Hoop Dreams: ESPN FBA

Fantasy Basketball has been a big part of the AISG basketball players’ lives. FBA is an online stat competition based on live stats of NBA players, updated on a daily basis. Players have to create a league and add up to 12 players that are willing to participate in the competition. Players then can decide to have a online draft or have their players auctioned. Drafts are fixed on a single date where all the players are online and try to draft their favourite NBA superstars. The same holds for auctioning. A total of 13 players can be picked per team. Unpicked players go into the Free Agents list and can be picked up at any time.

This is a true battle between those who are very much interested in basketball, keeping up with their teams every day and checking out strategies to beat their competitors. Usually at AISG most of the fantasy players are students; however, some teachers form their own league and compete against each other. Players are always competing either Head-to-Head (H2H) or doing a rotisserie. In Head-to-Head teams compete against one other in the league for a week and try to beat each other in the following categories:

1. FG% (Field Goal Percentage)
2. FT% (Free Throw Percentage)
3. Rebounds
4. Assists
5. Steals
6. Blocks
7. Turnovers
8. Points
9. Fouls

At the end of each week whichever player does better than other in the categories will get a win in that category, and the ones s/he loses will go into the lost category of the point counter. The roster then switches and for 18 weeks, each team plays another, sometimes playing one other twice. A rotisserie league has the same parameters except there is no head to head combat, just a final count at the end of the 18 weeks.

Players can offer trades to others for a change of players depending on what category they are trying to fill up to specialise. Trades are lethal and can change the course of your fantasy team. Getting good trades shows your expertise in the basketball world, as you convince others to give you the players you need. The Fantasy League also accounts for injured players and those who are out for the season. If a player on your team is injured he will not play for your team until he is fully recovered making it a very life-like league competition. Players can always be dropped as per the owners’ will. Except for the first two picks of your team, any other player can be dropped.

Fantasy Basketball can be played for fun or there could be money prizes for the top 3 players, etc. Fantasy basketball is a great way to get yourself back on track with the current NBA season and to have heated competition between your friends.