What are Fantasy Games?
Have you ever dreamed of what it would be like to own your own professional sports team? Fantasy games are a way to live out that dream. And to make things easier, all fantasy games are fundamentally the same — real athletes and their real-life performances are used to generate points for fantasy teams in fantasy leagues.
In a traditional fantasy league, there is a set number of team managers, and a clear set of rules that govern everything from roster size to scoring to schedule. You and your fellow managers hold a draft, filling your fantasy roster with real-life athletes from across the sport.
Then, throughout the season, you set your lineup based on how well you think your players will perform. The statistics they generate in real games are collected, and fantasy points are awarded based on those numbers. The better your players perform, the more points your team racks up.
Ultimately, those points determine a winner. The team that accumulates the most points — or earns the most points-based wins over the course of the season, or prevails in the postseason — is declared the league champion. And with that title comes all the glory of lording it over your fellow managers... until next season, when they come back hungry for revenge.
What is ESPN Fantasy Basketball?
Welcome to the world of fantasy basketball—ESPN-Style!
ESPN Fantasy basketball is the closest thing you can find to buying your own professional franchise and becoming the team's coach, team manager, and president. All decisions are yours to make.
And lucky for you, basketball is a game filled with unbiased player performance statistics. Using these statistics, you have everything you need to understand which players are performing well and which are not.
ESPN's Fantasy Basketball is as close as anyone will come to owning a winning franchise and becoming the team's manager, team manager, and president. All team decisions are yours to make. Each team manager is supplied with all of the tools—multiple draft methods, unlimited waivers and trades, free agency, an all-powerful commissioner, chat rooms, league bulletin boards, player statistics, etc. In other words, everything needed to build a championship team.
Statistical reports, expert analysis, and up-to-date feature articles from ESPN.com editors are readily available to keep team managers informed. Armed with this information, team managers are free to create the team of their dreams.
To win, a team manager has to be crafty, as each team competes directly with nine other team managers who are equally determined to come out on top. Team managers can choose who they compete against and are free to join a league at their own level.
Like the race for the final NBA playoff spot, the league title could be determined on the very last day of the season in rotisserie leagues. For head-to-head scoring, the top four teams in each league will play each other in the playoffs, which are held during the final weeks of the NBA regular season. The remaining teams compete in the consolation bracket. Regardless of your regular-season record, your team is guaranteed to play every week of the NBA season.
Once you join a league, ESPN provides you with everything needed to build the best possible basketball team. And sure, you got your cut-throat, 11th-hour wheeling and dealing between armchair LMs, fully customizable league rules and scoring, multiple draft methods, live box scores, waivers, trades, free agency, custom player updates, a commissioner, league bulletin boards, sortable stats for all players, and more.
There's plenty of room to sling trash-talk throughout your league, and enough stats and weekly analysis to make you the next ESPN Fantasy Basketball champion. We just want to make sure you know what to do with it all! These FAQs will guide you through the keys to success in ESPN Fantasy Basketball. It's time to get crackin' on creating the next fantasy dynasty!