Winning your fantasy basketball league is 75% luck and 25% attentiveness. We can’t do much to turn your luck around, but we can make sure you know where to rank players and how to tinker with your team on the fly.
Critical to success in any fantasy league is understanding the waiver wire or fantasy free agency. In fantasy basketball, how often you’re allowed to set your lineup will determine how often you’re on the wire.
Weekly lineups set your team for the week so any waiver wire pickup will likely apply to next week’s roster. Daily lineups on the other hand allow you to pick up a player at 6:00 pm and start him an hour later.
No matter your league format or if you’re in Yahoo, ESPN or CBS leagues, here’s your guide to mastering the art of the add/drop with some top fantasy basketball waiver wire strategies.
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Fantasy Basketball Waiver Wire Strategies by League Type
The waiver wire in fantasy basketball, like other fantasy sports, is a pool of unrostered players who can be picked and added to rosters by any manager in your league. When a player is dropped, they are put on waivers for a set period, allowing them to be claimed by managers, with the order of waiver priority determining who gets the first shot at a recently dropped or undrafted player.
After the initial waiver period, the rest of the players on the waiver wire who weren’t picked up by anyone are considered free agents and can be added immediately. How your waiver wire works depends on your league’s rules and format.
Here are some strategies for winning the fantasy basketball waiver wire in various formats:
Weekly Fantasy Basketball Waiver Wires
With 82 regular season games, the NBA makes for a marathon of a fantasy season. Weekly lineup sets make it a little more manageable by limiting how many times you can set your lineup. With fewer lineup sets comes fewer changes you can make to your roster.
In weekly lineup sets, things operate much the same way as in fantasy football: You make claims on players based on a priority system, which is set randomly at the beginning of the year. Once you make your claim on a player, you go to the back of the line and move up as other league members make their own claims.
Daily Fantasy Basketball Waiver Wires
As the name implies, daily fantasy basketball lineups allow you to make moves every day of the week. There is still a waiting period on someone who was recently dropped, but your lineup can be more dynamic.
Someone you put a claim in on Monday could be putting up 21 points and seven rebounds on your team by Thursday.
With daily fantasy lineups, the waiver wire could win you the week. An extra consideration to make when playing fantasy basketball is the number of games a player has in a week. The impact of someone playing four games vs. just two swings entire matchups.
In most daily systems, there is also a cap on the amount of moves you can make in a week so don’t go too crazy on Tuesday night. You might need those moves on Saturday.
Weekly Vs. Daily Fantasy Basketball Waiver Wire Strategies
The major difference between weekly and daily waiver wire strategies is obvious: frequency.
In daily leagues, your roster can be fluid. Need a burst of steals over the weekend? Try to find a guard with a back-to-back. Player injured on Wednesday? Pick up a player that can keep you on track in the meantime.
In weekly leagues you should be thinking medium- to long-term. You want subs for players who will miss extended time for injury, free agents that have been thrust into a more prominent role or simply a way to drop an underperformer and shake up your team’s energy.
Waiver Wire Strategy for Free Agent Budget (FAAB)
Whether you play in a daily lineup or weekly lineup league, the complexity is turned up a notch with a free agent acquisition budget (FAAB). Dabbling in free agency with a salary cap requires more calculated decision making. With typically just $200 per season to spend on waiver wire pickups, you should have an idea of the medium- and long-term potential of the player before you blow your budget.
How to determine how much FAAB to spend
How much of your FAAB you should spend depends on the potential impact of that player on your team long-term. If a starting point guard were to miss significant time, adding their backup will call for a higher allocation than someone you look at as a weekly replacement.
Bidding “Just Over”
Popular pickup bids are highly competitive. Every marginal advantage matters. Often, managers think in nice, clean numbers like 10, 20, 30. Not you, you anticipate those lazy bids and kick yours up to 11, 21, or 31.
Bidding odd numbers
Maybe there are some savvy managers in your league. They’re playing the “just over” game, but not you. You’re even savvier. You’re thinking in 17s, 29s and 45s. Your bets are chaotically calculated in building your team of destiny.
Impact of Fantasy Basketball Waiver Wire
With the duration of the season and the ever-changing rotations of NBA lineups, the fantasy basketball waiver wire is one of the most important elements of the game.
Picking up the right player off of the waiver wire at the right time can be a game-changer for your week’s or day’s matchups. Check your league settings to make sure you know if it’s a rolling priority list or a free agency budget system.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is a fantasy basketball waiver wire?
The waiver wire in fantasy basketball is a pool of unrostered players that managers can choose or bid on players from to add to their roster or replace an injured player.
What does FAAB stand for in fantasy sports?
FAAB stands for Free Agent Acquisition Budget. It is an auction-based format for determining which manager wins a player off the waiver wire.
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