Welcome to Fantazzle Fantasy Basketball, a truly one-of-a-kind fantasy gaming experience. Fantazzle will begin its offering with the Fantasy Basketball Salary Cap game and look to add more games as the season bounces along. You will be asked to select 3 Centers, 5 Forwards, 5 Guards, and 3 “Utility” players. The players you select for the Utility slots can play any of the 3 positions – the choice is yours. In the Salary Cap Challenge, each player is assigned a dollar value, and you must select a combination of players that fit within your $1,000,000 budget.

The scoring system is simple, and similar to standard fantasy basketball scoring. You receive one point for each assist and rebound that your players compile, as well as two points for each block and steal. You also receive one point for every actual point that each player notches, meaning that you will receive two points for a field goal, one point for a free throw, and three points for a three-point field goal. Please note that, unlike most fantasy basketball scoring systems, field goal percentage, free throw percentage and turnovers are not categories.

This leads us to our first strategic observation: certain players will have drastically different values in Fantazzle’s game than in your typical fantasy league, so you must adjust your player rankings accordingly. The most obvious example of this anomaly is Dwight Howard of the Orlando Magic. In standard fantasy leagues Howard is noticeably less valuable than superstars such as Dwayne Wade, Chris Paul and Amare Stoudemire, because unlike these other players, Howard essentially causes you to forfeit a whole category (in this case, free throw percentage). Meanwhile, in Fantazzle’s format, Howard is just as valuable as any of these players, and by season’s end could quite possibly end up being the most valuable player in the game.

Fantazzle’s Fantasy Basketball games run twice a week. The first batch of games run Monday through Thursday, and the second batch of games run Friday through Sunday. This leads us to our second strategic observation, which is that not all players will play the same amount of games in any given cycle. Most players play two games per cycle, but some players play just one game, and others play three. Therefore, it will behoove you to avoid one-game players and load up on as many three-game players as possible when selecting your roster. Fantazzle goes to the trouble of telling you how many games are on each player’s schedule for that cycle, so it is very easy to implement this strategy.

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There you have it – an introduction to the game itself. Now please allow me to introduce myself, your trusty fantasy basketball blogger, analyst and bonafide hoops enthusiast, Dr. Quez. I joined my first fantasy basketball league in 1993, at the age of 13. At this time, I did not even own a computer, or even know how to use the internet. My father noticed that every morning I would race to the kitchen table, annihilate the sports section in what seemed like mere moments, and then sit there studying box scores for the next half hour. One day he saw an ad in the newspaper for a “rotisserie basketball league” and signed me up. Next thing I knew, I was sitting in some dude’s living room with 11 other strangers, drafting my first fantasy basketball team. We negotiated trades over the phone and submitted our weekly lineups and waiver moves via regular mail. I will never forget the surge of excitement that I felt when I got home from school and saw that envelope with the updated standings and rosters waiting for me in my mailbox.

In hindsight, it was probably the best training conceivable to become a good fantasy player. I was nearly half the age of the next youngest player – a fellow whose name escapes me now, but who named his team “F.U.B.A.R.” – and found myself calling grown men to negotiate blockbuster deals. Their wives must have been perplexed when out of nowhere, some squeaky-voiced twerp was suddenly calling her husband on a regular basis to discuss that big Latrelle Sprewell for Karl Malone trade.

I never did win a championship in that league, but I got awfully close. In 1995, I found myself in last place when Michael Jordan announced his comeback. According to our league’s waiver rules, this meant that I had the top waiver position, which also meant that I suddenly went from zero to hero. Next thing I knew, F.U.B.A.R. had me on the phone, offering me a rookie point guard by the name of Allen Iverson and his 1996 first round pick for my new best player. I can’t remember who I took with that extra first round pick in 1996, but it doesn’t really matter – no matter who it was, I got fleeced in that deal. F.U.B.A.R., indeed.

That league got me hooked, and I never looked back. Back in 2003, I couldn’t organize enough people to start my own fantasy basketball league, so I joined a random ESPN league that was full of deadbeat owners. You know the type – guys who miss the draft, end up with a crappy team, begrudgingly pay attention for the first few weeks, and then, once they realize their team totally blows, disappear forever. It was in this league that I bumped into a fellow by the name of Ryan Erb, who ended up taking over one of those deadbeat teams and surging past me into first place. We completed a few trades that season, and at the end of the year, Ryan invited me to join a fantasy sports league known as “Ricketts,” which is one of the most competitive leagues I’ve ever been a part of. This is where I really cut my teeth as a fantasy gamer, as guys like Ryan, Jared Hayes and Chris McCarthy won title after title, and I spent years figuring out what it takes to win against truly knowledgeable players.

Shortly after my initiation into the world of Ricketts, I began working at KFFL.com as a fantasy baseball analyst. There, I wrote impact reports on players, contributed to their annual Draft Guide by writing about undervalued players, and eventually ended up writing weekly positional analysis pieces. Although I didn’t always agree with their editorial decisions, I think I came of age as a fantasy sports writer during my tenure with the company.

I became involved with Fantazzle several months ago when Ryan Parr, an old college buddy (and the website’s founder), contacted me through Facebook and told me about the project. The rest, as they say, is history, and I am excited to be a part of the Fantazzle team. I will be posting a weekly blog entry where I will discuss fantasy basketball news and offer strategic suggestions for winning your weekly tournaments. Keep your eyes open for my next post, and I look forward to hearing your feedback!

–Dr. Quez

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Tags: fantasy basketball, salary cap, scoring system, strategic observation

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 6th, 2008 at 9:12 pm and is filed under Dr. Quez. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.