Fantasy Basketball 101By Cody Rivers

Who should I pick first?

• Depending on what pick you have depends on who you should pick first, if you have a top three pick than you should definitely look to pick up a player like LeBron James, Kevin Durant, or James Harden but if you have one of those later picks like 10th than maybe look for a player like Steph Curry or LaMarcus Aldrdige.

ctsnow, "James Harden at Palau Sant Jordi", July 24, 2012, via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution

Who shouldn’t I pick?

There's always that one player to avoid and that player right now is Andrew Bynum. Bynum is never healthy and has yet to play an entire NBA season in his career. He hasn’t even played in a preseason game after missing all of last year with a knee injury. He has some of the biggest upside and can get you a lot of points when he’s healthy, but he could also cost you a lot of points sitting the bench. Avoid Bynum until he can show he can actually play a game or two and than maybe go out and pick him up, but definitely not before he proves he can play.

Biggest steal?

• Nicola Vucevic. Yea I know who the heck is that? Well how does 15 points, 12 rebounds, and a couple blocks sound? EVERY NIGHT! Yea he turns in to who to woh. Best part is no one knows who he is so he can easily be a 9th or even later round pick making him the biggest surprise out there.

What about Kevin Love?

• Kevin Love is always going to dominate the boards and probley get you about 13 or more night in and night out. He's also coming off a season where he missed a great deal of time due to injury so for me Love is a hesitant move, but he has way more upside than bad so it’s a pick in the first or second round or miss out.

How do I boost up my blocks?

• Larry Saunders, led the league in blocks and went games where he got at least 5 blocks a game! He’s improved every year and is only 23 years old. He’s just going to be better this year and maybe average 3 blocks or close to it a game this year.

Rajon Rondo

• Lets face it Rondo lost all of his star players that have made him the assisting machine he once was. Now he’s just a lone star on a Boston Celtics team that is in the process of rebuilding, so the question is can he still rack up the assists that he was so known for doing in the past? Rondo is an all star and lets not count him out, but don’t be surprised if his numbers are down from the past years.

Deron Williams

• Deron Williams as many of us may know has been on the decline as of the past couple of seasons. His points, assists, minutes, and steals are all down so what makes us thing anything is going to change this year? New Jersey made a hugh trade this offseason bringing in two hall of famers and a hall of fame coach! Deron Willliams is going to have less pressure and able to create more so doesn’t that mean his production is going to increase as well?

What about that new guy for the suns?

The suns traded for an up and coming talent in Eric Bledsoe during the offseason. He was able to do so much in LA playing as a backup to Chris Paul so now that he is the main man in Phoenix look for him to have a huge year this year.

What if someone's hurt?

• Everyone is going to get hurt at some point during the season. What should you do when that happens though? Just drop the player if their gonna miss multiple weeks and pick up a solid player who is going to be able to give you solid points.

What about Kobe?

• Kobe Bryant is without a doubt the best Laker in history and one of the best players in NBA history and can score 30 points a game every single night. There's just one little problem with Kobe Bryant. He shots the ball about 40 times a game and shots 40% or under on most nights which is just going to bring your FG% down which for me the points that he could give you just doesn’t add up to the ones you'll be losing due to his shooting percentage.

How do you get all this info??

• A lot of it is just from all the countless years of studying the game of basketball and being a huge fan and watching every single game and player. A great place to go if you wanna get information from professionals who do this kind of stuff for a living is http://www.nba.com/fantasy/?ls=iref:nba:gnav