NBA Fantasy Basketball Draft Guide: Are You Prepared?

You watched the draft and have been keeping tabs on all of the summer’s big moves. Summer League showed us that OJ Mayo and Michael Beasley are for real. We all saw the Olympics; Dwyane Wade is healthy, but not human.

As the NBA preseason kicks off, many of you will be preparing for your fantasy basketball drafts. Most of you will be doing live and auto-pick drafts online, while a few will be participating in the coveted offline draft. No matter what format you play, you will need a strategy so you can be successful against the ever-improving “average fantasy player.”

Ranking the Player Pool

First, you will need to establish your personal player rankings. To help you out, I have created a top 10 list for Point Guards (PG), Shooting Guards (SG), Small Forwards (SF), Power Forwards (PF), and Centers (C), as well of the next-best players, and guys to not sleep on for each position.  I have selected sleepers from all the teams too.

In my rankings, I used a combination of looking at the players’ stats from last year, lines from their entire career, the players’ career averages, as well as evaluating how much untapped potential a player has.

Another important variable to factor in is a player's injury history, such as if he misses games every year, if he has a nagging injury, and how easy is it to come back from the season-ending injury he had last season. A star player getting injured down the stretch can make or break your fantasy season. 

In fantasy basketball, most players can play multiple positions, so you don’t need to worry too much about winding up with a team of small forwards; some will play shooting guard and some will play power forward. Concern yourself more with the talents of each player. I’ve ranked my players by position to give you a broader scope, but if you make a big board, it should work just fine. Remember, there is always trading if you wind up overstocked at one position.

Don’t let my rankings be the only ones you look at. Every fantasy provider and sports media outlet will have rankings of the players. Determine what you want your team to look like. Determine how much risk you are comfortable with—would you want Greg Oden and Andrew Bynum as your starting centers?

Also, make sure you take a hard look at the rules you are playing by. Ignoring assist-to-turnover ratio or field goal percentage can dig your team’s grave. Lastly, you will inherently be rooting for the players on your fantasy team all winter and spring, so go ahead and rank your favorite player(s) at a premium if you like. 

Now you are ready to draft.

Auto-pick

The auto-pick style is a bit like Christmas. You create a wish-list, send it to the fantasy Santa, then a day or two later you get to come back and see if your team is naughty or nice. 

When you are preparing for the auto-pick draft, never assume that you are ranking too many players. If you rank five of every 10 players, then you run the risk of ending up with a guy who you could have picked up later while better players are still on the board.

Make sure you rank players at every level. In a 12-team league, with 13 roster spots, that is 156 players drafted. Yahoo! has Brook Lopez ranked 144 and Shaq ranked 165—who do you want on your roster? 

We all know the feeling of clicking the draft results tab, and realizing you got the guy you really don’t want when someone you did was still on the board. Even worse is when you draft someone you kind of want four rounds before you would have liked.

The draft is 75 percent of the season; don’t screw it up by not thoroughly pre-ranking your players.

Live Draft

The live draft is where the active fantasy owner can really separate him/herself from the bozo who was busy "not celebrating that sh*t" with Josh Howard and missed the draft.

The first thing you should do after entering the draft and realizing what pick you have is to determine your top pick list. If you pick early in the draft, there is the standard short list of NBA superstars to pick. If you pick in the second half of the draft, you will really have to decide who you want to be the leader of your team.

Don’t sweat too much, though, because when the second round snakes around, you will have another All-Star on the board to add to your roster. 

After the first few rounds is when things get interesting. You will know who didn’t make the draft, and if they are picking off the default rankings. Use this to your advantage; don’t reach too far down against the league's rankings to take a guy you want if the drafters near you are AWOL. Maximize value with all of your picks.

Conversely, if you have reason to believe a guy is way undervalued by the system and a fellow live drafter might also be aware of this, then draft him; you are the owner, this is your team.

In the final rounds of the draft, make sure you have your sleepers queued. There are a handful of guys who will step up big this season—make sure they’re on your team.

Offline Draft

Your strategy for the offline draft is very similar to the online, except for the dope who missed the online draft showed up this time.

In the offline draft, anything goes; there is potential for a lot of irrational picking in this format of draft, so don’t get caught up in the craziness. You have spent time developing your player rankings, so stick to them. 

There can be a lot of chatter at the draft, so make sure you keep a poker face on. Don’t tip others about who you are high on, and don’t be over-emphatic in trying to trick your buddies, either.

Good luck drafting, and check back in for more fantasy tips.