What rules would you change?
April 4, 2008 by Evil E
Contemplate your fantasy league rules. I doubt they’re perfect, so what would you change?
I’ve enjoyed my recent chat sessions because they’ve allowed me to connect with some of my readers while hearing about the different formats and rules that vary from league to league.
Over the years, I’ve played in many different types of leagues and used a variety of rules. At the end of each year, I try to assess what I don’t like, why I don’t like it, and how it can be improved. If you know me well or have been following my site for awhile, then you probably get the feeling that I don’t like to simply accept things the way they are.
Frankly, I think Yahoo’s standard Head-to-Head rules are garbage. I apologize if you are offended by that statement, but I believe the overall fantasy basketball experience can be much more authentic, strategic, and exciting than what we tend to accept.
Which is why I’m currently outlining the best set of fantasy hoops rules that I can possibly think of. I’ll give you a teaser: it’s not just one league, it’s 3 leagues rolled into one! There are many variables that I’m currently playing around with, but I’d like to hear from all of YOU before I start finalizing version 1.0.
What type of league(s) do you play in? What do you enjoy most about that format? Are there any rules that you dislike and disagree with? If you could change any of those rules, what would you change and why? Is there a certain type of league that you’ve heard about but never tried and would like to participate in next year? What would you do to make your league unique?
In a few days, I’ll start to ask questions about specific rules and variables that I have in mind, but for now, I’d just like to open up the forum. If you enjoy participating in fantasy hoops, then I’d love to hear from you. Let’s get some quality discussion going!
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This is my first year in ROTO basketball. I figure after 3 baseball championships, I would give CBS basketball a try. It is a basic 4×4, 12 man league that I really enjoy.
I have found that 4×4 & 5×5 formats are the best. You get to enjoy the sport you love rather than always worrying about God knows how many categories. I have tried a baseball league in which we used 20 total categories and it was the worst year I can remember watching baseball. I could never relax.
Keep it simple stupid is my ROTO moto.
Hi Eric!
As a first time fantasy NBA player, I have no real comparison to other leagues and what would be changed to make the experience better but I am looking forward to your comments.
I am playing in yahoo H2H now and I am curious as to why you think yahoo’s H2H rules are garbage. Hope to hear from you.
For the last two years the only leagues I’ve played in were Yahoo Head to Head, standard format leagues. My biggest concerns with that rule set are:
1. No limit on games per week.
2. 6 of the stats are purely based on compiling big numbers.
3. Injuries aren’t handled like the DL in a baseball league (extra roster slot until the injured player comes back).
4. Change Turnovers into Assist/Turnover ratio.
1 and 2 go hand in hand. For the 2006-2007 season, my team was pretty bad except for a few bright spots: DWade, Ray Allen, Al Jefferson, Zach Randolph (career year for him). Realizing my talent deficit at basically every other position, I decided to consolidate everything I had into about 8 core guys via 2 for 1, 3 for 2, etc trades. I definitely got pretty lucky filling out the rest of that team with guys who had breakout years like Monta Ellis and Jefferson, but mostly I was able to carry my team to a 2nd place finish by rotating players in and out every day in order to get the most possible games per week. With this strategy I was able to win points, boards, assists, steals and either blocks or threes depending on the match up, leaving me a 5-4 winner every week. My team wasn’t really that good, I relied heavily on a superlative year from DWade and some breakout years by young guys, but mostly it was built on my ability to get Erik Dampier’s 10 boards per game on my team every week without hurting the rest of my squad.
3 is just a personal preference of mine, kind of double punishment to lose the stats that player is producing and lose the roster slot.
4 puts a better handle on the turnover stat, I think.
Never have turnovers as a category in any leauge;
I prefer daily transactions to weekly only because if a player gets hurt on a Monday in a weekly league, you can’t replace him. If you are a going to have weekly rosters, then make an allowance for 1 change during the week in case of injury;
Reinstate the Injury Reserve List;
Trades should always be reviewable by the managers. Leaving it up to the Commish is to random. In pts based leagues I do like the rule that the player pt avg. must be within a specified limit to even be considered.
I personally like the fantasy points system (1 pt=1 fantasy pt, 1 reb=1 fantasy pt, etc.) more than I think most people do. In a sportsline league this year, I played my first average fantasy points per game league. It was interesting in that a guy only had to play in one game over the course of a week to get a decent score, but that no one huge game would be that big of a blip on your radar. Roto is probably the way to find the purest champion and the best overall team..
