Bet On Fantasy Basketball In 2024 – How It All Works

Basketball is easily one of the most popular sports on the planet. While the USA is all about NFL and NCAA football, in terms of ratings and popularity, these leagues cannot boast a presence in China, Japan, and many European countries, as can basketball. The NBA especially is a very inclusive place, where European stars, like Dirk Nowitski, can find stardom in the world’s biggest league. In recent years, the NBA and NCAA men’s basketball has taken on even more popularity, as fantasy sports have become all the rage.

Today, you have huge fantasy sites operating that pay out millions of dollars a year to people playing in daily fantasy leagues. With this sort of league, you’re only locked in for a day at a time, or a contest at a time, instead of having to tinker with your fantasy roster for an entire basketball season. The popularity of this type of fantasy sport option has exploded well past anything online casinos or poker rooms did in the past, at least in terms of the popularity vs. the time frame. So if you’re thinking about playing fantasy basketball, we at Bet on Fantasy Basketball want to walk you through the finer points. Follow along, and hopefully after leaving here you will be ready to score some wins in a fantasy league of your choosing.

Recommended Basketball Fantasy Sites In 2024

Site Name	Bonus Offer	Rating	USA Friendly?	Visit Link
Draft Kings	100% Max $600	95%	Yes	Visit Site
Fanduel	100% Max $200	91%	Yes	Visit Site

What is Fantasy Basketball?

Fantasy basketball is simply a sport wherein a player will assume the role of a general manager (GM), draft his or her team, and then play against other managers in a points-based system. You score the most points, you win the match. This sort of fantasy basketball has actually been popular since the 1990s. While many variations of fantasy basketball technically deal with the NCAA men’s Division 1 teams, most of the focus is put on the NBA, the National Basketball Association, where the athletes are professionals.

Even before the meteoric rise of big-name fantasy sites like DraftKings and FanDuel, fantasy basketball was still popular via ESPN, the NBA Fantasy and Yahoo Fantasy. The typical makeup of a fantasy basketball roster includes one point guard (PG), one shooting guard (SG), one guard (PG/SG), one small forward (SF), one power forward (PF), one forward (SF/PF), two centers (C), and either one or two utility players of any position. Depending on the league, you may also be able to draft some other bench players to compliment your roster. Your goal, at the beginning of each game or each contest, is to set a starting lineup that you believe will score the most points. Points are scored based on overall player points, three-pointers, rebounds, blocks, steals, etc.

Steps to Play Fantasy Basketball Legally Online In 2024

1: Know the Leagues

The first step to playing fantasy basketball is to know which type of league you’re looking for. While we will give a lot of information on daily leagues and regular leagues below, what we want to stress here are the different set-ups in scoring and gameplay formats. For instance, you have rotisserie style leagues that operate more like tournaments; you have points-based leagues; you have head-to-head leagues, where you’re only playing one other person; you have salary based leagues, where you have a salary cap.

And then you have leagues that operate on different periods of time, such as year-long leagues, keeper leagues that allow you to keep players for multiple seasons, and even dynasty leagues that allow you to keep all drafted players indefinitely while tinkering with the roster in form of picking up, cutting, shuffling, etc. So before we get into explaining how you go about drafting and other important tidbits, your task is to figure out which sort of league you want to enter.

2: Daily Leagues vs. Regular Fantasy Basketball Leagues

There are two main types of leagues, with keepers, dynastic, year-long and other leagues falling under the “regular” banner, and day-long or contest-long leagues falling under the “daily” banner. The daily leagues are what the fantasy sites are famous for these days. With these daily leagues, you start off with a blank slate each and every time.

For instance, you will log on to the site, you will visit the site’s lobby, you will select which league/contest you want to participate in, and then you will draft the players you can afford and play against others in a tournament. If you win that day’s contest by scoring the most points, you win. If not, you’re in no way locked into any league and can instantly try again, starting from scratch, by selecting your contest and drafting a brand new team.

Of course, this daily concept appeals to most people. Rather than having to keep the same players, pay attention to injury reports and the waiver wire, and be a hands-on manager, daily leagues allow you to only focus on the contest at hand for that particular day. So if LeBron James is on your team on Friday but twists his ankle on Saturday, you’re fine. You’re not in that league anymore and can just pick another player.

3: Find the Right Website

After you have picked the type of league you want, either a season-long or daily league, or any other league, it’s time to find the right website. Now, we cannot stress this enough: You need to really see what the sites specialize in. We can direct you to some impartial reviews of big-name sites like DraftKings and FanDuel, where you will learn all about playing here in their daily leagues. But if you decide to go another way, you want a website that offers you many positive things. You need a website that:

• You can understand, first and foremost
• Offers you the type of leagues/contests you’re after
• Allows you to participate in the types of drafts you want
• Has a great reputation for fair play and paying winners
• Is popular and has enough people so that you can easily find a contest to join
• Gives you lucrative bonuses and promotions
• Has a lot of different contests to choose from

4: Put the Work in Pre-Draft

So, now you know the league type you want, and now you know the site on which you want to play. Now it’s time to put in that work before the draft. Yes, even with daily leagues you’re going to want to run some numbers. For instance, let’s say you want to take Chris Bosh in the power forward position, but you see that he’s playing the LA Clippers that night. Historically, Bosh may do very poorly against Jordan with the Clippers.

So, what do you do? It’s incumbent upon you to choose players who will have the advantage in their match-up. You have to remember, of course, that your fantasy team isn’t physically playing another fantasy team. Most every player on your roster plays for a different team that will be going up against a different team. You need to research to find favorable match-ups and select players who are more likely to do well. This is something Bet on Fantasy Basketball can’t help you with, other than telling you to pay attention to the league and draft players whose odds of a good game are high.

If, for instance, Kevin Durant with the Thunder is in a shooting slump for the past five games, why risk taking him when you can grab somebody like Paul George who is lighting it up? Let somebody else take the risks.

5: Be Attentive to Your Roster

Even if you’re playing in a daily league, you still have to be very attentive to your roster. Using the step above, you’re obviously looking for favorable match-ups. But even beyond that, you aren’t looking to draft an all-star team per se. You have to be strategic. Throwing together the equivalent of a Team USA seems like a great idea, but there are a couple of points to keep in mind. Firstly, there are only so many roster spots. Secondly, total points your players score is only one area of focus in a scoring system, because rebounds, field goal percentage, and other aspects count, so maybe Kobe isn’t a smart pickup.

Lastly, other players in fantasy leagues know the drill here, and they’re putting together a “Moneyball” type of team; that is to say, they’re putting together a team that, statistically speaking, can do well against the opponents individually, resulting in a large collective score. You have to emulate this game, and do it better, to win these leagues. It’s not as simple as picking the players likely to be on ESPN’s highlight reel.

Never Stop Learning

The best piece of advice we can offer you here at Bet on Fantasy Basketball is to never stop learning about the game. Fans of the game typically do better at fantasy. Those who are attentive typically do better than those who focus on the big-name players. Start slowly, ease into things, and work your way up, learning as you go. Follow our advice on which site you should try out, and the rest is up to you.