by Jimmy Patrick

Created on: January 30, 2009   Last Updated: October 26, 2010

Fantasy basketball is a great way to follow your favorite NBA players and perhaps enjoy a little competition with your friends. The first thing you have to do is find a league to play in.

You can join public leagues in which you play against total strangers, but it is highly recommended that you play with people you know; it makes the competition aspect much more fun. It is much more satisfying to beat your cousin or your sister than it is to beat John Doe from Miami.

Once you have gathered 8 to 12 participants, you can start up a league. You will have two primary choices as to which type of league to play in. You can play rotisserie or head-to-head.

Rotisserie leagues keep a point system based on cumulative statistics throughout the entire season. For example, if one stat category in your league was rebounds, you would earn points based on how many rebounds your team got for the entire season. If, by season's end, your fantasy team had more rebounds than the other teams in the league, you would earn the most fantasy points for the rebound category.

Head-to-head leagues are much more popular these days. They are scored on a week-to-week basis with each team in the league playing against another team in the league for that week. A win/loss record is kept based on statistical categories. For example, if there are nine statistical categories scored in your league and you win five of them in a given week, then you would earn five wins and four losses for the week. The fantasy team with the most wins at the end of the season is the champion.

Head-to-head leagues provide the feeling of competing in a game each week, but in reality rotisserie leagues play out with the same basic strategy: rack up statistics by picking good basketball players, because the fantasy team that accumulates the most statistics will win no matter what kind of league you are in.

Once you have established a league and chosen the format, it is time to hold a draft. Live drafts are fun and provide the opportunity to throw a little party. Live drafts are time consuming, however, often lasting three or four hours. Online drafts are much quicker and more convenient for record keeping and they still give all participants a chance to draft their own team.

If you are in a real hurry, you can do an auto draft for which all participants will submit a list of their NBA player rankings, then let a computer draft for your league in a matter of minutes. Of course, this loses all personal touch associated with picking your team, but it is the easiest way to accommodate all schedules and get a league under way.

Depending on how serious your league is there will some strategy used in drafting players. There are a lot different theories on how to have the perfect draft. The best advice is to go with your instincts and pick players you like and want to root for throughout the season. Don't waste too much time studying statistics. Statistics have their purpose, but rarely are they consistently true indicators of what players will do in the future.

In the end, fantasy basketball should be fun. So, whether you play for a few bucks, a plastic trophy or good, old-fashioned pride, make sure not to take it too serious. Fantasy basketball is a great way to add a little excitement to watching the games, but more importantly it is about good-spirited competition with some friends.

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