Give Me The Rock

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that every single person reading this post has played fantasy basketball – or at least fantasy sports – using what scientists call “the internet.” Thinking back, how did you choose the website for your league? When I started playing fantasy basketball on Yahoo!, it was because my friend and commissioner of the league had set up the league there. I knew nothing about it at the time.

In the interest of science, and to help anyone who is looking for place to play fantasy basketball, I’ve reviewed four of the major fantasy sites: CBS Sports, ESPN, NBA Ultimate Commissioner, and Yahoo. I was planning on including AOL Sports as well, but they apparently keep their basketball site on maximum security lockdown during the off season. In the interest of fairness, I didn’t want to rank a site that I haven’t seen the latest version of.

For this systematic review process, I rated the sites on four different aspects that make a good fantasy site: appearance, ease of use, player stats and news, and customizability and features. Each was rated on a scale of 1=Shawn Marion’s jump shot to 5=the Miami Heat Dance team. The ratings were totaled so that a perfect score is equal to 20.

The Categories:

Appearance: I’m shallow. My eyes appreciate the look of a well-proportioned site with good colors and nice, tight graphics. I like my fantasy site to have a nice league home page – streamlined but not too showy. Equally important is the look of the sub-pages - are they just as developed?

Ease of Use: Fantasy sites need to make six things easy to do: draft a team, check out your team, set your lineup, check out the standings, research players, and add/drop/trade players. Additional features are great, but they tend make a site more difficult to use. Could someone who has never played fantasy sports before get around the site ok?

Player Stats/News: Does the site provide player information that is current, useful, and accurate? There are three different types of player info; 1) player stats, 2) player news about injuries, promotions, etc, and 3) exclusive player analysis from “experts.” In a perfect world, I want to get all this information from one site rather than having to check fifteen different ones. Bonus points if a site’s experts actually know what they’re talking about.

Customizability and Features: This isn’t pre-Berlin wall Germany. Let’s celebrate our differences and embrace our uniqueness. You might want to run a 30-team 20-year keeper league that starts 15 point guards and awards points for the number of blog posts Gilbert Arenas writes in a week. That’s cool, we don’t judge. How far out there will the site let you go? And does the site have any other features that are worthy? (trending stats = awesome, smack talk = lame).

Note, I did not receive any money from any website for this review; however, I would not be opposed to such as offer. ESPN, I’m looking in your direction.

The ratings, from worst to first:

ESPN
Appearance: 5
Ease of Use: 3
Player Stats/News: 1
Customizability/Features: 2
Total: 11

Pros:
Well, I’ll give it up to ESPN, they know how to make a pretty good looking site. At least we can tell where all their Insider money is going. It also appears that they have copied the Yahoo! tabbed look, which is effective in a Microsoft jacking Apple’s operating system kind of way.

Cons:
Are you IN? You better be to get anything out of the ESPN fantasy experience. Anything beyond basic player stats is locked away from non-Insiders, which I can tell you from experience, makes managing a fantasy team a pretty frustrating experience. That’s pretty much a deal breaker for me right there. Also, many of the additional features are locked away from non-Insiders and in general, ESPN leagues are not as customizable as other sites on this list.

Final Word:
If you are “IN” ESPN is probably a decent fantasy experience. It’s extremely frustrating for anyone else.

CBS Sports “line”
Appearance: 3
Ease of Use: 3
Player Stats/News: 5
Customizability/Features: 5
Total: 16

Pros:
Hands down, CBS has the best player pages of all the major sites for fantasy purposes. Stats, news, analysis are all right on one page. You can see who the player has been traded for in other leagues and pick up a free agent right from their player page instead of going back to a add/drop screen. They also have trending information on the player pages, which is a feature I absolutely love. Their sortable stats are also well done as they provide more player information and different types of splits than Yahoo. News and analysis are updated with good frequency too.

