Sporting Up with Yahoo

With draft season in full swing, now is the time to fine-tune your strategies and prepare for a successful fantasy season. The decisions you make during your draft can set the tone for your team's success, so it's important to be well-prepared. By implementing some key draft strategies, you can position yourself ahead of the competition and increase your chances of coming out on top. Take advantage of these last-minute tips to elevate your drafting game and become a more skilled fantasy manager.

It amazes me how many fantasy managers go into their drafts blind. That's the biggest mistake you can make. Understanding where players are being taken is the most important factor when drafting. Whether you need to get a read on players you love or find out which players are being overvalued, it's key to do a mock draft. The good news is that Yahoo offers mock drafts nearly every minute on their site, and you can adjust the settings to cater to your league and even select which draft slot to pick from!

This is simple, but you must have a vast understanding of your league settings. The first factor is understanding how many teams are in your league. That will help you realize which positions might be shallower than others, especially considering the roster sizes. The most important factor when looking at the settings is the scoring. The standard is a nine-category format, but there are varying setups, including points leagues. Players have different values based on each format, and it's imperative to capitalize on those guys because the ranks and ADPs don't change in the draft room.

I was initially going to say to make your own rankings, but that can be time-consuming for most people. An easier method is to break down rankings by tiers. This means organizing the rankings based on your preferences and getting a read on what players are going in the same areas. This can help you find values, as there will inevitably be fallers in every draft. It will also help you with your personal player preferences, essential for every fantasy manager.

Most formats on Yahoo are nine-cat, and understanding how each player is valued in this type of format is critical. This is simply putting a puzzle together and finding the right amount of statistics to defeat your opponent each week. It'll be a different puzzle each week, and it's imperative to fill every category equally going into the season. If you lean towards specific categories during your draft, zone in on the others using the waiver wire once the season commences. You must also be flexible and pick the best player available rather than rely on personal preference. Bringing biases into fantasy is the quickest way to hurt your team!

As someone who's done nearly 20 drafts already, this is the most critical factor for yours truly. I've been limited to drafting forwards and centers at times because those are undoubtedly the most challenging positions to fill. The forward position is particularly tough. The best fantasy producers come from the guard and center positions. That's why I always take three forwards in the first eight rounds. The selections after that are non-existent. You also need to realize when the centers run out of juice. Every solid starting center will be gone around pick 100, and it's critical to get at least two or three of those guys in Yahoo formats.

I do this in every fantasy sport because nothing is worse than starting your season with a bunch of players in your IL slots. The sad reality regarding sports is that some of these guys are injury-prone and simply can't handle a full season. It's a grueling job to play basketball three or four times a week for six months, and some of these guys have proven they can't handle it. There are also players with pre-existing injuries, and staying away from those players is key. This season, my list includes Joel Embiid, Kawhi Leonard, Paul George, Khris Middleton and Ben Simmons. Many of these guys can still provide immense value if they fall to the right spot, but know that they are unlikely to play a full season.

This is not an advertising plug because I truly believe Yahoo Fantasy Plus is a game-changer for drafts. My favorite benefit is that they do ADP by diamond drafters. Yahoo is one of the few sites that ranks its fantasy players, and the diamond players are the most successful ones on their site. Understanding how those guys draft is a major benefit in your league because they typically finish near the top of the standings every year. They also have Draft Scout, a helpful tool that advises which players have the highest value for your specific team build during the draft. It also gives you some advanced statistics that aren't available for most players, and many of those are essential for understanding how these players produce.

This sounds simple, but it needs to be said. So many people playing fantasy get caught up in fantasy experts' rankings, advice and start-sit columns that they need to remember why they play fantasy in the first place. At the end of the day, you're doing this as a hobby, and you have a great understanding of what to expect. If you follow enough to read an article like this, you're definitely smart enough to make your own decisions. The only person who will regret the decisions you make for your fantasy team is you, and following your heart/brain is the best way to play fantasy. Soak up as much info as you can, but always follow your gut!

This goes into the last section because the most important factor is to have fun. At the end of the day, this is a hobby where we fictionalize player's statistics and play against one another. There's definitely money on the line for many of you, but none of you would be playing if it weren't fun in the first place! As someone who loves basketball, I can't tell you how much fun it is to monitor box scores every night. The everyday grind is one of the primary reasons I love fantasy basketball, and it's something you need to enjoy, or it'll eat at you in a long, six-month season.