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The Draft
Home » Fantasy Sports » Fantasy Sports: Basketball » The DraftPosted by Your Guide on May 2, 2006 8:34 PM
The fantasy basketball draft is one of the most anticipated days for players in every league! Leagues can have their draft whenever they would like, and they can choose from all different kinds of drafts. Some leagues prefer to get each member together and hold the draft in person. If every player in a league doesn’t live close together, though, this is difficult. Leagues like this can go with an online draft, offered by most web sites which offer fantasy basketball. In an online draft, players log onto any computer and go to the “virtual draft room,” usually a Java applet which keeps track of the drafted players on each room for you. An offline draft is also an option, in which each fantasy owner sends their player rankings electronically to the league, the draft order is randomized, and teams are selected based on owners’ rankings.
There are also other variations in drafts. The most common drafts are standard drafts, in which each fantasy owner has the responsibility to fill a roster of players. When their turn comes to draft, they can take any player available. These drafts are usually serpentine in nature, meaning that the player who gets the last pick in the first round will get the first pick in the second round and so forth. This is called serpentine because the draft order “crawls” back and forth like a snake.
Another type of draft is the auction draft. In an auction draft, each fantasy owner is given a fictional “allowance” with which to pay the “salaries” of their players. Owners then bid on the players available, understanding that they have to fill their entire roster within their allotted amount of money. If they run out of money, they are no longer allowed to draft any more players. The auction draft provides an interesting twist but is usually only for experienced fantasy players.
There are a number of different draft strategies, and you can read all about them at any of the web sites or in any of the magazines that cover fantasy basketball. Most experts agree that fantasy owners should simply take the “best player available” approach, meaning they should select their highest rated player who is still available on the draft board when their turn comes to pick.
One of the fascinating things about basketball drafts is how consistent they are, at least in terms of player positions and when they are picked in the draft. Many of the web sites that offer analysis for fantasy basketball provide a tool in which the fantasy owner enters the information for his unique league and then is given the order in which he should select his positions. These orders have been tested over time and have proven to be one of the most effective strategies for drafting in fantasy basketball leagues. For example, if your league values three point percentage and three pointers made over some of the other statistical categories, the draft tool would suggest that you select one or two shooting guards early in the draft. The tools are available to get so in-depth that they will actually lay out your entire strategy for you, suggesting what position you select in every round of the entire draft.
When you think about the greatest players in the NBA, many of those are also the best players to select in fantasy basketball. Some of these players are Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant, Dwyane Wade, LeBron James, and Allen Iverson. There are many players in the NBA who quietly go about their business putting up outstanding fantasy statistics, and these players are often selected early in the draft even though they don’t necessarily receive a lot of the media attention. The foremost of these players is Shawn Marion of the Phoenix Suns, who consistently puts up some of the best numbers in the league without much fanfare. But fantasy owners have taken notice and made Marion one of the earliest choices in fantasy drafts every year.
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