Cons:
I’m not a fan of the way the fantasy home page is set up. All the stuff I care about – my scores, standings, recent transactions, and the message board - are either squished in the middle of the page or pushed to the bottom. Instead, taking up the prime real estate are a bunch of CBS Sports articles and a giant video player that I’m never going to use because 99% of the time I check my fantasy team I’m at work. Come on CBS, make my fantasy league feel special, not like its intruding on the front page of the CBS Sports website. Also, CBS makes league navigation tricky by putting the league tabs right below the general website tabs. One slightly misplaced click and you’re suddenly reading about NASCAR. It is the most difficult site to get from point A to point B.

Final Word:
There is a lot to like about CBS. The site is a good one for beginners because the player pages provide all the info a newb needs to get up to speed with minimal effort. If the front page and navigation could be simplified, CBS would be a real contender for best in show.

NBA Ultimate Fantasy Commissioner
Appearance: 3
Ease of Use: 4
Player Stats/News: 4
Customizability/Features: 5
Total: 16

Pros:
NBA Ultimate Fantasy Commissioner, the new kid on the block, has been completely redesigned this year. You can read about some of the changes from NBA.com’s Fantasy Games Manager, Jon Loomer via HoopsAddict.com. It has some pretty cool sounding features, like a co-owner option, free keeper leagues, the ability to customize a player position, and ability to trade draft picks. I appreciate any feature that helps me feel more like a real pretend general manager. Since it’s the NBA.com, the player pages are very good, although they tend to focus more on the stats/news angle rather than the CBS-like fantasy angle. The site is fairly easy to use and get around on. And after personally trying it out, I can definitely say that that the sortable player stats are the best I’ve seen. The amount of options they give you to slice and dice player stats are absolutely razzle dazzling.

Cons:
The site has a 2002-ish look and feel to it, meaning it doesn’t quite feel as polished as the other sites. Like I said, I’m shallow. The player pages are detailed but lack a fantasy focus. Seeing that UFC is new this year, it’s likely that there will be some bugs in the system. For example, one annoyance I’ve already come across: NBA.com makes you sign into your account quite often to check on your team, like every day or so for me. Sounds minor, but when you have fantasy ADHD and check your team every hour, you really want the site to save your info.

Final Word:
For far, the redesign looks decent and the potential is certainly there. I can’t put it ahead of Yahoo just yet because I haven’t seen how UFC will live up to that potential. If NBA.com can continue to tweak the site and smooth things out, we may have a new king next year.

Yahoo!
Appearance: 4
Ease of Use: 5
Player Stats/News: 4
Customizability/Features: 4
Total: 17

Pros:
Yahoo! has kept the same basic site layout since Al Gore was tinkering in the White House basement on a little something that came to be known as the internet, but why change something that works? Yahoo doesn’t have the wow factor of something like CBS and their player pages, although it does everything well. The two things that I like most about Yahoo are how easy it is to use and the league home page. It’s nice to see my league information without large and unnecessary videos taking up a third of my screen. Their new drag and drop lineup changes are like sliced bread – such a simple idea that is so… umm… tasty, I guess. Like NBA.com, they also added in a co-owner option for teams this year. Yahoo’s player stats are passable and their player rankings have gone from an embarrassment to acceptable the past few years. Finally, I like how Yahoo keeps track of your fantasy history and links it with your Yahoo profile, so that you can proudly display your fantasy profile like Nels’ does at the top of the site.

Cons:
The player pages, which use to be my favorite, basically haven’t changed in 5+ years. Yahoo also seems to have less fantasy content than the other sites. Their sortable stats only provide 1 week or 1 month time splits, which always seemed kind of weak. While nowhere near as bad as ESPN, Yahoo does try to make you purchase a lot of additional stuff. For example, they stop giving you live stat updates after a short trial period. Finally, Yahoo is less featurific than a site like NBA.com in terms of keeper leagues and draft types.

Final Word:
Yahoo is basically the same site it was five years ago, which is both good and bad. The lack of a major overhaul (like NBA.com) means that it’s a fined tuned piece of software. It is easy and intuitive to use, integrates well with Yahoo accounts, and has decent amount of player information. However, Yahoo lacks some of the extra features of other sites and it seems content on making minor improvements while other sites play catch-up.