People are starting to gear up for the start of the NBA season at the end of the month.  And that means researching players for their Fantasy NBA Teams.  I am going to write a series of blogs about things you Must-Know in order to win your Fantasy NBA League.

The most important tip in any Fantasy Sport, and most especially in Fantasy Basketball, is that your top players have to stay healthy.  If they aren’t playing enough games, you aren’t going to stand a chance.

Your top five players probably account for 75% of your stats or more, depending on how deep your league is, and probably account for 80 – 85% of your points (unless you happened to get Ben Wallace or Andre Kirilenko as one of your picks).

With that in mind, how can you guarantee that one or more of your top 5 picks don’t go down with a season ending injury after 5 or 10 games?

There really is no guarantee, but you can greatly reduce your chances by looking at the number of games that they played the year before, and to a lesser extent, the year before that.

Finding players that play every single game in an NBA season is rare, though not impossible.  Between stomach flu, deaths in the family, babies born, suspensions for flagrant fouls, and normals bumps and bruises, even the healthiest of players usually miss a few games.  I usually pick a nice round number like 70 games and make sure that every single player I pick played at least 70 games the year before.  If they haven’t, chances are they won’t get met 70 games or more this year either.

And remember, every game that they don’t play is a game that you are replacing with a bench player that you picked up in the 11th or 12th round, or from the free agent market.

Now if you are particularly picky, or you are dealing with a player who missed several years with significant injuries, you probably will want to make sure that they have at least two years of playing 70 or more games before you pick them up.

As an example of this, I finally picked up the injury-plagued Vince Carter last year, after he had two healthy years under his belt.  And he played very well.

Tracy McGrady says his back is finally healthy this year, but you’d be a fool to pick him up this year or next unless he somehow drops to the 6th round.  I imagine most drafts will have someone take a chance on him and pick him up in the first or second round, so you’re dreaming if you think you can pick him up in the 6th round.  And there’s no way you bet on McGrady’s back finally being healthy enough to go a full NBA season.

One final note that ought to be mentioned is that there are a few superstars who always play at least 80 games, if not the full season.  These players are gold. Don’t pick them too high, but don’t miss out on them either.  In a long season, they will carry you to victory.