• HOOPBALLERS!

    If you’ve made it this far, then welcome! Just like Happy Gilmore’s visions when he’s lining up a putt, HoopBall is our happy place. This is a vibrant and growing community filled with NBA sunshine, rainbows, colorful characters, Steph Curry 3s, ferocious Giannis dunks and everything in between. The HoopBall Draft Guide is our masterwork and the heartbeat of this very site.

    You’re here because you followed a voice inside you that has thought about either getting into or getting better at fantasy basketball but weren’t sure how to go about it. Well let me put your mind at ease, you’ve come to the right place.

    Editor’s Note: If you want to check out the Guide right now you can click here.

    I’m Josh Millman. I’ve written and contributed at HoopBall for the past three seasons and I’ll be your friendly HoopBall Draft Guide Welcoming Committee. On behalf of all of us here at the place we lovingly call ‘The Hoob,’ thank you for considering us as your primary source of NBA and fantasy basketball information. We’re thrilled you’re here.

    We know you may have some questions before you’re ready to take the real plunge and lay some real moolah on our Draft Guide. I’m here to help answer them for you. You may be a bit skeptical or not sure if you’re truly ready to put any kind of scratch down for fantasy basketball information when you’ve been able to scour things for free in the past. On paper it may not sound like a big investment, but we understand. Any purchase you make comes with a blind trust that you are going to get your money’s worth.

    We also know there are any number of places where you can get fantasy basketball information. We’re definitely not here to bad mouth them either. Not our style. There are lots of great people that we know and respect that are putting out solid content around fantasy basketball. But we truly believe we have built a team of the best minds in fantasy basketball and together we have put together the single best Draft Guide you’ll find anywhere.

    If you’re just getting started in fantasy basketball, we’re certain that after buying our Draft Guide that you’ll have a strong knowledge base and feel nothing but confidence as you head into your first drafts. If you’ve played fantasy hoops before and are looking to kick your game up a notch, we know all the tricks of the trade and can arm you with strategies to outsmart and outplay your competition. We have fun putting this together because, well, fantasy basketball is a ton of fun. But we also like to put ourselves in position to pour ourselves some of that sweet, sweet gravy because this is still a financial competition at the end of the day, and who doesn’t enjoy the euphoric sensation of victory?

    How do I know all of this and why am I so confident in HoopBall beyond being a part of this team? Because over three years ago, I was in your shoes. I was just starting my fantasy basketball journey and that same voice in your head was the same as in mine. I decided to put my faith into this site, dive into this Draft Guide and now here I am, writing about my fantasy basketball experience and knowledge and passing it on to you, my fellow hoops fan.

    Knowing that you probably have the same questions I did when I reached this very spot, I wanted to walk you through everything that I was thinking and asking myself those years ago. I’m going to do a mock interview with my past self to get all these questions and answers out in the open the way I wish they were back when I was just a customer. As you well know, any good tour guide loves to hear themselves talk and as any one of my colleagues here will tell you, I am definitely no different.

    Past Me, go ahead and fire any questions you have at Present-Day Me.

    How are you Present-Day Me?

    I’m doing well, all things considered, thank you. Work has been crazy and remote schooling for my kids is stressing me out but otherwise, my family is healthy and that’s all I can ask for.

    How are you Past Me?

    I’m good, thanks. Been looking around for some fantasy basketball research because some buddies I do a football league with decided to also do one for the NBA.

    That’s great! You’re going to love it. It’s easily my favorite of any fantasy sport. What can I help you with?

    Really, this is the big question when I’m staring at any internet paywall. Why would I pay for this Draft Guide when there is plenty of fantasy basketball information available for free?

    You’re absolutely right, there is a lot of fantasy basketball information available for free. Like all things that are free, some of it is good, some of it is crap. But there’s an old adage that goes, ‘You get what you pay for.’

    What that means is that we put a price tag on this draft guide because we have poured our hearts and brains into this Draft Guide. We spend countless hours, days, weeks, and months consuming the NBA to cover every angle you can possibly think of when it comes to fantasy basketball. We’re not in the business of churning out mediocre content for cheap clicks that you need to wade through a million ads for useless apps and celebrity gossip in order to reach. This is our business and our blood, sweat and tears at work and because of that we do charge for this to make your fantasy basketball experience the best it can be. But we believe that it’s worth every penny and then some.

