Hashtag Basketball - Preparing for the playoffs

It's playoff time, and I wanted to run you through some ways to get the most out of the premium tools on the website to prep for your playoff run! 

Most of these tools are available for category leagues, and most have a points league equivalent.

Smash mode

This tool lets you simulate matchups against any two teams to see how they would have scored against each other for every week of the season. This gives you an overview of any trends and insight on on what categories you're a good chance to win (and which you stand little chance of winning). 

Click the "update all weeks" button (it'll take 5-6 seconds to import the data since it's bringing in a lot of data), but once it's in, and you select two teams (you vs your opponent), you'll see something like this: 

H2H Matchup Planner

This lets you simulate the week, pick players who are and aren't playing for both you and your opponent, and gives you a projected after matchup scores that estimate the matchup. There's an extended guide on using this here https://www.patreon.com/posts/how-i-like-to-73455334

Are you in an ESPN league that has 2-week playoffs? Use V2 of the Matchup Planner

It works by letting you select the fantasy basketball schedule week and your league's scoreboard week as separate dropdown list options (because scoreboard weeks often lag behind a week since they're multiple weeks in one week).

Example: You're in an ESPN league that has multi-week playoffs. This week is week 22 of the fantasy schedule, but your scoreboard matchup might be week 21. V2 of the Matchup Planner lets you pick the scoreboard week to use.

If you're not in a multi-week playoff league, ignore the V2 option!

Knowing the difference between the different sets of projections

There's a few different options to choose from, and knowing the difference helps you get the most out of the tools. Here are the main differences:

Projections: These are my baseline season-long projections for the season. They're predictions for the rest of the season season and get tweaked almost daily.

BLEND7: Is a 50/50 split of my baseline projections mixed with averages from the last 7 days. These are useful for quick reactions to recent performances.

BLEND14: Is a 50/50 split of my baseline projections mixed with averages from the last 14 days. These are useful for quick reactions to recent performances with a bit more data to filter out fluke one-off performances.

Premium Schedule Grid

Scheduling is super important this time of the season. The more games you can get into your week, the more opportunity you have to build up counting stats (be weary of your shooting %s and turnovers if you're not punting them), and using the premium schedule grid to plan your adds is a big help. This is also a good time to use some of the BLEND projection options.

It works by showing you available players on your waiver wire (based on your last league data refresh), and lets you see who's available on selected days (eg Mon-Tue B2Bs to get two games from one transaction). It also gives you a matchup rating based on the position vs defense data available here: https://hashtagbasketball.com/nba-defense-vs-position

Getting up to date player injury news

This isn't part of the website, but in general, https://twitter.com/Underdog__NBA is one of the best sources of info for player injury news. Make sure you're following them!

Good luck to y'all!

Chat soon,
Joey