There are a few different types of fantasy basketball scoring systems and a plethora of league settings to choose from. Just by looking at my name, you can tell that I'm all about Rotisserie scoring. I don't mind points based scoring, but there's just less strategy involved. Head-to-head is kinda cool because it allows the teams at the bottom of the standings to stay involved and get a fresh start every week, but since my team is never at the bottom, I don't really care about that. Also, Head-to-Head scoring just seems like it's trying too hard to be like fantasy football.

So I'm all about Rotisserie scoring. Rotisserie lamb isn't bad either. But none of this 9-category turnover crap. If you look at the top 5 in turnovers last season, you'll notice that 3 of the most dominant players in the world made the list: Dwight Howard, Steve Nash, and Kobe Bryant. Why should these studs be penalized for handling the rock all the time? Answer: they shouldn't. As for people using free throws made as a category over FT%, I understand their reasoning, but since you're using FG% already, I think you have to use FT% as well. It's not like those percentages don't have merit: last year the Suns led the league in both FG% (49.4%) and FT% (80.8%) for the 2nd year in a row. They've been pretty successful in recent years and your fantasy team will be as well if they can shoot 50% FG/ 80% FT. Trying to achieve the perfect FG%/ FT% balance is one of my favorite things about Roto hoops. So yeah, my name's Roto Evil and my preferred scoring system is standard 8-cat Roto.

The number of teams in a league varies, but the minimum should be 8. One year my league only had 6 teams so the player pool we used was the Pacific Division ONLY. That turned out to be quite interesting, but far from ideal. I like the standard 12-team league, but have no problem playing in 14 or 16 team leagues either.

As for positions, I think the style of play and the versatility of players in the NBA today suggests that specific positions don't really matter anymore. Being labeled a "tweener" is usually considered a bad thing, but some of the top players in the league are "combo" guards (Wade, Arenas, Iverson). You also have guys with small forward size (Marion, J. Howard, Barnes) who are able to utilize their quickness to effectively play the "4" spot. Just as you shouldn't have to pigeonhole a player into one position, you shouldn't have to force teams to play certain positions.

If an NBA team wanted to start 5 big men, why try to stop them? It would be a fun experiment! I learned that from the OG Nintendo version of Ice Hockey. Remember that game? You selected a team of 4 players, but you could pick from skinny (fast) guys, medium guys, and fat (bruising) guys (FYI- My favorite lineup was 2 skinnies, 1 medium and 1 fatty).

My point being, whether it's a video game team, a real life team, or a fantasy team, the coaches should be allowed some flexibility in who they start. That's what creates different matchups and that's what makes competition so much FUN! So, rather than having specific positions (PG, SG, SF, PF, C), you should just have guards, forwards, and centers. Based on a 12-team league, my ideal starting positions are: 4 guards, 4 forwards, 2 centers, and 2 utility players.

While it really sucks when you're in a weekly league and one of your top players gets hurt on a Monday, daily lineup changes are usually too time consuming for most people. Which leads us to waivers and free agent pickups. One of the silliest fantasy sports scenarios is when a key starter suffers a major injury and then half your (fantasy) league rushes to the nearest computer to try and pickup his backup. How realistic is that? In REAL sports leagues, if there is a coveted free agent (not on waivers), the interested teams have to vie for his services. This is why the Auction method of acquiring free agents is far superior. It's not which owner gets online the fastest; it's which owner decides to bid the most of his free agent acquisition budget to own that player.

Similarly, I really like the idea of having keepers, but it makes no sense to do so unless the players you are keeping have salaries attached. Which leads us to draft types. While I'm all for live serpentine-style drafts, there is much more strategy (and excitement) involved in a live Auction draft. An auction draft gives owners a budget (let's say $100) to spend on fielding their fantasy team. Owner #1 starts by calling out any player that they want, and then everyone spends the next few minutes bidding for his services. The highest bidder gets that player, simple as that. Of course there is a lot of strategy involved. If you REALLY want KG this year, be prepared to spend half your team's budget. Do you want to get 2 superstars and then fill out your roster with $1 and $2 players or do you want to get a bunch of 2nd and 3rd tier players for $10-$20 each?

Perhaps the most fun you can have is driving up a player's price to make someone else spend more than they should. If I know that my buddy Dave is a Clippers fan and he really wants Maggette, I'll raise Maggette up to $25 and then laugh hysterically when he bids $26. Of course, you can also get stuck with players you don't want by attempting this. But hey, that's what makes auction drafts so much fun! Auction drafts are what keeper leagues are meant for.   Rather than keeping your best players, you want to keep your best "value" players. So if I bid $24 on Michael Redd and $4 on Kevin Martin last year, which player makes more sense for me to keep this season? You got it: keep shopping at K-Mart and save your money for someone else. An Auction draft is ideal because it allows owners to get ANY player that they want and everyone has to stay on their toes at all times (unless they run out of money) while trying to manage their budget wisely.  

While fantasy hoops is a lot of fun to play, I don't spend countless hours analyzing stats to win free t-shirts and meaningless trophies. I want that chedda! This is perhaps the most disappointing thing about fantasy NBA. The NFL and MLB have semi-official high-stakes leagues where owners can pay a sizable entry fee to have a chance at competing against the best (or at least the most serious) fantasy owners and winning $100,000 or more. There is nothing like this for fantasy hoops.

While I do have a lot of confidence in my abilities, I'm not going to call myself a fantasy "expert." I don't like that term. However, I AM willing to put my money up against anyone, especially those so-called "experts." I want to go up against the best of the best, so if you're feeling some of the league settings described above and you want to be in a serious high-stakes league this season, shoot me an email and we'll see if we can get something going...