    Ok, what exactly do I get for my money that I can’t get for free? 

    Well this is the most comprehensive Draft Guide there is in all of fantasy basketball so you’re getting all the information you can possibly handle. It is a mountain of player stats, data, and analysis all sorted so that you can easily read through and make informed decisions when it is time for you to draft your team.

    So it’s rankings, projections, and stuff like that?

    You’re selling it short if you just think of it as just rankings, projections, and stuff like that. Yes, we have all of that along with the typical Sleepers, Breakouts, and Busts list that are always popular.

    But it’s so much more.

    For starters, you’re getting in depth player profiles of over 500 NBA players. Think about that, 500 players! In standard drafts, you’re only picking around 150-180 players and most rankings lists that are freely available stop at 200 players at most. We’re doing deep dives on over 500 of them. Put it this way, there was a reason why people who subscribed to the Hoop-Ball Draft Guide knew about players like Devonte’ Graham, Davis Bertans, Richaun Holmes, Norman Powell, Daniel Theis, and Dennis Schroder well before everyone else was.

    These player profiles are everything you need to know about all of those 500+ individual players and why you should or should not draft them. Then we look at each one within the prism of their positions, schedules, injury history, how many years they’ve been in the league, and more. It is NBA basketball covered at every angle you can imagine.

    As the draft season progresses, we make recommendations on who to draft, who to avoid, why someone might be labeled a sleeper or bust and not just labeling them. We have tons of articles about how to win by category, who might crush your percentages, trends in average draft position and fun stuff like that. Then as the season draws closer, we plant our flags on the players we think are going to be the biggest league winners and make our bold predictions on the season.

    We also host mock drafts with HoopBall contributors and our Draft Guide readers to get a gauge on how drafts will play out. It’s an opportunity to engage with the people who put the Draft Guide together and do practice runs with all the knowledge that’s been laid out in front of you.

    And then of course, there’s the industry’s finest and most consistently accurate rankings list there is: The B150 created by Aaron Bruski himself.

    I guess you’re right, that is a lot of information, but who is this Aaron Bruski character anyway and what makes the B150 so special? You make him sound like he’s a King or something…

    Not a real King per se, a Sacramento King perhaps. No really, Bruski knows more about the Sacramento Kings than most people know about their own children.

    Anyway, Aaron Bruski is the founder of this very site, a championship level fantasy basketball player and the best fantasy analyst in the business. You could say that’s hyperbole and I’m just being biased, but that’s the truth. He spent a decade at NBA/Rotoworld doing his own rankings and projections. His rankings consistently beat the consensus of all NBA experts by finding players who he believed would drastically outperform their expectations and making serious ranking bets on them. It got to the point where he was competing in high stakes fantasy basketball leagues and his competition started using his ranks against him. Guess what, he still won anyway.

    Editor’s Note: If you want to check out the Guide and more you can click right here!

    So instead of letting the competition rip off his insight and rankings for free, he decided to start the very platform that you’re currently reading this on. He still creates the B150 and it still consistently outperforms everyone else’s rankings and projections. It is in the B150 that you get Bruski’s best, the boldest predictions and the players that no one else is giving a chance to outperform where they are being drafted. The B150 is designed to help you win. It pulls no punches and is clear about who will be great and outperform their average draft position and who you can ignore in drafts.

    OK, but with all the information and player profiles you have on here it can’t just be Bruski doing all this, right?

    That’s exactly right. The B150 is a lynchpin piece of this Draft Guide but our fearless leader assembled the best fantasy army on the internet to build a Basketball Megatron. HoopBall and this Draft Guide is the work of the best fantasy basketball minds on the planet that Bruski hand-picked to help you win your league. There’s Dan Besbris, the host of the Fantasy NBA Today podcast. There’s our Editor-In-Chief Mike Passador, known around these parts as Panda, who won one of the industry’s premier leagues, a 30-team fantasy competition.

    Wait, did you say a 30-team league?!?

    Yup, a 30-team league of the industry’s biggest names from every fantasy site you can think of. Panda repped The Hoob and conquered.

    (Editor’s Note: You haven’t lived until you’ve turn to Shabazz Muhammad as a streaming option.)

    Damn!

