To celebrate the unofficial second start of the NBA season, ESPN Fantasy is making it easy to start your fantasy basketball season right now!
Sign up to play or create your own custom league to start fresh with no stats carried over from the beginning of the season.
We've even created a mini "not too late to draft" draft guide to help you get started. With ESPN fantasy and the ESPN Fantasy App, you can play how you want, when you want, and where you want.
The best three words in the English Language are as follows: Fantasy Draft Day.
While the season tipped in mid-October, the NBA is just starting to kick into gear, with the Christmas Day games later this month as the unofficial start of the NBA binge-watching for a large segment of the country. Starting a fantasy hoops squad now would let you ramp up your own fantasy hoops team on a similar timeline, filling your winter and early spring months with the excitement of both the NBA and your fantasy basketball playoffs races.
For many, fantasy drafts are synonymous with the preseason. But why limit something you want to just once a year? There's no reason why fantasy drafts can't happen any time, and in fact, we're getting hyped about starting a new fantasy basketball season. Right now.
Many of you have said, for years, that you wished the NBA season started a couple of months later, as the NFL season is winding down. Many more have told us that they really don't get all the way into the NBA until the New Year, or that the fantasy basketball season is just too long for them. Well, we hear you.
We learned during the COVID-shortened 2020-21 season that starting a fantasy hoops season in December is ideal for a lot of people who want more separation between their NFL/fantasy football and NBA/fantasy basketball obsessions. But, unlike 2021, this season will end as usual, in April.
So, starting your fantasy hoops season now gives you a four-month sprint with three months of play and a bit less than a month of playoffs, enough time to really enjoy the season without getting overloaded or burnt out.
ESPN's League Manager allows you to set up and draft your leagues at any time for an entirely fresh start, with no carryover of early season numbers. You can sign up to run a league or to join an existing one at any time, and we'll generate a schedule for you that begins the following Monday.
For those who like to run things their way, the game allows for plenty of custom settings, including how many teams in your league and how many make the playoffs.
There are 16 weeks left in the NBA, and 15 scoring periods will remain as of Monday, Dec. 19. That gives you the ability to set up a 12-team league where you play everyone once and then have a four-week playoff bracket. In a 10--team league with two divisions, you could play everyone in your division twice (8 games), everyone in the other division once (5) and have two weeks left for the playoffs. In an 8-team league, you have time to play everyone twice and have a one-week final for the top two teams. You can play with the permutations down to four teams as well.
Another advantage to starting now: we know so much more about the NBA season now than we did in mid-October, which means that our fresh fantasy basketball drafts will be so much better informed. We know now that Jayson Tatum really was ready for a higher form of war (shout-out Thor for the turn of phrase), joining Luka Doncic, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Nikola Jokic at the top of the NBA and fantasy hoops MVP competition.
We know now that Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was ready to make his own superstar leap and is worthy of a first-round draft pick in fantasy hoops leagues.
We know how the big offseason moves look. How Donovan Mitchell and Darius Garland can coexist; how Trae Young and Dejounte Murray share the same backcourt; how Rudy Gobert and Karl-Anthony Towns share the center spot. And, due to injuries to one or the other, we've also gotten to see how each team looks with only one or the other of their centerpieces playing without the other.
And, hey, if you haven't been paying attention, don't worry, we have, and we made it easy for you to catch up with our "not too late to draft" draft guide. We've also updated the projections and rankings in the ESPN draft rooms to reflect only the games that remain to be played.
Everyone loves a fresh start. And having your fantasy team set up and going strong has always proven to be one of the best, most unique ways of fully enjoying a sport season.
This is a win-win-win situation, and the perfect time for you to get your own league set up and draft your fantasy basketball team fresh for the new year. If you do, it'll be one of the best holiday presents that you can give to yourself.