BALL DON’T LIE recently published a guest post from RealGM’s Alex Kennedy that discusses why fantasy basketball is struggling when compared to fantasy football. Kennedy goes on to promote PASPN, a company that runs uber-realistic 30-team leagues where fantasy owners can play GM or even take the role as agent to negotiate contracts for their clients.
But what about fantasy basketball as it stands? Is there a way to fix it?
I think so. As both an avid fantasy football and fantasy basketball owner, I think fantasy hoops struggles for several reasons:
Problem #1: Roto or category scoring systems are convoluted and difficult to understand/manage.
Most fantasy basketball leagues utilize one of two formats. A roto format awards points based on a team’s rank in each of several categories. The team with the most roto points at the end of the season wins the leagues. Another format is category scoring, where each team plays head to head with another team in several categories, so one team might win in points, rebounds and assists, but lose in FG%, turnovers and blocks.
Solution: Go to a head-to-head fantasy points system.
My recommendation is to use the NBA’s efficiency statistic to calculate fantasy points for each player. Here is how efficiency is calculated:
EFF = ((Points + Rebounds + Assists + Steals + Blocks) – ((Field Goals Att. – Field Goals Made) + (Free Throws Att. – Free Throws Made) + Turnovers))
That may look complicated, but really it just adds up a player’s points, rebounds, assists, steals and blocks, while subtracting his turnovers, missed free throws and missed field goals. I like this statistic because it covers all the major stats while rewarding an efficient shooter more than a volume shooter. For example, a player that scores 20 points on 15 shots is probably going to have a higher EFF than a player that scores 20 points on 20 shots, because of the negative effect of missed field goals. Most importantly, a fantasy owner can look at a box score and have a pretty good idea about how his player performed that night.
Here is a list of the top 10 EPG players from the 2008-09 season: 1) LeBron James, 2) Chris Paul, 3) Dwyane Wade, 4) Dwight Howard, 5) Al Jefferson (pre-injury), 6) Dirk Nowitzki, 7) Pau Gasol, 
Chris Bosh, 9) Tim Duncan and 10) Kobe Bryant.
Of that list, only Al Jefferson stands out as a surprise, but don’t forget that he was averaging 23.1 points and 10.9 rebounds before going down with a knee injury mid-season.
Problem #2: There are too many games.
With games going on throughout the week, owners have to pay more attention to their teams, and this narrows the appeal to only those people with enough time or desire to check/set their rosters on a daily basis.
Solution: Set rosters once-a-week.
Every Monday (or any other day of the week), fantasy owners set their roster for the week and it is frozen when the first game tips-off. This would only require that the most laid-back owners manage their teams once a week.
Problem #3: One player might have four games, while another has two or three games in a given week. Who do you start?
While some fantasy owners may appreciate the strategy involved with maximizing their team’s schedule, this is beyond the scope of casual fans.
Solution: Instead of total fantasy points, use the AVERAGE for the week.
If LeBron scores 40 fp in his game on Monday, 35 fp on Thursday and 30 fp on Sunday, his average would be 35 fp per game. His average would be added to the averages to all of the other players in the starting lineup to come up with a total (average) fantasy points for the week. This would allow fantasy owners to start their best players every week and not worry about the number of games they play week-to-week. It would also keep the games interesting heading into the weekend. A team that’s trailing could pull out a win with an epic performance from its star player or even win with a horrible performance by an opposing player.
I am going to test this format this season and see how it goes. Drop me a line at scoresreport@gmail.com if you’re interested in participating.
10/10/09 Update: After hunting around for a site that offered average stats without much success, I found one (Fantrax) that is free and offers what I want. I have a 12-team league that’s full and ready to go, and I’ll report back after the season with feedback from the members of our league. I had to tweak my scoring system a bit, because they don’t currently offer a stat for free throws missed, but the work around is simple — assign -1 points for each free throw attempted and 1 point for each free throw made. The result is -1 point for each free throw missed.
Solution: Go to a head-to-head fantasy points system – thumbs up – but the cats are addictive
Solution: Set rosters once-a-week. – thumbs down
As football, basketball players get hurt – and often. Unless there was an option to update injured players only, I would not be very appealing.