Hey Eric, love the site
I am two leagues every year. The first is the default public yahoo roto league. I like this league because of the competiveness of alot of teams all at once. It takes a lot of skill to win this type. This is my first year in a “winners league” , and after a horrible draft and trading for Butler before got hurt, I’m in 11th of 12. To note it was an autopick league and I setted my player rankings bad.
The second is a friend’s, live draft, daily transaction, private league. There is 13 categories: FGMade. FTM, FG%, FT%, 3s,Pts, Oreb, Dreb, Ass, St, Bl, TO, Fouls. TOs and Fouls are put in to combat the “daily adders”. Rebounds are separated causes there are too many Gaurds on regualar teams. There is an emphasis on points cause there aren’t many die hard NBA fans and Pts are a “sexy stat”. What I don’t like about this league is there are only 10 teams. I’m liking deeper leagues (like 14) for H2H cause that would limit the FA pool for daily transaction players.
Next year, I’m going to have an online salary draft based on chinese auctions. It would go like this. I would email every player an excel file with the top 50 players. They would have a week to send it back with the dollar amounts they would bid. After all bids collected, I’ll post the max bids on each player and by what team on a website (They won’t be on that team yet). Then on draft day, I’ll list 10 players at a time, the teams would get one last bid for those players. This would be done by IM or email. I’ll update the website and put those players on the their team. Then list 10 more players, so on so forth.
Sorry for the length. Peace
Hey personally i am in 3 yahoo basketball leagues an i was screwed over in 2 of them…
I was in the semifinal in both as a 1 and 2 seed respectivly and what do you know…either some of my players where sitting it out for the season or they get a mysterous injury
In one semifinal game i had Jamison miss 2 games, Gooden miss 2 games, Alson miss 3 games, Maggette miss 1 game, and Ben Wallace miss 1
I mean if its in the playoffs we should at least have the players average scores counted to our tally.
My change would be if in the playoffs…If a player gets injured…You still get their averages
I mean i was 1st seed and i lost just because of this happening…Which negated my whole season…Pretty gay
I am anti the head to head system as well. In our h2h league the lineups were locked for the entire week and Orl playing only two games the 1st playoff week may have cost me a championship. I would much rather play in a h2h league where free agent pickups were locked throughout the week and you could plug in your bench to make up for game differences. However this is still not a perfect solution.
Thus far, my favorite league style is straight roto. It forces gms to consider the balance of their team rather then just focusing on a couple of cats like a points based system does. The downfall of the roto league is that all GMs must remain active throughout the year, otherwise the ranks can get skewed. In my roto league this year it is amazing the number of Teams that will not reach the maximum number of games just because their draft plan stunk and now they are no longer interested.
To prevent this from happening I suggest adding a playoff system to a roto league. At the beginning of the year there will be X number of fantasy teams in a league all competing for points based on their ranks in each cat. Around game 50 all ranks would be reset to 0 and only the top 4 teams will compete against one another. My other recommendation is to have the fantasy season last only the first 72 games of the NBA season to minimize the Piston effect.
How about the can’t cut list? If you have artest, r allen, pierce and garnet on your lineup your dead hahaha…
it’s been stated already but as a yahoo player i really wish they would institute a max games/wk. makes it too easy for guys with bad teams to just interchange day in and day out to get the mass categories (pts, reb, etc). i like their h2h, but i i wish it was a weekly scoring instead of total. so if i win the week 8-5, my record should be 1-0, not 8-5.
oh, and @matt- waaaaaaahhhhhhhh.
Some good responses here. I’ll add some comments and pose more questions very soon!
Hey, I know this is off topic, but if anyone can chime in, it’d be a huge help. I’ve looked at my games and have (with Kobe and Monta finishing the season at PG and SG), 4 games to use between Chauncey and B-Roy. Do I play matchups? Play both at once? Take a risk that the Pistons don’t shut down Chauncey, or also, the B-Roy isn’t benched for injury?
My main categories to make points are rebounds, steals, and assists, and turnovers (not my choice of a category, btw). Thanks.
I’m happy to say I started a keeper league about 6 years ago, and it’s still in good shape with relatively small owner turnover. I try to play in a different style keeper league each year just to incorporate best practices – but we haven’t changed many rules for this specific league.
