Fantasy Basketball Playoffs !

Do any of you play fantasy basketball on YAHOO! or ESPN? Well what fantasy basketball is pretty much you draft your own NBA team compiled of many NBA players and total the statistics. Statistics includes many categories, such as points, field goal percentage, field goals made, field goals attempts, free throw percentage, rebounds, blocks, steals, assists, turnovers, etc. 

So every week for about 22 weeks or so, you manage your own team by adding and dropping players to accumulate the most stats to match up against your weekly opponents. Most leagues draft their teams before the season starts, and fantasy playoff times is always before the actual NBA playoffs. 

This year in YAHOO! Fantasy Basketball, I am in two different leagues. So I have two teams to manage. Around this time of year is the typically Fantasy Basketball Playoff week! Both my teams managed to make the playoffs. Each league typically has about 12 teams and normally top 6 goes into the playoff bracket.

Here’s a picture of how the match up looks like with the stat categories. My team is ‘Kobe Land is Great !’

click to enlarge the picture.

As you can see, it is pretty much an average of your entire team and the compilation of each player’s night to night statistics for the week. 

Here’s a picture of what the roster look like. 

click to enlarge the picture.

It has each player and their individual stats for the week and it is easy to compare to your opponents side by side.

This year I’m not that satisfy with my team because it isn’t as good as I want it to be. I used the wrong draft strategy by drafting 3 rookies and ending up dropping 2 of them. This is my 4^th year playing fantasy basketball, and for the past 3 years, my draft pick was pretty high. This year I got booted all the way to the end. Therefore I wasn’t able to draft my favorite player Kobe Bryant. There’s no correlation here, but maybe mentally I believe that if I have Kobe on my team, I have a higher chance of winning and overall I would just like my team more since my favorite player is on it.  

Another factor that effects fantasy teams a lot is injuries. The likelihood of athletes getting injured is very high. So in fantasy, when a player gets injured, we either drop them or pick up a free agent or we wait for them to get back in the lineup which can take from week to months. For example, about two weeks ago, Rudy Gay injured his shoulder, a week later the doctors concluded he will have to undergo a season ending injury. Therefore there is no point in keeping him on the roster cause he won’t be playing for the rest of the year.

For week 1 in playoffs, my team hit a major bad luck streak. Four of my starters got injured L Players like Rudy Gay, Luis Scola, Aaron Affalo, and Deron Williams. I was pretty sad because I don’t know how I will make it past round 1, but luckily the free agents I picked up performed on par, therefore I’m not onto round 2. However, these backups don’t look like they will consistently perform well, so I probably will not make it to the champions.

Also in YAHOO! Fantasy sports on our own player profile; we get a Trophy displayed next to our name if we finish top 3. Sadly, I only have 2 trophies; both are second places from 2007 and 2009. This year I might be able to fight for the bronze, but we will see what happens. But I will definitely come up with new strategy next year and try to win it all. One of these days, I will finish on the top spot …