Fantasy women’s basketball: Best advice for fantasy managers in 2023

The 2023 WNBA season tips off Friday and that marks the beginning of the second season of fantasy women’s basketball at ESPN.

So what’s the best advice our experts have for fantasy managers this season?

Here are Andre Snellings, Eric Moody, Jennifer LaCroix and Liz Loza to offer some key tips and takeaways.

Dictate the fun

Managing a fantasy roster is like playing a “choose your own adventure” game for sports fans. It offers users a chance to expand their fandom beyond a particular region and root for stars on rival squads. Whether someone has followed the W for a decade or is new to the league, playing fantasy only enhances the fan experience. So, ultimately, the control is yours. Draft the personalities you want to watch. Try not to load up on too many members of the same team. Know that top-tier guards thin out fast. And just have fun! — Loza

Draft based on upside

The standard league format has only six teams with six starting spots and three bench slots, which means only 54 players are on fantasy rosters at any given time and only 36 are starting. To separate your fantasy squad from the competition, you’ll need to get big contributions from your starters on a regular basis. It also means that the fantasy free agent wire almost always has good, contributing players available, so you can afford to take a risk on upside and, if it doesn’t pan out, you can likely still replace that player with someone productive. In summary, it’s more valuable to take a risk on a player with high upside because, if it’s realized, it gives you a leg up on your competition, and if it isn’t realized the ability to find free agency replacements mitigates the risk. — Snellings

Use positional tiers during your fantasy drafts

Players are grouped into tiers based on their expected fantasy point performance for the season. The value of each player in a specific tier is comparable, so fantasy managers will draft any player from that tier. Players not in that tier would represent a notable drop off in fantasy points. Tiering stops you from becoming so concentrated on taking a certain player with each pick, shifting the focus to values of ranges of players. — Moody

Diversify your roster

Build your roster with players from different teams. A lot of teams play on different days, and it’s ideal to have a variety of players from different teams so you can mix and match and score points on as many days as possible. If I have three Aces players and they only have two games that week, then that means the rest of the week those players can’t score for me. On the flip side if I have a bunch of players from different teams then I can work to have players in my lineup every day that will score points for me. — LaCroix