While we’ve got a little lull here in the schedule, I thought I’d chime in on a topic I’ve been meaning to write about for awhile - head to head leagues. More specifically, I want to talk a little bit about why I don’t think they really work for fantasy basketball.
One of the most challenging things about fantasy sports is dealing with the uncertainty factor, be it an injury, a mid-season trade, whatever. In fact, most of the writing that we do here is based on trying to mitigate and take advantage of uncertainties as a fantasy factor. The thing is, it’s also one of the things that makes fantasy sports so exciting. It’s why taking huge leaps of faith on guys like Baron Davis, Tim Duncan or Amare Stoudamire generate so much talk around draft time and through the year.
However, there’s two kinds of uncertainty - luck and risk. Risk is good. Risk is the debatable stuff: How well a rookie will perform, how many games will an injury risk play, how players will mesh with new teams. It’s the life blood of fantasy sports, gambling, etc, and I love it. Luck, however, is bad. It’s stuff that you can’t possibly forsee or plan for or that really should have no bearing on your ability as a fantasy player. It’s the most frustrating part of fantasy basketball, and unfortunately, H2H leagues bring them into the forefront. Here are my three biggest beefs with H2H fantasy basketball:
1. The weekly games played issue.
Now, come on. you can’t tell me that in the heat of the draft, you’re looking at a guy and saying, “well, he’s not as good as this other guy, but his schedule complements my team a little better.” The extreme example was last week where most teams played either one or two games. The difference between one game and two, obviously, is huge, and teams with few one-gamers has a nice advantage over teams that have a lot of one-gamers. But that’s ridiculous! Just because your team has a more favorable schedule this week doesn’t mean that your team should have any real advantage in the standings. That might be an extreme example but this happens every week to some degree. This is closely related to…
2. The weekly lineups issue.
Listen, I know how impossible it is to predict when one player is going to play versus when he isn’t. I have problems with this all the time, and we have daily lineups. So I can’t imagine how impossible it is to predict the future six days ahead of time. A perfect example was Elton Brand last week, who sat out two games with absolutely no warning. Daily lineup leaguers were at least able to plug in a bench player to get some help. Weekly lineup leaguers were totally SOL. Even worse, this set-up means that the injury affects TWO teams - it gives a big disadvanage to the injured player’s team while giving a huge advantage to their opponent!
3. The innattentive owners issue.
It’s just the truth. Over the course of a nearly 6-month season, the owners of struggling teams are going to stop paying attention. It happens in rotisserie leagues just like it happens in H2H leagues. The only thing is, in rotisserie it affects all of the competitive owners the same. No one gets any real benefit over anyone else if the last place guy stops paying attention. Not so in H2H. Here, only the teams scheduled to play against the lame owner benefit, and that’s a big advantage over guys who don’t get to play against the walkover.
Now, granted, a lot of these arguments can also be made for fantasy football, but with so much less attention attrition, so much more of a trash-talking culture, the lack of good rotisserie stats, I can see the point of doing H2H for football. But basketball? Not so much. Rotisserie works and works well. The best team will win the championship, not the one who got to play the most teams who were decimated by injury at the time. H2H is a neat idea for football, but please, let’s not get carried away with it.
17 Responses to “Thoughts on Head to Head”
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February 20th, 2007 at 7:34 am
Rotisserie is lame and boring. That’s why people in rotisserie leagues drop out much more often. It’s much more fun to have an opponent each week. Every one of the problems you mention can happen to any team in the league; they’re part of the game.
I’ve tried to get into rotisserie, but it just seems silly. And I don’t think I’m alone. Head-to-head fantasy basketball leagues are here to stay.
February 20th, 2007 at 8:32 am
I don’t think it’s necessary for either one of the league to bash the other. I participate in both leagues, and I think H2H and Roto are completely different games.
H2H is more exciting for most people since every game is significant for that week’s result. If you play with a group of friends it’s definitely more fun to start over every week and match up with different opponents.
With Roto leagues, after about 4 months the team rankings are pretty much set. There is really little incentive for managers to log into their account and check on their teams if they’re not top 3. Imagine you’re ranked #6 right now in a Roto league with 5 weeks to go… you already know it’s highly improbable for you to win this season. On the other hand, 2/3 of the teams in H2H leagues are still hoping to make the playoffs because just like in the real NBA, anything can happen in the playoffs.