    Yup. And there’s so much more talent that I haven’t even gotten to who have spent years building strong reputations in this field, who know their hoops inside and out and have competed against the best of the best. Our Associate Editor Erik Ong, former Rotoworld expert Ethan Norof, former Fantrax expert Adam King, and a whole slew of regular contributors to Hoop-Ball including Souriyo Dishak, Stephen Vidovich, Mike Apotria, Brandon Marcus, and many more, including yours truly.

    Ok, but why can’t I just follow and talk to those guys on Twitter to get their insight?

    You certainly could, they are all active on Twitter. But you know Twitter, it’s not the greatest to get real insight from within 280 characters and it isn’t always easy to respond to the ‘who should I draft, this guy or that guy’ questions that quickly escalate during the preseason.

    When you’re a Draft Guide subscriber though, you have our attention. You’re the one we pay attention to the most. When you’re within these walls, you’re part of our family and nobody goes against the HoopBall family. So when you have questions, there are a ton of ways to get answers from the people who put the work in. Live chats, forum posts, video streams, you name it. Chances are you’re going to hear directly from any one of us, even Bruski himself. We’re constantly adding new ways to build our community and hear directly from the folks who built this Draft Guide.

    Ah, I see. It really is interactive.

    Very much so. We want this to be the very best basketball experience you have on these here interwebs. It’s not just about the Draft Guide, even though it has more NBA information to swim through than Scrooge McDuck has cash and gold coins in his vault. It’s about staying connected to The Hoob all season and helping you to become a winning fantasy basketball player.

    You guys sound really competitive. I mean, I do like winning, but right now I’m really just a casual fantasy player. I’ve done leagues with my friends and there’s money involved but that’s about it.

    No problem at all. We don’t expect that everyone wants or needs to study to become high-stakes championship fantasy players.

    But even casual players need to build their knowledge base and not look like chumps in front of their friends. No one wants to be that guy or gal who drafts the dude who’s already injured, washed up, or gives up on their draft halfway through and goes on autopilot. By investing in the Draft Guide, you’re going to want to put your best foot forward at your draft and that will make you look like you know what you’re doing to your friends. The pride factor in that is worth it too. If your league is casual and there’s still a small dollar amount on the line, then you’ll be in a better position to win because you weren’t Autodraft Guy or Forgot to Draft a Starting Point Guard Gal. Don’t be those guys or gals. The Draft Guide will make sure you’re not.

    The Draft Guide has so much to offer that even if you’re in a casual league and think this is too much info to handle, then you can pick and choose what is most relevant to you. You may just want to look at the B150 and some mock drafts and that’s totally cool. We all gotta start somewhere. You may not need to look at all 500 player profiles, but they’re there if you want to.

    Ok, this all seems cool and worth the money but I’m still leery about paying for fantasy information. I already have to pay for my league so it feels like an additional fantasy basketball fee that I didn’t plan to spend. 

    That makes sense and I know that money is tight these days. But try to reframe your thinking of spending in different terms. Instead of paying $50 for a league entry fee, now you’re paying $70. And this is the big one — think of WINNING differently. Since this guide is created to help you win all you need to do is subtract from your winnings. Even finishing in 3rd place of your will net you double your entry fee. So instead of winning $50 you’re winning $30. No big deal, right? Now, if you win your league, which is exactly what we want you to do, instead of winning $300, you’d win $280. In that scenario, you’re not going to miss $20 and the Draft Guide would be well worth it and then some.

    Or the other thing to do is join a second league. That way the cost of the Draft Guide is spread out between two leagues instead of one. And you’ve just increased your chances of winning in two leagues because you’ve invested in the Guide. It’s even more practice too. A different league means different competition and other players to potentially be invested in during the season. You might even find yourself applying different strategies in each one without thinking about it because you’ve done the prep work because of the Draft Guide.

    You know what, I’m in. I’m ready to buy the Draft Guide. That much work and effort has to be worth it. Will this really make me a better fantasy basketball player?

    Take it from me, not only will it make you a fantasy basketball player, you’re going to have a blast doing it. I’ll catch you again once you’re in this space a few years from now talking to a past version of yourself.

    Thanks so much Present-Day Me.

    You’re very welcome Past Me.

    There you have it folks. I sure hope that was educational. Come on in and enjoy the fruits of our labor when you’re ready. The water is warm and comfortable. Happy hooping to you all!

    Check out the Guide and more right here!

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