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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.