Sneak peek at Ottoneu Fantasy Basketball Rules and Settings at Launch

With basketball season fast approaching, I wanted to give everyone interested in Ottoneu Fantasy Basketball some information on what to expect in its inaugural season, launching later this year. I’m hoping to cover most of the initial set of settings so you can start deciding how you want to set up your leagues for the 2021-22 season.

All of this will be documented on the site once the site launches, so consider this a little sneak peek to get you started.

Leagues

League sizes, tiers, and prizes will mirror Ottoneu Fantasy Football exactly. You can find the prize structure for 12-team leagues on the Football Prize Terms page but you can basically expect 12-team leagues with $20, $50, $100, $250 tiers on launch day with the according set of prizes. League sizes other than 12 teams will not be supported by default on launch day, but can be accommodated if you reach out to me via the help@ottoneu.com email address.

Lineups

Ottoneu Fantasy Basketball will be launching with a 9-man starting lineup that will consist of 3 guards, 2 forwards, 1 center, 1 G/F spot, 1 F/C spot, and one Util spot that can be used by any player with position eligibility. Position eligibility will be set by our data provider and will be G, F, C, G-F, or F-C. Players will mostly have single eligibility, with about 31% of players having dual eligibility. I could see lineup options and position eligibility evolving over the next few seasons, but this is what we are going with for 2021-22.

Each position slot in the lineup will have a weekly max of 3 games in order to reduce streaming and keep teams on a level playing field with one another. This means there will be a total of 9 G games per week, 6 F games, and 3 C, G/F, F/C, and Util games per matchup, aside from the rare 2 week matchups in the playoffs.

Scoring

Ottoneu Fantasy Basketball will be launching with 3 H2H scoring options.

  1. 9-category H2H, whichever team wins more categories wins the game. The categories will be: Points, Rebounds, Assists, Steals, Blocks, FG%, FTM, Three Point%, and fewest turnovers.
  2. A simplified points format developed by some friends of the site that run a very similar type of league.
Stat Points
Points +1
Assists +1
Rebounds + 1
Steals + 1
Blocks +1
Turnovers - 1
  1. A more traditional fantasy basketball points offering:
Stat Points
Points +1
FGA -1
FGM +2
FTA -1
FTM +1
REB +1
AST +2
STL +4
BLK +4
TOV -2

Calendar

The 2021-22 NBA season starts on October 19, 2021. The Ottoneu Fantasy Basketball trade deadline will be February 1, 2022. The NBA season ends on April 10, 2022, and Ottoneu Fantasy Basketball playoffs will happen in the 4 weeks leading up to and including the end of the NBA regular season. The NBA play-in tournament will not be part of the Ottoneu Fantasy Basketball season. The matchup week that includes the NBA All-Star Game will be longer than a week to compensate for the break in the NBA season, but will not change the games per position limits for that H2H matchup.

Economics

Ottoneu Fantasy Basketball will have 25 roster spots, a $400 budget, $2 $3 inflation for NBA players, and $1 inflation for any non-NBA players that are rostered at the end of the season. Each team will get $25 during arbitration, with a max of $3 towards any team and a max of $3 towards any player.


Let me know if you have any questions and I’ll try to answer them as best I can. I’m sure I have forgotten one or two important things here. Thanks as always for reading and for supporting Ottoneu Fantasy Sports!

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Ottoneu Fantasy Basketball will have 25 roster spots

Is there going to be any sort of an injured list that adds a roster spot to a player who misses an extended period of time (e.g., the 60 day IL, etc. in baseball)? I’m not as familiar with the current rules in the NBA to even know if such a thing exists so the question may not be a good one, but just curious.

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I would have thought that with fewer players you’d want the automatic salary increases to be larger than in baseball? You get hit with ~$80 of increases in baseball vs. ~$50 here, and also the best players here will presumably cost a lot more than the best players in baseball (same cap but fewer spots and a much smaller lineup) so I’d think it would take longer for salaries to catch up. Any thoughts?

Yeah that was supposed to be a $3.

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Ok, that’s a simple answer to my overly long question. Thanks!

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The NBA does not have an equivalent to the IR or 60-day IL.

I plan on reviewing my injury feeds soon and hope that one of the injury statuses will be a good stand-in for IR / 60IL but no definitive answer yet. This is on my mind though, don’t worry.

Thanks. Always looking to find opportunities to expand my roster to stash players for next year. :slight_smile:

Yeah we’ll see. One of the reasons it’s a 25-man roster and 9-man starting lineup is to have a truly extended bench, and again since the NBA doesn’t really have an IR-equivalent, there may not be a great way to allow more roster spots based on injury status.

Yeah makes sense. There’s going to be a limited number of G-league or NCAA players worth rostering in any given year too, so 25 is probably plenty of roster spots even if you’re building for the future.

Are you able to disclose the criteria for earning position eligibility? X amount of games starting, similar to baseball? What about a bench player, can they earn position eligibility? Etc…

It’s just data provider’s discretion. Especially with the modern NBA, it’s really hard to measure and track positions in-game, so we will just go with whatever they have.

That’s what I expected. Prefect, thank you for the follow up.

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Interesting. Not the biggest fan of turnovers as a category—they tend to be the most obvious punt imo—but I get it, especially since 9-cat makes more sense if it’s one win a week rather than a win for each category. Glad there’s a games started cap. Excited to get a league going!

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is there a plan to introduce a roto scoring option in the coming years?

This is the roto offering we’ll offer in the first year. My initial thought is that Ottoneu Fantasy Basketball will be H2H-only, but we will see.

i humbly advocate in favor of adding a roto option in the future–i prefer it to h2h for two main reasons:

firstly, as basketball is a sport in which a handful of guys really make the difference, even with the weekly games played limits, the unbalanced schedule can heavily influence h2h matchups. if say a team’s best player(s) has(ve) two games scheduled in a week and an opposing team’s best player(s) has(ve) four games, then the latter team has a big advantage.

secondly–and this is more of an aesthetic preference–with full season roto, one needs to give greater consideration to how players and their skill sets complement each other and fit together…

obviously, i don’t assume many others have a strong preference for season long roto, but this is more-or-less why i do. excited regardless!!

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FWIW, this is why we will be implementing position game caps every week, 3 games per lineup slot.

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Lead your league in blocked shots and win the Tree Rollins badge.
tree

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I’m new to this format and not a baseball fan so it wasn’t on my radar until basketball. I read through the rules and I have a question on the waiver rules. If I waive a player, then half their salary is on my books in dead money. However, that dead money evaporates if the player is picked up on waivers. It also looks like it goes away if he’s picked up as an in-season auction and that part seems unusual. I can pick up my own player after 30 days, can’t I reset his dead money by picking him up for a cheap $1 auction? Maybe I’m missing a rule on that.

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Right, after 30 days you can start an auction for a player that you’ve cut. However, the starting bid for that player will be the same as the penalty that you’re carrying.

For example, say I cut a $40 player, which creates a $20 cap penalty. Assume he’s not claimed. In 30 days I can start an auction on that player, but the minimum bid will be $20, not $1. It’s also a minimum bid of $20 for anyone else starting an auction on the player.

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