Petition for the Standardization of Fantasy Basketball (First Draft)

Categorized as: Author: Nels, Fantasy Basketball
Posted on: April 23rd, 2008

I’m sitting here, and it’s Wednesday morning, and I feel like I should be writing something. But I don’t want to do a playoff recap… that’s already been done to death, and besides, this blog is about fantasy basketball.

So, instead, I present the first draft of The Petition for the Standardization of Fantasy Basketball

I am doing this because it is clear that fantasy basketball is a 2nd class citizen to the established behemoths of fantasy football and fantasy baseball. My belief is that with a standardization of the rules for fantasy basketball, it will become more accessible to people who are confused by the many variations currently available.

The Articles of Petition:

1. There shall be 2 acceptable formats for fantasy basketball: 1) Rotisserie, 2) Head-to-Head. The articles that follow apply equally to both of these formats, except where noted.

2. There shall be 9 scoring categories, and they shall be (their standard abbreviations are noted): 1. Field Goal Percentage (FG%), 2. Free Throw Percentage (FT%), 3. Three-pointers Made (3PTM), 4. Points Scored (PTS), 5. Rebounds (includes Defensive and Offensive) (REB), 6. Assists (AST), 7. Steals (ST), 8. Blocks (BLK), 9. Turnovers (TO). The previous order shall be the standard order for listing the scoring categories.

3. The lineups shall be set weekly, and the scoring weeks shall start with games played on Monday and conclude with games played on Sunday.

4. The standard lineup will consist of: PG, SG, G, SF, PF, F, C, C, Util, Util, Bench, Bench, Bench.

5. The standard for drafting teams shall be: Live Draft with 1 minute and 30 seconds or 2 minutes to draft a player (I’m okay with changing this according to the level of experience of the league). The draft shall be conducted prior to the start of the season, as early as is allowed by the selected fantasy league provider.

6. The standard league size shall be 12 teams, with 10 and 14 teams be acceptable alternatives.

7. There shall be no maximum number of moves, nor maximum number of trades. For rotisserie leagues only: There shall be a maximum of 82 games played per position. Since lineups are set on a weekly basis, I don’t see this being an issue.

8. Standard Waiver Time shall be 2 days.

9. Scoring for the league shall begin on the first day of the regular season.

10. Scoring for the league shall end no later than 2 weeks prior to the end of the regular season. For Head-to-Head leagues, the end of the season shall proceed as follows: 6 teams make the playoffs based on regular season standings, with the top 2 teams getting a bye for the first week of the playoffs. The first round and second round of the playoffs will be 1 week each. The final (championship) round of the playoffs will be 2 weeks in length. In a 25 week regular season (where week 25 consists of only 1 or 2 games played by each team; which the NBA has used for the past 3 years) this means the playoffs will start in week 19. The second round will be week 20. And the final round will span weeks 21 and 22. For rotisserie leagues: this simply means the end of the fantasy season will be the end of week 22.

11. The fantasy trade deadline shall be approximately 2 weeks after the NBA trade deadline.

12. Trades shall be voted on by the league with a majority of owner vetoes required to block the trade.

13. The initial waiver wire priority order shall be the reverse order of the draft. Other than that, waiver wire priority is already fairly standardized.

14. For leagues with inexperienced members, the Can’t Cut List shall be provided by the provider of the fantasy league system. For leagues with experienced members, there shall be no Can’t Cut List.

End of Petition.

Please let me know if there is anything that needs to be added. I’m sure there is, even though I’ve been working on this for a while already.

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grover

Aww, weekly lineups?! That’s no fun!

On Can’t Cut List, there should be an option of dropping injured players. The leagues (Yahoo!, etc.) often leave players on the can’t cut list for weeks after a serious – even season-ending, sometimes – injury has been confirmed.
http://www.neonhustle.blogspot.com Brendan K.

The lack of finite roster moves is an open acceptance of streaming in all leagues. Should not less experienced leagues include a limit in order to prevent havoc from being wreaked by unconscientious owners against those in contention when they need a sub? I think limits help new players learn to value of a roster move, and don’t neccessarily have to preclude streaming. Just a thought.
http://www.fantasybasketballpros.com Farid

great list..i really would like to see some standardization across leagues as well!
http://www.givemetherock.com Nels

@grover, The idea behind the weekly lineups is to make it easy for people who aren’t quite as into the whole fantasy basketball as, say, most people who read this blog. As for the CCL, that’s exactly why I say that there shouldn’t be one. For inexperienced owners, though, the CCL is good so that people don’t do something like drop a really good player after they have one bad game.
http://www.givemetherock.com Nels

@Brendan, I have never been in a league where someone was actually streaming players, but yes, that is something that should probably be taken into account, especially since we’re trying to make the standardized league as easy as possible for people to enjoy, and that means making it as fair as possible.

What do you imagine a good limit would be? In the DroppingDimes Experts’ League, one team made 95 moves. The next closest was 51, though, and the highest in the GMTR Readers’ League was 55… so, for the next draft of the petition, I’m thinking maybe 60 moves would be a good limit…? I imagine that would be low enough to prevent streaming, since you’d only be able to pick up about 3 players a week. With the waiver wire time limit at 2 days that means you’d use all your moves pretty fast trying to keep guys unavailable.
http://www.givemetherock.com Patrick

I’m also a fan of daily changes. I say we leave the weekly/daily changes decision to the discretion of the league.

@Brendan – with Nels advocating weekly changes only, infinite roster moves is not a problem.
http://www.givemetherock.com Nels

@Patrick, Brendan, How about this: For H2H, weekly changes (which really is the only way it make sense anyway), but for Roto, we’ll allow daily lineup changes with a games played per position limit of 72 games (that prevent people from plugging people in to play every day, and also take care of the last 2 weeks of the season where most teams play 8-10 games).

There’s a reason I called this the first draft. There will be revisions.
http://www.neonhustle.blogspot.com Brendan K.

Well, I actually am partial to daily changes (and yes, I misread that weekly lineups were to apply to H2H leagues) but I think you have a decent compromise for Roto.

Is there a reason lineup changes shouldn’t be league discretion? I’ve been playing exclusively H2H league for about 5 years now, and I prefer the format immensely. The only significant issue not adressed by this petition would have been the possibility of streaming in daily H2H, and I think that a limit of between, say, 60 and 90 moves is optimal to both allow for swaps when needed but limit hate-signings (pickingv up a player just to drop him to waivers and make him off limits to anybody else) and the overstreaming of players in the playoffs (especially by owners in consolation brackets having too much sway in who can win the high matchups.)

Ultimately, I also like the strategy that daily changes with roster move caps would provide. Owners in the middle of the ladder have to balance streaming enough categories to make the playoffs, but can’t overuse moves lest they be crippled by an injury, limited minutes, or any of the other late-season factors that could leave them one and done after clearing the top 6.

I like the suggestions presented so far, but I doubt I’m the only one who prefers daily lineups in H2H.

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Petition for the Standardization of Fantasy Basketball (First Draft)

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