Short version rules are:
Standard 8 category roto league; with prize pool contribution towards 1st-3rd and each 8 category winner. i.e. $120 pool might be divided $50 for 1st – $50, 2nd $20, 3rd $10 – $5 for winner of AST, FG%, STL …..
For the initial season each team drafts 15 players, first round “salaries†are $10, and descend in some fashion thereafter, up to round 10 where each player is $1, to a total of a $50 salary cap.
Any waived players or free agents can be picked up again for $1 “salaryâ€. We do have a clause that they have to play again that season to be kept. Thus, there is no incentive for anyone to pick up a $1 Yao Ming.
For each season thereafter, you can keep 5 players from the previous year, but their salary goes up +$1. We have an online bidding board where you can bid a minimum of $2 for each of your next five players, except for rookies. If 24 hours pass without being outbid – they are won. No one has kept or bid for a player above $13.
The last five players are all $1 players and drafted based on a lottery that heavily favors those that did poorly last year. Rookies are usually the top 4-5 picks, and then leftovers from bidding. I nabbed Turkoglu with one of my early picks this year, so he could be kept for $2 headed into next year. This way we get to rollover 1/3 of the team, bid for 1/3, and draft 1/3 – it really balances the risk, as opposed to having “a bad draft†or stupid mistake in free agency bidding.
A lot of leagues get overly complex – but this format seems to work. If teams are out of it – they try to win an individual category, or get a good keeper for next year. But a $12 Bryant isn’t easy to unload for a $1 Durant, when the other team can’t make room for his salary. It actually helps to keep trades relatively even. The cap is steady at $50, but space increases as the year progresses and higher salaried players are dropped – it certainly makes it more difficult to tip the balance of power with a single trade, as I’ve done in other leagues making trades like the equivalent of Jason Kidd/Kobe Bryant to the eventual winner for Michael Beasley & OJ Mayo. The guy that finished #2 was real ticked with me, and I finished last that year – but was in such a dominant position thereafter that the league disbanded.
Fantasy leagues need a system for voting on approval of trades. I dont like the fact that one person in the league (the manager) gets to decide on approval of all trades. It would be cooler if trade approvals were up to a vote and if you could set the percentage of votes needed to make a trade or a move.
Jon, most fantasy sites have that option.
For some GMs, having the fantasy season run the same length as the regular NBA season (82 games) is kinda nice. For example, I have Iguodala. Granted, he may not be 1st round pick, but his fantasy numbers down the stretch are really helping me and they reflect what he’s actually trying to do to help his team’s playoffs position. Also, I have J.R. Smith. It was fun watching him on TNT drain all those 3s and dunking on fools in GS yesterday. The playoff run atmosphere makes fantasy play that much more exciting.
I am benefiting as well from the playoff stretch run, with Amir Johnson and J Maxiell I hardly even notice the lost production from guys like Chauncey Billups and Rasheed Wallace
I’ve been a league for over ten years. We have 10 teams. Each team starts 5 guards, 5 forwards, and 3 centers, and has a reserve squad of up to 6 players. We do not play head-to-head. We use 12 categories, some of which have a bit of (deliberate) redundancy to emphasize certain aspects of the game over others: total points, two-pointers made, three-pointers made, FG%, FT%, offensive rebs, defensive rebs, assists, assist-to-turnover ratio, blocks, steals, and personal fouls. Though we’ve made a few changes to our league’s rules each year (including a nascent keeper policy), the scoring categories themselves have held steady. There’s been a lot of debate within our league this year about the merits of having the personal fouls category. Some see it as part of the game, while others simply hate that fouls are involved (much as it is in real life recreation leagues). We may eliminate PF’s next season, but we’re not sure if we’ll just go down to 11 categories or find a suitable substitute. We’ve got an entire league constitution, too, which has evolved to address trouble spots and shady maneuvers by rogue owners. Among my favorite aspects of our league: a 4-person “brain trust” that runs it (good system of checks and balances); every few years we evict someone for antisocial behavior; we have a fair system for overturning shady trades, which still allows for about 95% of all trades to go through and just weeds out the ones that would screw up the integrity of the league; and there are penalties for finishing in 8th, 9th, or 10th, which means that everyone has an incentive to stay active all year long.
“and there are penalties for finishing in 8th, 9th, or 10th, which means that everyone has an incentive to stay active all year long.”
