The last time I properly followed the National Basketball Association (NBA), the Golden State Warriors had won the championship in the 2018-19 season. Since then, although I have been aware of major trades between teams and which teams were doing well through social media, I stopped paying much attention to the sport as a whole, until my friends invited me to play in a fantasy basketball league this year.
Fantasy sports are described as online games where participants draft real-life players of a sport and play against each other with said teams, according to Philanthropic Fantasy Sports. After drafting players, participants play against one other participant each week, and can “lock in” players, securing that player’s points for that game if they believe that will be the player’s best performance that week. At the end of the week, the participant with the most fantasy points, points awarded based on the statistics of your player in their real-life games, wins that week and improves their overall record. In the app I used, Sleeper, you could also bet on certain players’ performances as well as teams.
The history of fantasy sports goes back to the 1960s; baseball was the first sport to gain a fantasy community, according to The Miami Student. The first versions of fantasy included table-top score tracking based on the athletes’ real-life performances, unlike the many online sites and phone applications nowadays.
Although hesitant at first, I joined the league by paying $20, which would later be added to the joined prize pool of all the players, and started my draft. With nine other players who also paid $20, there was a weighted prize pool split between the first, second, and third place finishers.
Since I had not followed basketball for a while, the majority of the players I drafted were players who were good in 2019 and who I still knew to be good, such as Phoenix Suns power forward Kevin Durant and Los Angeles Clippers small forward Paul George. As I began the drafting process, I quickly realized that I was out of touch with the current state of the NBA, and simply started choosing the players whose names I recognized.
As expected of someone without current NBA knowledge, I started the season with three straight losses. Although this start was discouraging, I slowly began to get the hang of what was going on. Through checking Sleeper, I noticed which players performed well consistently compared to those with unreliable performances. With the hope of getting into the top three and making money, I was motivated to actually try and win, despite being the least knowledgeable participant in the group. Playing fantasy with my friends also gave our group friendly competition and gave us something extra to talk about in our day-to-day conversations.
Checking the Sleeper app every day has almost become part of my daily routine. Due to being involved in fantasy, I also began to watch the NBA again and watch the players I had drafted live, which added an extra layer of excitement when a player on my team was having a good game.
Through playing fantasy basketball, I have gotten back into the NBA as well as given myself something to look forward to when a game is on. Watching my players rack up fantasy points as well as watching them not have good performances all add to the experience, and make it a game different from any other I have played.
For those of you who are thinking about getting into fantasy sports, there are many online leagues that you can join, as well as apps that allow you to create a league of your own to play with your friends. If you are involved in sports, I highly recommend diving into fantasy leagues, but do your research before your draft!