Daily Draft Fantasy Basketball Games and Contests (9/23/10)
Sep 23, 2010 Blog
If you guys followed Fantasy Basketball Daily last season, you know that I play a lot of daily fantasy cash games at sites like FantasySportsLive.com and Fanduel.com. As I stated in a post from back in July, I’m going to be creating some articles geared toward daily fantasy basketball contests, in addition to posts about season-long leagues. Once the NBA tips off and season-long fantasy league drafts are concluded, I’ll probably be moving toward a daily focus with information on things like waiver wire moves, injuries, lineups and fine tuning your daily rosters. I’ll still throw in some keeper league stuff too. I’m also going to include a daily report on my play, my results and other interesting things about the gaming sites and other players in the daily contests.
The first thing I wanted to throw out there is where I’m playing this year and why. I’m probably going to be splitting my play between Fantasy Sports Live and Fanduel for three reasons: 1) they both use the same stats for their fantasy games, 2) they both have very flexible rosters broken down into PG, SG, SF, PF and C positions and 3) they both have multiple salary cap levels on their basketball games. There are a couple of other sites that I may check out, but their games are structured a little differently. I’ll post more about those sites another day. If you guys have any questions about the different sites, feel free to post you questions over on the Fantasy Basketball Daily Facebook Page in the comments section and I’ll do my best to answer.
Stat Categories – Since both sites use the same stat categories, it makes keeping up with the players much easier and quicker. I don’t have to spend my time coming up with different sets of players for different scoring structures. Both sites use Points (1), Rebounds (1), Assists (1), Steals (2), Blocks (2) and Turnovers (-1). If you want to know more about the stats and scoring, check out the FBD Player Ranking System.
Flexible Rosters – I like having plenty of room to build my team and being able to pick players at each roster position really provides numerous ways to build a unique fantasy team every day. I’ve seen some sites that just use the Guard/Forward positions rather than breaking it down into PG/SG and SF/PF, but I think those games omit much of the strategy and fun. Fantasy games are supposed to mimic the real game as much as possible and Fanduel and Fantasy Sports Live both do that very well.
Multiple Salary Caps – In a salary cap game, the amount of salary you get to buy your players determines the quality of players you can buy. Both sites offer a loose cap, which simply means that they give you enough money to buy really good players, mostly all-star caliber fantasy players. They also have another game that is a tighter salary cap, which means that you have less money and you have to sometimes dig down and choose some of the second and third tier players to fit everyone under the salary cap. Some days I may feel like picking a team of all-stars, while other days I might want to play the tighter cap game and throw in some sleepers. Both sites let you choose your own salary cap level.
Both sites also have NFL Football, MLB Baseball and NHL Hockey, so go ahead and get signed up for basketball season and maybe even play a little weekly fantasy football to keep entertained while we wait for the NBA season to tip-off. Again, if you have any questions about the gaming sites, post over on the FBD Facebook page and I’ll do my best to answer.