Different skills are required for each format. In H2H leagues you need to worry about the # of games per week and which 5 categories your team is capable of winning during that particular week. For Roto leagues you need to worry about how many games you’ve played at each position and all 9 (or however many) categories of stats. Both are fun, but H2H is probably more exciting since each week is a game within a game while for Roto the entire season is just one long game.
Roto format is a more accurate way to measure the true worth of NBA players since all 9 categories are significant. For H2H leagues, each team only needs to win 5 out of the 9 categories each week. This is why I feel players like Shawn Marion and AK47 are not worth as much in H2H leagues, because no team will ever need all 9 categories… it is more important to figure out which 5 categories that your team is good at, and draft players who are good at those 5 and only those 5.
Don’t HATE the game…
PARTICIPATE (in both games)… and
APPRECIATE (the fun in H2H and Roto)….
PEACE.
February 20th, 2007 at 9:26 am
One other thing that adds to the fun factor of H2H leagues is the trash talk aspect when you’re playing with a group of friends. In my H2H league, the trash talk is pretty constant and quite entertaining.
When Nash drops 20 dimes on a Sunday to give you a narrow 5-4 win in H2H, that is much more fun than if he gets you a little closer to taking over 3rd place in assists your roto league. Plus, it clearly qualifies you to ridicule your opponent’s managing skills and/or physical shortcomings.
I do agree with one of the downsides of H2H that bv pointed out. The scheduling issue always grates on me. The other two issues can be addressed to some extent by playing in a daily lineup H2H league with keepers (or with close friends who are less likely to give up).
Overall, I do think Roto leagues reward the most strategic managers, which is great. I play both H2H and Roto in baseball and I really prefer Roto. However, for my group of friends, H2H has made for a very fun and competitive basketball league. Sure, there is some luck involved, particularly in the playoffs, but in some ways that adds to the fun and keeps more guys interested.
February 20th, 2007 at 11:29 am
Going off topic here, but I’ve been having a burning question:
Is an owner adamant on keeping Steve Nash worth trading LeBron James and Andris Biedrins? That trade sounds crazy, but here’s where I stand:
*If* Darko goes through waivers and I pick him up, *if* he’s able to replace LeBron/Biedrins block totals, meaning he needs to average ~2.5blk, then losing Biedrins won’t be quite as bad. I’ll still miss his FG%/REB.
My team is weak on FG/FT/3PTM/AST and could definitely use Steve Nash to patch up those 4 problem areas. If the trade goes through, I’ll be decent to dominant in everything.
February 20th, 2007 at 11:48 am
Nice article.
I agree with all of your points about H2H. I appreciate the point about risk vs luck, which is something I’d never heard articulated that way before, but makes a lot of sense.
This is my 2nd season doing roto-basketball, and my first season doing H2H. I greatly prefer the roto-format.
It’s not that H2H can’t be fun, it’s just that the luck:skill ratio becomes too high for my taste.
An added ridiculous thing about my H2H league is that it has Daily Changes which would be a good thing, exceot that there’s no limit on games played. Thus you can add/drop (”stream”) people throughout the week to play more game then your opponent. I think that’s annoying.
February 20th, 2007 at 12:32 pm
As mentioned, H2H is a lot more fun IMO.
I also strongly disagree on #3 - owners are a lot more likely to drop out of roto leagues than h2h. Many people find Roto style very boring in all fantasy sports, not just b-ball. H2H gives you the excitement of side bets and trash talking. With a good group of guys, it is a blast. Like everything though, this is highly dependent on the people involved. But h2h with playoffs gives even the people at the bottom of the standings a puncher’s chance in the last few weeks to crack into the playoffs. It keeps people involved to the very end in my experience.
While your #1 and #2 are not invalid arguments (in fact, the early week injury thing is my biggest gripe as well), you kind of need to look at this all in a mathematical probability sense. At the end of the year, everybody is going to have weeks where they had more games and weeks where they had less games. We’re all going to benefit from our share of injuries and unexpected absences, and we’re all going to hurt from our share of injuries and unexpected absences. Statistical anomalies aside, these things tend to come out in a wash. Psychologically speaking, human nature dictates that we always tend to feel we’re getting the short end of the stick in situations like this, but in reality it ends to break even. And if you do happen to be the guy who got screwed this season, odds are you won’t be next year.
I still think the biggest element in either roto or h2h is major injuries (1 week+). This season has shown it more than ever - generally speaking the healthier teams are at the top and the injury-riddled teams are at the bottom.