That sounds rather sinister. I’m curious to hear what these “penalties” are…
I don’t like using fouls as a category. If that’s a MUST, I would suggest adding something to spice it up a little. Maybe make technical fouls positive, so they wipe out a personal foul. Or how about if a player fouls out of a game, their personal fouls get reset to 0! I could see that being kinda fun. Say you’re watching a game and one of your guys picks up his 4th foul (Stop fouling!), but then he picks up his 5th foul (just 1 more baby!).
Or not.
A lot has already been said about the pro’s and cons or roto vs. head to head. However, I think an equally (if not more) important decision is whether to have a snake draft or an auction. The primary league that I play in is an auction-format roto keeper league. Based on my experience in this league over the last 6-7 years, I believe the auction format is far superior to a snake draft.
First, the auction system does a better job of rewarding managers for skill rather than luck. In a draft, there will inevitably be moments where there is a significant drop off in player talent. As such, a snake draft blindly rewards certain managers that, by luck of draw, pick right before a talent drop off and punishes managers that pick immediately thereafter. An auction format, on the other hand, creates a completely level playing field.
Second, the auction system is vastly superior system for keeper purposes. The problem with any snake draft keeper league is that the keeper decision is never challenging (or interesting). It’s solely a question of “who is the best player(s) on my team”. If you happen to have LBJ, CP3, KB8 or KG (which you probably have because you were the lucky sucker that got pick 1,2, or 3), theres your guy. With an auction, on the other hand, keeper decision are likely to be quite different. In my league for example, each team starts each year with $400 auction dollars and 3 keeper slots (although the keeper slots and up to $30 of auction cap room can be included in trades at any time during the prior year). To keep a player, (1) the player must be on your roster at the time the player’s name is called auction, (2) you must use a keeper slot on them (3) you decide whether you are keeping them for 1, 2, or 3 years and (4) you pay $10 x (number of years player is being kept) + their previous auction price. Therefore, if Monta Ellis went for $20 in last year’s auction , and you want to keep him for two years, the cost is $40 per year. If you wanted to keep him for 3 years, you pay $50 per year. Once a player is kept, at the expiration of the keeper contract, the player must be returned to the auction (they cannot be re- kept). Thus, the keeper decisions are far more interesting. Instead of asking, “who is my best player”, you ask “who is my most undervalued (based on last year’s auction) player and are they undervalued to the extent that it justifies the added contract price”). This rewards managers for making the correct call on a player before they blow up (like buying CP3 when he was a rookie), rather than rewarding a manager that drafted a guy after they had already became a top player.
Now, the obvious downside is that an auction can easily take well over 10 hours (our auction lasts approximately two days, including numerous food/beer/whathaveyou breaks). However, as the auction/draft is unquestionably the most important part of a fantasy season (and is somthing that should be quite enjoyable if you are a fantasy fanatic) I think this is a small price to pay given the benefits outlined above.
Regarding Evil E’s comment, what our league has is a completely graduated payout. 1-6 get paid. 1st place gets about 1,000 second 600, etc. Seventh and below pay, but the amount they pay is different. 15th for example pays about 500 whereas 7th pays less than 50.
On a side note, our league is switching to a new cat system. The old system was a standard 8 cat league (pts. reb, assists, blx, stls, t/o, ft% and fg%). We found that this system overrated bigs. Marcus Camby should not be the second best fantasy player. Brad Miller and Dalembert are not really top 50 talents. A big part of the problem is that any t/o cat (while valuable) overrewards bigs since they handle the ball a lot less and punishes ballhandlers.
To combat this problem, we are switching to a nine cat system (pts, rebs, assists, blx, stls, assist to t/o’s, ft%, fg%, and ft made). Are reasons for this change are a bit arbitrary, but essentially we played around on basketballmonster and looked at how the player valuations change using different cats. The above system seems to get to a very realistic valuation.
Finally, I just want to say that the standard nine cat’s (including the 3-ball) is traves-sham-mockery. Kyle Korver should not be a top 50 player. Ray Allen, even in his prime, should never be a top 10 talent. Admittedly, shooting the three is an important skill. However, I have not seen a system that effectively rewards it, without overrewarding it.
Great stuff WCL!
