My addiction to fantasy sports started in the summer before 6th grade. I was running around my friend Nigel’s backyard kicking soccer balls, jumping in the pool and just having a blast. Then, all of a sudden, a series of grown men armed with laptops and stacks of papers marched into Nigel’s backyard and set up their ‘war rooms’ around the barbecue. Being my usual inquisitive self, I ran over to Nigel’s dad to ask what on earth was going on. Nigel’s dad explained that he and all of his doctor buddies from the hospital were doing a fantasy football draft.
At the time, I didn’t know crap about the NFL but I was interested. When it was time to devour some of Nigel’s Dad’s delicious wings, I carefully watched all the little dynamics— small jabs being thrown across the table, the radiant yet silent glee the previous year’s winner and an overall charming and competitive little community.
At the end of the night, Nigel’s dad joked that “you should run the team next year”. I said I would be happy to but I mainly shrugged it off and went back to running around like a madman.
Then, about 11 months later, Nigel called me up on the phone.
“You started preparing for the draft right?”
“Huh? What draft?”
“For fantasy football, you told my dad that you would run the team this year. The draft is next month…”
“Oh… really?”
“Yeah, my dad said that if we win he will split the $750 pot with us”
“$750!!!?”
As a kid on summer break, I had literally nothing to do other than play video games and binge consume fantasy football content. It also helped that $750 seemed like an infinite amount of money to me.
On the night of the draft, I got to Nigel’s backyard way before any of those old clowns. During the draft, these grown men with families were trying to give me tips but I didn’t want to hear any of it. I was taking deep sleepers they had never heard of and they were looking at Nigel’s dad like ‘is this kid going to destroy your team?’.
We won the regular season and playoffs handily. I was a rich man. I showed up to the draft the year after and those clowns were calling me THE Oracle. Just a year ago they were trying to part their words of wisdom onto me and now they feared me. I had the radiant glee but I wasn’t silent about it.
I’m saying all of this in part to brag about my fantasy football run from over a decade ago but mainly to demonstrate that I love fantasy football. I have played every year since then and i’m even a commissioner of a league now. Yet, I can say with confidence that fantasy basketball is far superior to fantasy football.
Setting the Record Straight
Before I get into my reasons why fantasy basketball is far superior, I wanna make it clear how fantasy basketball works. There is one true way to play fantasy basketball: 9 Categories. Each week you have a head to head matchup, just like in fantasy football, but instead of competing for total points you compete in 9 categories and whichever team wins 5 or more “cats” wins the week. The 9 cats are: field goal percentage, free throw percentage, 3 pointers made, rebounds, assists, steals, blocks, turnovers (less is better) and points scored. You can see an example of a scoreboard here:
Fantasy Basketball Promotes Trading
The fundamental reason that all fantasy sports are fun is because it allows people to role play as a general manager of their own little team. Each person gets to live and die with their decisions and ultimately prove their wisdom to everyone else.
Trading is by far the most fun part of fantasy sports. Sure there is some pleasure from hitting on a guy in the draft that no one else believed in but the feeling of an amazing trade that changes the outlook of you team is unparalleled. Hell, even trade negotiations that don’t go anywhere can be a blast.
The problem is that the structure of fantasy football limits trading. Essentially, the only time that a trade can happen in fantasy football is a WR for RB swap. The likelihood that your league has one team lacking a WR but with extra RBs while there is another team with the opposite situation is so low. That’s not even mentioning that the WR and RB being swapped for each other have to be of about the same value. Yeah, sure, there might be sometimes where the trade includes a QB or TE swap but that is also hella rare. The structure of fantasy football limits the possibility for mutually beneficial trades.
9-cat structures fantasy in a way that makes trading way more advantageous for both teams. In 9-cat certain players can actively hurt your team. For example, Giannis is a monster in fantasy basketball but he is terrible from the free throw line. If you have Giannis on your team, you should “punt” FTs because having Giannis will tank your FT% every week. Now, all of a sudden, guys like Rudy Gobert or LeBron who are awful from the FT line are a lot more valuable to your team. Other guys, who are awesome from the line, like Bradely Beal, lose a ton of their value. Now you have the setup for a trade: The Giannis team gets a bad FT guy and the other team receives a good FT guy.
You can decide to punt any category at any point in the season. Maybe the rest of your team are monsters from the free throw line and you want to see how much you can get in return for Giannis. Maybe you send a trade to get Harden and DeRozan back for Giannis. The very best players in the league are available for trade in a way that the best fantasy football players simply are not.
The Waiver is Far More Strategic
In fantasy football, the waiver wire is essentially about being first or winning the lottery. When Christian McCaffrey got traded, whoever checked twitter first ran to grab D’onta Foreman. Congrats on being a nerd bro, I guess. Last year, whoever randomly picked up Cordarelle Patterson in the beginning of the year watched and laughed at the rest of the league. Sure, there is some strategy to it but it’s limited, its mainly luck.
In fantasy basketball, you have the same basic concept of trying to identify players on the verge of a breakout. But there is not really the same level of “starting RB x got injured/traded, run to the waivers!” which again, kinda lame. But, due to the nature of 9 cat, there are a lot more guys on the scrap heap who can help you out against certain opponents. Take Matisse Thybulle, the dude basically does nothing but get steals and blocks and he does that at an ELITE level. If you are playing someone where it seems like the matchup will come down to steals and blocks, he could be an awesome add. On the other hand, if your opponent is functionally punting steals and blocks Matisse is useless. There is no such thing as a situational/opponent based fantasy football add.
“Streaming”, when you add a player just to get extra games, also makes fantasy basketball waivers way more interesting. You might find yourself on Saturday morning in a super close matchup and you know that if you add a player who plays on Saturday and Sunday that you have a way better chance of winning that week but that also means that you have to drop someone from your team. A lot of the time, pretty decent players will end up on waivers due to streaming. Balancing how much you value a certain guy over the long term vs streaming value is a fun little game. Not only is it fun but it also makes it a lot easier for crappy fantasy teams to build themselves over the course of the season.
The Haters are Noobs
The biggest complaint that I hear about fantasy basketball is that you have to set your roster all the time. First, you just need to sit down for like 5 mins to set your roster at the beginning of the week. Second, you can get a chrome extension that will do it for you for the rest of the season. Third, get good kid. If you are like me and you actually like fantasy football then you wish there was more action going on. Why sit around all week waiting for Sunday to roll around when you can play a version of fantasy that has some action everyday?
I adore fantasy football but I have come to the light and I accept that for nerds like me fantasy basketball is far more fun and strategic.
The Reedbound 