Reasons for Focusing on Head-to-Head Standard Setting
Choosing what league setting you want to play in is a matter of preference. Regardless of their differences, pick the setting which brings you more fun. Fantasy basketball is, after all, a game.
In this channel, I will primarily be focusing on the head-to-head standard setting because:
- Most channels tackle Fantasy Basketball from a general perspective. There are differences between how Rotisserie (Roto) and how Head to Head (H2H) leagues are approached in terms of analyses and strategies.
- To add differentiated value, I want to go in-depth into analyses, strategies, and tactics specific to Head-to-Head (H2H) leagues.
- I prefer the strategic and tactical variety of H2H leagues.
- If strategies and tactics are correctly implemented, I find that H2H leagues can be less impacted by uncontrollable events.
Recap: What are H2H Leagues?
H2H leagues are divided into 2 phases — “Regular Season” and “Playoffs & Finals”.
- Note: Fantasy’s “regular season” and “playoffs & finals” take place during the NBA’s regular season. No game exceeds past the NBA regular season.
In H2H leagues, you are matched-up with another team on a weekly basis, where each statistical category’s totals are compared. Whoever has the higher totals between you and your matchup at the end of the week gets the winning game point for the statistical category. Each statistical category equates to 1 game point.
Your goal is to win majority of the statistical categories to acquire game points in the win column.
During the regular season, your goal is to acquire enough game points in the win column to reach the “playoffs & finals” phase. Usually, the top 8 teams enter the “playoffs & finals” phase.
During the “playoffs & finals” phase, each week is a do-or-die. Your goal each week is to win majority of the statistical categories to get to the next round. Once you win in the finals, you become the overall league champion.
Strategic Variety
Winning in H2H league is not a one-way street. You need to have a balance of short and long-term thinking, as elaborated in this post.
In a gist, to be the champion, you need to:
- Focus on winning majority of the statistical categories in your weekly matchups
- Make it to the “top x” teams that gets into the playoffs & finals phase during the regular season
- Win in do-or-die matchup during the playoffs & finals phase
Satisfying all the win conditions opens up multiple strategic avenues — and this is what makes H2H leagues exciting to play.
Case 1: Stat Build & Games Played
Two (2) key levers that help you satisfy win condition#1 are stat build and games played.
Stat build means choosing which statistical categories you are good at (dominant stats), which ones you will not be good at (punting stats), and which stats you may need to adjust depending on matchup (challenger stats). People most commonly use either a balanced stat build strategy or a punt strategy in their stat build. Given the flexible nature of H2H, both strategies have equal merits.
A balanced team build strategy means that you are not sacrificing any statistical category. The strength of a balanced team is the flexibility in that your team can match up to any team composition. You also have a high chance of not just winning the small majority (winning 5/9 categories), but winning a large majority (winning 6–7/9 categories). However, this strategy is most successful only when you have a high draft position due to a shortage of good all-around players.
A punt strategy means that you are sacrificing certain statistical categories. The strength of a punt strategy is that it requires less maintenance during the season — your team has better focus so there are only a few stats you need to work on. Moreover, you are also at a lesser risk when players sit out due to health or non-health issues since there are more players who specialize in a few statistical categories. However, this strategy may affect your chances of winning the large majority since you can only focus on a certain range of statistical categories.
Under the punt strategy are also sub-strategies that contribute to the strategic variation in H2H leagues. We’ll dive into these sub-strategies in future posts.
Moving to Games Played, the concept is: “More games per week means an increased possibility for higher totals.” Common factors that affect games played are: waiver wires and position distribution.
Waiver wires basically allows you to change players depending on the available player pool. Adding a player with 4 games for the week in exchange of a player with 3 games for the week can turn certain stats to your favor.
In waiver wires, you need to consider your waiver wire position, max adds, and game schedules.
One strategic option that fantasy owners take is to intentionally open 1 slot in their team to strengthen dominant stats or turn a challenger stat into a dominant stat. The drawback in this strategy is that it affects their waiver wire position in the long run, which is crucial in the playoffs & finals phase.
As for the other factor, position distribution allows you to maximize the active slots in your team.