You read my mind on the Auction draft. My next “Ideal League Rules” article is going to focus on that. I’ve only done an auction draft twice, but I had a blast both times. Getting to bid on players is a lot of fun and really tests each owner’s ability to construct a team. Thanks for posting your rules…but the keeper inflation prices seem kinda steep! I guess the $400 salary cap as opposed to $260 or $100 allows for that, but it still seems steep. Can you post which players you plan on keeping and their prices to give us an example of your top values?
I’m also curious if you guys auction off free agents each week as well. My leagues have been doing that the past few years, and while I appreciate the fact that it’s not the fastest to pick a player up but how much one is willing to spend, having to decide on bids each week is rather stressful and time consuming. Any thoughts on that or any other auction aspects?
I really like your payout system, where the last place team has to fork out big bucks. I think that’s a great way to ensure that all teams play to the end, but you must have a trustworthy group of guys to make that work.
I also like adding free throws made to reward players that get to the line often, but I have a hard time believing that Kyle Korver is a top 50 player under ANY scoring format!
I had never heard of a league that doesn’t use three-pointers made, but I agree that it’s an overrated category. In real life, I think a team’s 3P% is just as important (if not more) than how many per game they make. So just like using FT% and FT made, I like the idea of using 3P made and 3P%. Anyone use all of those cats?
Evil E:
Our league absolutely depends on having a really good group of managers that are committed to the long haul. So far, we have only had a 1 manager leave since moving to the keeper format. When this manager left, we had a number of guys that were willing to hop in and assume the franchise, so the transition was very smooth.
RE: your question about player valuations, the top players go in the 130-160 range (approx. 1/3 of the overall budget). Garnett went for 160, Marion went for approx. 150. To give you some sense about keeper pricing in our system, here is a abbreviated list of keepers from last year (I will list their name, previous auction price in 06-07 auction/ keeper price per year/number of years kept)
Monta Ellis/$1/$20/two years
Deron Williams/$18/$48/three years
Amare Stoudamire/$68/$88/two years
Baron Davis/$29/$49/two years
Jose Calderon/$1/$11/one year
Bynum/$1/$11/one year
Kaman/$32/$42/one year
There were approximately 45 players kept, so the above is just a snapshot. As you can see, the best keepers are usually guys that come out of nowhere (Monta) or guys that were injured immediately prior to the auction, and have subsequently become healthy and have a blow-up season (Amare/Baron).
In our league, the top keepers in this coming auction are likely to be: Danny Granger, Elton Brand, Ronnie Brewer, Jamario Moon, Manu Ginobili, as well as a number of guys like AI and LBJ that will benefit from our category change. Moreover, there are a couple of studs that have atleast a year left on their existing keeper contracts, like Deron and Monta (see above) as well as CP3 who was kept for three years (at a price of $67 per year) immediately after his rookie season.
Based on the our experience, I think the $10 for one year, $20 for two, 30 for three keeper price is pretty reasonable. At these prices, there are definitely great keepers (i.e. CP3 for 17% of your auction budget). Moreover, because we have the option of keeping a guy for up to 3 years, if the keeper price is too low it would make keepers so valuable that it would undervalue what a manager does at the auction.
One other cool thing about our league that I want to mention. If you finish last, you have to wear an WNBA LA Sparks jersey for the entire auction (we rent a house and auction in person).Let me say, the fear of the Sparks jersey keeps things very interesting at the bottom of the standings.
One more comment. 3pts Made and 3pt % would be a disaster. According to Basketballmonster.com, if you add 3pt% to the standard 9 cats, Peja Stojakavic would be the 5th best player and Rashard Lewis would be 6th. Yikes.
Perhaps I am being a bit irrational, but I think Rashard Lewis illustrates why you should not have any 3pt category. In the standard 9 category system, Rashard Lewis ranks 17. Rashard Lewis is not a top 20 player (despite his contract). He is not a top 50 player. 45% 85% 18 pts, 5 rebs, 2 assists, 1.2 steals is such a mediocre line. He’s like a rich man’s Matt Carroll. But when you count the three ball, all of sudden Rashard (and JRich too) becomes more valuable than guys like Pau, Deron, David West, Nash, Pierce, and Melo. That is sign of a broken fantasy sytem, IMO.
But Rashard Lewis is worth 120 million dollars, right?!?
I like the LA Sparks touch. It sounds like you guys have honed your auction system and go all out. In fact, if you could email me your league constitution, I would happily examine it more closely.