February 20th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
In response to JM’s comment that one of the problem with H2H format is there’s no limit on games played.
That is definitely a problem. I play with a group of friends (this is our 3rd year playing H2H together)… and in our league there’s a maximum of 45 moves per season. This is something that Yahoo should integrate into their standard H2H rules.
February 20th, 2007 at 2:12 pm
Ive been trying to turn my h2h’ers into a roto league, but we’ve all known each other (most personally) for years. so we do H2H for bragging right on who beat who in week 7!!!!
it fun to play my friends from week to week and talk crap and then kill them or get killed!
your arguements against h2h are right though, id love to have a roto league with my league, plus im better at roto
February 20th, 2007 at 5:44 pm
Our H2H, weekly, keeper league struggles with this same problem. We can’t find a godo compromise between limiting transactions (for streaming, or churning purposes), injuries, and daily vs weekly lineup issues.
We’d love it if Yahoo would put in weekly limits, or even average scores across the week (which is good, but creates problems of it’s own). There seems to be no clear cut great way to run H2H, and the various platforms (yahoo, cbs, nba, espn) all have their various issues implementing what you’d want too.
Is fantasy basketball just destined to be a “lesser” fantasy sport than football?
http://slam-nation.blogspot.com/
February 20th, 2007 at 6:59 pm
I have my complaints with H2H as any avid fantasy basketball manager would have. It’s one of the reasons I actually campaigned for a, get this, LeBron James and Delonte West trade for Steve Nash and Ruben Patterson.
My team hurts on FG/FT/3PTM/AST, CLE plays 4 games vs 5 PHO games and even if LeBron/Nash sit out games, I’d wager Nash ends up playing more anyway because of the H2H schedule. I’ll miss owning LeBron, but my team is better because of dumping King James.
February 20th, 2007 at 10:58 pm
Hi, I need some quick advice… given that Wally Szczerbiak sprained his ankle again tonight (4th time in the last 2 months)….
Would you drop Wally for Randy Foye?
February 20th, 2007 at 11:01 pm
My H2H league has a cap at 27 moves (or somewhere around there). That lets you make enough moves to upgrade/change your team but not enough to stream. That seems to work for that particular problem….
Carl
February 20th, 2007 at 11:51 pm
yeah, my leagues max moves is set at 30. havent had any abuse yet in two seasons.
In response to john, I have no idea why fantasy football is more popular than fantasy basketball! I think it has more to do with the popularity of the sport than it does with the fantasy part of the game. I know thats a pretty obvious statement, but I dont even play fantasy football anymore because its too boring. I know that may be blasphemy to many of you, but fantasy basketball is the best by far, and then baseball is my second favorite! Id even play fantasy hockey before football and im not a huge hockey fan.
as a side note, dwight howard was robbed with that 43 he got for the sticker dunk!
February 21st, 2007 at 2:16 pm
@cman - The point of argument #3 was not that owners are less likely to drop out in Roto. That’s obviously not true. The point was that owners who drop out in Roto don’t give an advantage to only a few particular teams, but rather, their quitting affects everyone evenly.
February 21st, 2007 at 2:16 pm
I think most fantasy basketball players are coming to realize (as the comments here demonstrate): H2H is for playing with friends/for fun, while Roto is for players who want to demonstrate a level of mastery that is based on skill and strategy with luck affecting the outcome as little as possible.
February 21st, 2007 at 2:20 pm
And finally: Yes, I believe that fantasy basketball is destined to be a “lesser” fantasy sport unless basketball as a whole can become more popular than football.
And as a fantasy basketball fanatic, I’m cool with that. I don’t want someone coming in to my local bar with a laptop and checking their fantasy scores while watching a Bulls game or TNT Thursday. Leave that kind of stuff to the football crazies.
February 22nd, 2007 at 6:05 am
1. The weekly games played issue.
Plan accordingly. For example I bumped up Arenas and Nash for 2 spots each in my list before this season fantasy draft, cause of their play-off shedule. OR Trade for a players with a better shedule latter in the season. For example I traded Kidd for Iverson in one of my leagues where I’m on top to have thet additional games advantage in play-offs.
Problem solved.
2. The weekly lineups issue.
Play in daily leagues if this bothers you.
Problem solved.
3. The innattentive owners issue.
Play with your friends or expierienced players.
Problem solved.