Usually, there are 10 active slots — PG, SG, G, SF, PF, F, C, C, UTL, UTL; and 3 bench slots. Given that there are 7 days a week, the maximum number of games played is 70. If you only have 1 PG and that 1 PG only has 3 games, you might be throwing away 4 games because you can’t fill up the PG slot with an active player.
Generally, you need to maximize each active slot by having an even position distribution in your team — remember to have a backup. However, the position should not be filled mindlessly. You still need to consider your stat build and get players that would strengthen your build.
As an example, let’s say one of your dominant stat is REB, your punting stat is AST, and you need to draft a PG; you can get a PG like Donte DiVicenzo who is top 10 among PGs in REB. This is how you can maximize games played through position distribution to improve your stat build.
There are other factors that impact games played such as having a balanced player team distribution (ex: not having a team full of Bucks players), trades, and game schedules — all these add to the strategic variety in H2H leagues.
Case 2: Short & Long Term Thinking
Besides the strategic options in the game mechanics, H2H leagues make you think both short and long-term. While as much as possible you need to win every week, you also need to set yourself up for success in the latter stages of the fantasy season.
Player Value
One example would be thinking about player value. Who would you take: Steph Curry or Dame Lillard?
Stat-wise, Steph takes 5/9 categories. Dame’s FT% and BPG leads are even negligible since they are very close.
However, given Steph’s injury risk, you can argue that it is better to take Dame over Steph to maximize games played, especially during the latter part of the season.
Trades
Another example would be in trades. Let’s say the trade deadline is March 26, 2021 and we need to evaluate trades — who would be a better player to get: Steph, Dame, or Trae?
To maximize the number of games, it is better to take Dame overall.
If you need to make the playoffs, Trae is valued higher than Steph.
But if you are secured of a playoff slot, Steph is valued higher than Trae (not considering each player’s probability of sitting out games).
As you map your stat build and team composition, your strategic approach would vary based on how you want to achieve the win conditions throughout the fantasy season — and this short and long term thinking adds to the gamesmanship in H2H leagues.
Cushioning The Uncontrollable
Besides the strategic variety, H2H leagues allow more options to manage the impact of uncontrollable events such as injuries, non-health related drama, rest days, and the like.
Wider Player Pool
The focus on winning majority of statistical categories enables more opportunities for punt strategies to work. Punt strategies open up a wider pool of players because of players who are really good at certain stats — most commonly known as specialists.
One of the best examples is Matisse Thybulle. He is ranked at the bottom for most stat categories, but is ranked 10th and 45th in STL and BLKs. For other league settings, he may not be a recommended add and may totally be skipped. But in H2H leagues, he is a good replacement in teams that have STL and BLK as dominant or challenger stats.
Through the concept of specialists, players who have lower overall value are still viable pickups in H2H since they can help you cushion the impact of unforeseen circumstances in your team builds.
Maximizing Waivers
As previously shared, maximizing games played is also a requirement to winning, and waiver wires allow you to do just that in H2H. What makes waiver wires a very useful resource is the fact that there are no maximum games played per position in H2H.
Aside from keeping one slot open to take advantage of waivers, another optimization is to take players who have back-to-back games and maximize your adds for the week.
For example, one of your dominant stat is 3PTM and this stat is led by Duncan Robinson who averages 3.5 3PTM/game. Let’s say he gets injured and is out the whole week. Furthermore, Robinson has 4 games that week — so you lose a total of 14 3PTM for this player.
You can mitigate it by for example, getting De’Anthony Melton (1.7 3PTM/game) who has back-to-back games at the start of the week + Reggie Jackson (1.8 3PTM/game) & Luke Kennard (1.6 3PTM/game) who have back-to-back games at the middle of the week + KCP (1.8 3PTM/game) who has back-to-back games at the latter part of the week. The stats from these players (total of 13.8 3PTM) could make up for the what you loss with Duncan Robinson.
As you can see, it’s not the end when you lose a player in H2H. More often than not, you can find ways to adjust.
Again, choosing the league setting you want to play in is a matter of preference. Given the endless possibilities in H2H, this channel prefers to provide differentiated value through in-depth analyses and discussions of strategies and tactics to win in this league setting.
