The NBA season begins!

I'm a big basketball fan, so the new NBA season is welcome news. And because I'm obsessed with the NBA, I have joined four fantasy leagues this year.

My favorite is the Yahoo Fantasy Sports. I have 2 rotisserie (aka roto) leagues and 1 head-to-head league in Yahoo. In roto, you add up all the stats to decide the winner of the league. For example, if you have 12 teams in your league and you lead the category of steals, you get 12 points for that category. 2nd place gets 11 points, 3rd gets 10 and so on. You add up all the points garnered in each category to determine your ranking in the league. In head-to-head leagues, you play against someone in your league for a single week. The points garnered will determine the ranking for the playoffs for the season. Whoever wins the playoffs will be crowned the champion.

I used to favor head-to-head, because there is variety in the opponent you play every week. However, it is frustrating to play because even if you end up being the first at the end of the regular season, it doesn't mean squat if you somehow get unlucky in the playoffs (e.g. your players all get injured, busy schedule, etc). A manager who somehow gets lucky (e.g. sudden surge of his players, weak brackets, add/drop strategy) can win the championship even if he has had an ugly regular season So I am now more into roto because it entails more deliberate thinking (i.e. there are only a limited number of games that you can play for each position). Plus, the stats are tallied for the whole season. Thus, you cannot win the championship by just pure luck.

NBA has its own fantasy games, but I'm not a big fan. The pages are slow to load, the instructions are confusing, and the service is generally unsatisfactory. But I joined one league because it has a different format, a points-based league. It is similar to roto, so I am intrigued. If it's good, then maybe I'll stick around. But if it's not, I'm staying with Yahoo.