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Holy Crap: NBA Ultimate Fantasy Commissioner is NOW OPEN

Author Icon for Nels

Categorized as: Author: Nels, Fantasy Basketball, NBA.com
Posted on: August 31st, 2007

ufchome

Wow. NBA.com is really going for it this season. Not only did they redesign the whole thing (good move, cause it sucked!) but they’ve opened the doors in August! Last day of August, sure… but August!

You can literally go there and sign up right now. We’ll ignore the minor typo on the home page since I’ve made at least one on this blog. :)

Yahoo is still waiting to open their registration. ESPN’s link to Fantasy Basketball just refreshes the page. CNNSI will notify you when Fantasy Basketball 2007 launches.

Also, free keeper leagues. Free live scoring. Email drafts. Co-owner option. Six waiver types, including auction.

You can make leagues that only have players from one Conference in them! Not that I’d ever really actually want to do that… but the option is there.

Yeah, I realize this sounds like an ad for UFC… I’m just amazed right now. I’m pretty much out of words to describe… well… this… To sum up, I’d say: unprecedented.

Other Stuff Like This:

  • Yeah! Running fantasy section for a whole year round is consuming very large of maintenance in the site. Try to delete that section the site will run fast and smooth.
  • Glad you're pumped, Nels. This is actually a soft launch -- it was intended to be an exclusive for the loyal message board users we have, but obviously the word has gotten out. In addition to being a nice perk for them, it also is allowing us to get the bugs out early. There isn't a deeper game available anywhere, which means countless pages and settings possibilities. Test, test, and test some more. After that, we keep testing.

    One thing that's clear based on some of the comments here is that we didn't do a good enough job of spreading the word about the features we offered last season. Most of what you all are excited about here (keeper leagues, waiver types, live scoring, single universe leagues) was available last year. It's just much, much cleaner this time around, and we've added a few nice features (smack talk, top stories, upload photos and logos, league polls, quick links, etc.). The changes have only begun -- it's only the beginning of September.

    By the way, we kept our game up during the offseason, but had to take it down during the redesign. Otherwise, we'll have it up year around.

    Stay tuned!

    Jon
  • I am pretty jacked about UFC. I have stuck by Yahoo for many years, but the feature set being released by NBA.com is too tempting.

    Looks like they finally did a focus group to figure out where the holes in fantasy commissioner products were:

    - Keeper leagues
    - Auction waivers
    - co-owners
    - posting stories

    plus live scoring and other nice to haves that I am getting tired of paying for on Yahoo.
  • re Mock drafts, here's what Jon Loomer said:

    "I was hoping to have mock draft rooms this year, but there's too much focus on the redesign in general. Won't be available this time around."

    So UFC will have mocks capability maybe in a future update.

    I guess a way to work around this, if you're the commish, is to set the draft for a certain date, run it, then reset it.
  • crap... so I typed out a huge response and failed your math challenge... my grade 2 students would laugh so hard if they knew this!

    I was chatting with Jeff about this and while he's amped for NBA.com I'm still worried because of all their issues they had last season. The first month of the season was a wash and it made it almost impossible to make waiver wire claims and I couldn't figure out how to make daily roster tweaks without changing my roster for a week at a time (however, this is the guy who failed your math question).

    I used ESPN and Yahoo for fantasy football leagues and I loved how easy their program is AND they allowed you to do unlimited mock drafts. The mock drafts let me become used to the draft platform while gettting a hint into where some players were being drafted. Does NBA.com allow you to have mock drafts?
  • I love NBA.com Ultimate Commissioner. They do keep it almost year round with their variety of games (pick one, draft, etc). Jon Loomer (the game's creator) does a good job on adding articles throughout the year.
    This is the only site that I will have host my company's league.
  • One thing I don't understand, why don't these major sites keep their fantasy sections up and running all year round? Don't they realize that there are hardcore people who want to poke around the NBA fantasy leagues in July? Isn't everyone with me here? No? Just me? Alright.

    Also, I really like the waver type idea and the keeper league idea. I've done a keeper league draft on Yahoo before and they didn't (at least at the time) have any options for removing kept players from the draft list. So, before the draft you have to try to memorize a list of 40 players that you're not supposed to draft. And of course, some idiots did anyway. It was a pretty big mess. This sounds like a much better idea.
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