseball, and then basketball way down at the bottom with the other sports.
That's a shame. If you're reading this, you love basketball and you know what an entertaining game it is. But how can we make season-long fantasy basketball leagues more engaging and fun to play?
Many players have simply turned to Daily Fantasy Sports for their basketball fix, which makes sense. You can drop in when you want with no obligations to anything long-term. Instead of fighting against that, though, what if we incorporated the best parts of that into our season-long leagues?
The best part about traditional leagues is the draft, and then it's all downhill from there. So let's keep the draft before the season in place, with a twist.
Under my proposal, instead of drafting a full roster, each team will draft just six players. You'll then have exclusive rights to use those players in your DFS lineups, which will have all the usual restraints (salary cap, two PG, SG, SF, PF one C, etc.).
From there, you'll play head-to-head against all 11 teams three times a week (MON-WED-FRI). Only the team who wins that night's contest gets a W...and perhaps a cash prize. The rule here would be that you don't have to use all or any of your six drafted players when they play (due to injuries, bad matchup) but no one else in your league can use them, either.
The challenge here would be that on some nights, only one or two of your drafted players might be playing, which adds some difficulty to building your 9-man DFS lineup.
Let's move on. At the All-Star break, you would get to designate three of those original six drafted players as keepers, and lose the corresponding draft pick round where you originally took them. The rest would then become available to select in another draft, with the team that has the least overall wins getting the first pick of the available players and non-keepers.
At the end of the season, the team with the most DFS nightly wins is crowned league champion, with a bonus going to the team with the most wins post All-Star break that didn't win the championship.
I think this fixes a lot of problems. Roto leagues get boring after the first month or so, where nothing seems to change and the leads are often insurmountable. Head-to-head leagues rely way too much on the last few weeks of the season, where things start to get wacky in the NBA.
By combining the best parts of season-long leagues (drafts, trades, keepers) with the best of DFS (nightly payout, lineup building under a salary cap, instant gratification) we can make season-long leagues much more entertaining.
I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments, or maybe an idea of your own for how to make fantasy basketball more appealing.
2. Are blocks becoming less important in fantasy?
Now back to reality. In standard leagues, blocks are a huge roto category that you often have to chase early in your draft. It's why a big man like Rudy Gobert got so much fantasy hype this past offseason. If you can add somewhere around two blocks a night and not kill your team's free throw percentage in the process (sorry, DeAndre), you have tons of value in fantasy.
I don't think you need to necessarily prioritize blocks early on, though. Players like Gorgui Dieng and Robin Lopez can each give you a block a night and with sky-high shooting percentages. Top picks like Kevin Durant and Giannis Antetokounmpo can actually lead your team in that category just fine.
Blocks are typically easier to add on the waiver wire as well. Bismack Biyombo and Jerami Grant, two waiver wire recommendations this week, are good examples of players who can help you there if you're desperate.
Blocks are still important, but I won't feel the need to chase them in early rounds anymore.
3. Who was a first-round pick in fantasy drafts this season that won't be a first-round pick next year?
Here's the first round ADP for this season via NFBKC, in order:
Anthony Davis, Stephen Curry, James Harden, Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, Chris Paul, DeMarcus Cousins, LeBron James, John Wall, Damian Lillard, Kawhi Leonard, Klay Thompson.
Remember, we probably need to make room for Paul George, Karl-Anthony Towns, Draymond Green, Giannis Antetokounmpo and perhaps Kyle Lowry as well. Maybe not all five, but at least three, right?
So who gets the boot?
Curry, Harden and Durant are safe. Leonard has joined them as one of the league's most efficient scoring forces, even if he's still a notch below.
Westbrook and Paul may drop a bit, but both have been top-5 players most of the season. John Wall hasn't been very far behind at all, even in a worst-case scenario in Washington this year.
Davis has once again ruined the dreams of his owners due to injuries, but it's unlikely he'll fall from a first overall pick all the way out of the round entirely. He's still a monster when he plays, even if he took a step back this year.
Cousins is going to be awfully tough to pass up on, especially since he shoots threes now.
Thompson seems like the only obvious choice to fall out of the first round, right? And it's not like he's been bad â he just doesn't add enough value in the non-shooting categories like most first-round picks.
Honestly, for the first time since he was a rookie, LeBron James might not be a first-round pick in fantasy leagues next year, as crazy as that sounds. His poor free throw shooting and lack of threes and declining defensive stats might just do him in.
Eithe way, seeing which players the fantasy community sours on is going to be very interesting this summer.