Perhaps have 2 championships. One before the All Star break and one after the long haul. If the casual player wins, perhaps a taste of victory will intice the player to go all the way. Because I have seen many times where a player is all into it up to the break. They simply quit since they realize – “Hmmm, there’s another half to go!” – Just a thought as this to me is the Achilles heel of fantasy basketball. With football, it’s like -it’s over already?!
Solution: Instead of total fantasy points, use the AVERAGE for the week. – thumbs up – I love it
Thanks for sharing and good luck with the concepts!
Brian — I think going with the average fantasy points limits your concern about injuries. If a player plays in the first game of the week, but misses the last two, his average would be generated from that first game and that first game only. It’s actually a better situation than fantasy football because the player has a few opportunities to play and up that average.
Thanks for the feedback.
Valid point John and thanks for clarifying.
I have to agree that something has to be done to make it more appealing for a larger audience and it is nice to see someone trying to shake it up.
Correct me if I am wrong but dont most, if not all, fantasy sites have the option to set up your players for the week…or even the whole season? If so, a casual player can set up and leave it. So, is a freeze necessary? And would it take away the ‘feel’ of managing a basketball team for the more serious types?
It’s darn if you do and darn if you don’t type scenario. I would love to see a wider audience get more involved because in my experience with fantasy basketball it is the more serious that tend to play – especially a whole season.
Your thoughts?
As always thanks for your time and valuable site
There are many leagues with weekly freezes, but they are mostly by categories or roto. Most aren’t in this FF-type format. Most of the leagues I’ve run across require daily lineups, and that’s a lot of work for the casual FF owner who is used to spending a little time on waivers and a little time on his lineup each week. Serious players will continue to play the daily game, but this is intended for the wider audience, as you noted.
Another option is to have two periods a week. One from Mon-Thurs and the other from Fri-Sun, so each team would be playing two games a week. This format could be utilized for owners looking for a little more management action.
Cannot agree enough about the weekly set rosters. I think, however, that taking a players average from the week oversimplifies the format.
A better answer IMHO would be for the fantasy software to provide, right on your lineup page, the number of games played by each player that week. This simple interface addition would make it infinitely easier for managers to carefully select who to play. I don’t know if any fantasy providers have this feature.
As for your first suggestion, I can see how the point system might help football players transition over to basketball, but I believe the category system adds more depth to the game.
If you ask me, I think Basketball is sport that translates best to the fantasy game.
First, I agree with weekly head-to-head as the favored format. But if the hosting software included a random generator, it could pick a certain number of weekly games (say 20) from each franchises full roster for each week. Yes, that is certainly an element of luck, but it eliminates having less player games and the agony of that analysis. It could certainly change the approach to a draft or auction, and it would require maintaining a healthy roster unless there was an automated “IR” feature to reach back into the pool of games to replace “did not dress” mid-week.
I think if we’re trying to attract fantasy footballers, then there is no such thing as oversimplifying fantasy hoops. Fantasy football is so popular in large part because it is so simple (or at least most leagues are pretty simple).
I totally agree with your entire article. I play a lot of fantasy football, and have tried to play fantasy basketball a couple of times. It is hard to keep up with all the games. And the categories are tough to come in and pick up. I don’t hate the concept of categories, but it is a little difficult since every player scores in the categories. Like if you broke it down by categories for football, a QB can add some rushing yards to the team total, but not a lot, and there isn’t as much flex in football lineups as there are in basketball. I would like to see you do the reverse and make a category scoring for fantasy football. I think that would be interesting. But if fantasy basketball rules changed to what you wrote about, then I know there would be a big jump in participation.
I too am a huge NBA fan and have been trying to figure out the best setup for a fantasy bball league. I am in the middle of setting up a H2H weekly mathup with a points system:
here is a scoring system from a highly competitive fantasy bball draft:
Three Pointers Made = .08 points
Assists = .17 points
Blocks = .25 points
Field Goals Made = .25 points
Field Goals Attempted = -.08 points
Free Throws Made = .25 points
Free Throws Attempted = -.17 points
Points = .08 points
Steals = .17 points
Turnovers = -.17 points
Total Rebounds = .10 points
I’m not sure I love the system yet, but want to give it a try, if not this exact format then something similar. Let me know your thoughts, I want to setup a league that rewards shooters who shoot better than 40% FG and 70% FT along with all the reg cat, and penalize them for all the bad things they do, like turnovers and fouls. Just like in fantasy football. Any other ideas for scoring systems setups in bball? I saw one other.