RealGM

i feel this is an underrepresented area of fantasy sports. most people just talk about values of players in a vacuum. this is non-sense. on draft day this makes more sense. after the draft it goes out the window. gallinari, for example, could be of top 30 value to your team if you're dead in 3s. but zach randolph could be mostly useless to you if you have dwight howard, tim duncan and carlos boozer on your roster.

first of all: if you're really serious about your league (which you prob are cuz this is a past-time for nerds, which is a compliment, not an insult), look over the roster of everyone in your league. e-mail them. let them know who you like and who you don't like. make some proposals. you do not want to see some bull like steve nash and carlos boozer for john wall and tyrus thomas as "trade pending" because you were too lazy to find out the sucker who overvalued potential and youth.

this will be especially useful during the season. everyone has their blind spots, myself included.

roto:

if you are not happy with every one of your starters, DO NOT START THEM

you have 66 games. no one says you have to use them all at once. i rarely use them from the start because more talent, especially at the start and right after the all-star break (trade deadline bro), the waiver wire receives a major influx of talent. if george hill grabs the job over collison and starts going oops upside your head on the league a month from now, you don't want to be unable to milk all you can out of him because you wasted 10 games played on retreads like nick young.

personally i'm waiting for guys like aaron afflalo, tyrus thomas, and brandon knight to put up a decent stat line or two before i start plugging them away. don't be surprised if a lot of players start off slow to the season because of the lack of preseason work. don't be surprised if sleepers take 4-6 weeks to break out because the coaches decided to go with veteran retreads due to the lack of reps available.

h2h:

no time like the present. you can't afford to wait on potential. instant production, and opportunity, takes precedence. if jermaine o'neal goes for 15/7/2 in the first game you better be the first one adding him, not just because those are good numbers but because there's no one to impede his minutes. but if jerryd bayless goes for 15/5 with two steals you can wait a bit because jose calderon is a season-long threat and maybe he just played the suns or something.

MATCHUPS:

add http://knickerblogger.net/statpage/2011/o_pace.htm to your favorites. internalize who plays quickly and who doesn't, and discount/credit players' value accordingly. play close attention to how things change from last year to this year. rumor is nate mcmillan wants to start running more. i'll believe it when i see it, but if you start seeing it the first 3-4 games then you better try to acquire nicolas batum, ya heard?

also keep that page in mind when players go bonkers or start slowly. in roto you need to play matchups because games played matter so much. jarrett jack plays boston next week, for example. i am benching him then because rondo and the celtics kill opposing PG numbers and jack sucks to begin with. similarly if portland plays at a quick tempo but you find out they played the suns, warriors and bulls you can discount those numbers.

in h2h you should probably be streaming. if you're not 100% happy with your team i like to devote one roster spot entirely to streaming the best matchups on the waiver wire. this is a totally broken strategy and one of the main reasons i do my best to avoid h2h. incidentally if you ever see one of your competitors doing this (very common in the playoffs) you can add/drop everybody he might use because they'll be floating on waivers for a couple of days. (yeah dog i'm ruthless when playing fantasy sports hahaha)

this post was long. sorry about that.

I'm not familiar with all the fantasy terms yet, what exactly is streaming? Is it just picking up players that are on a hot streak?

streaming is utilized only in daily leagues. it's when you add a player -- say robin lopez plays the warriors on monday -- with a good matchup the day before his game is played. on monday you drop that player (lopez in this case) for a dude with a good matchup on tuesday (let's say louis williams v the suns). you do this all week long because a lot of leagues don't have a maximum of games played for the week in h2h leagues.

you can do this to shore up individual categories you're weak in (this is particularly broken in leagues that don't count TOs), like only grabbing shot-blockers or PGs.

the only downside is that if you want a player you just dropped you must wait til he clears waivers before you can add him again

Oh I see. That was the main issue in my roto league last year and it's the main reason we're doing h2h this year.

Apathy wrote:streaming is utilized only in daily leagues. it's when you add a player -- say robin lopez plays the warriors on monday -- with a good matchup the day before his game is played. on monday you drop that player (lopez in this case) for a dude with a good matchup on tuesday (let's say louis williams v the suns). you do this all week long because a lot of leagues don't have a maximum of games played for the week in h2h leagues.

you can do this to shore up individual categories you're weak in (this is particularly broken in leagues that don't count TOs), like only grabbing shot-blockers or PGs.

the only downside is that if you want a player you just dropped you must wait til he clears waivers before you can add him again

And that's why you have max moves per week in the good H2H leagues

yeah, over time leagues have become shrewder about limiting it. it's considered a bigger problem in baseball than basketball tho so it's always worth checking your league's settings to see how they handle it