LeagueRulebook

Complete rules. Amendments require seven of ten votes, offseason only.

01Rosters

Starters (9): PG · SG · SF · PF · C · G (PG/SG) · F (SF/PF) · UTIL · UTIL
Bench: 4  ·  Injured reserve (IR): 2, which don't count against roster size

With 10 teams, 130 players are rostered at any moment. The free agent pool will be thin — plan for it.

Lineup locks

Lineups are set daily. Each player locks at his individual game tip-off.

02Scoring

No double-double or triple-double bonuses. The four shooting categories are deliberately zeroed, so volume is never punished.

How this compares to standard scoring

Our values sit on the mainstream points-league scale. The rebound, assist and turnover weights match the industry standard used by RotoWire, SportsDataIO and most DFS platforms exactly.

Two consequences worth knowing before you bid.

• Volume scorers gain. With attempts unpenalised, a high-usage guard who shoots poorly costs you nothing for the misses. Inefficient shot-takers are worth more here than in ESPN's default format.
• Defensive production is fully priced. Steals and blocks at 3.0 sit at the top of the standard range. A rim protector averaging three blocks earns 9 points a night from that alone, so low-usage defensive bigs and ball-hawking guards hold real draft value.

Both effects are deliberate. The format rewards production over efficiency, and pairing unpenalised volume with well-paid defence keeps two different roster-building paths viable instead of funnelling everyone toward the same high-usage scorers.

03The auction draft

The auction budget is scaled to the buy-in at eight to one — your $25 entry becomes $200 of bidding power. The ratio isn't arbitrary: $200 is the scale every published auction values list uses, so you can prep with off-the-shelf pricing instead of converting by hand.

Nomination

Nomination order is randomized before the draft and runs in a fixed rotation. Every team nominates regardless of remaining budget until all rosters are full. The nominating team opens at $1 minimum, and a nominated player must fit on the nominating team's roster.

Bid ceilings and running out of money

You cannot strand yourself. No bid may leave you unable to fill your remaining spots at $1 each. ESPN enforces this — illegal bids won't submit.

Being out of money means sitting at a $1 maximum. A team in that position:

• Still nominates in the normal rotation. Nobody gets skipped.
• Can still win players, but only at $1 — meaning only players nobody else bids on.
• Cannot be forced out. As other teams fill up they stop bidding, and the rest of the pool clears at a dollar. We roster 130 players out of 450-plus.

Leftover money mostly evaporates. Unspent budget doesn't carry to next season and doesn't convert to anything else, so there is no reason to hoard it.

Unfilled spots. If a team ends the auction with an empty slot, they fill it from free agency before the first game of the season, at no cost, in reverse order of the prior season's standings.

Attendance

ESPN auto-bids for anyone not in the draft room. An auto-bid roster is yours to live with and isn't grounds for a redo.

What $200 buys

Total league spend is $2,000 across 130 players — roughly $15 each. Expect elite players in the $50–70 range and a long tail of $1–3 fills.

04Waivers and free agency

Every player who isn't on a roster is in one of two states at any moment: on waivers, where you can only put in a claim, or a free agent, where anyone can add him instantly. Knowing which is which is most of the skill in roster management.

How a player becomes available

After the draft. Every undrafted player goes onto waivers immediately when the auction ends. The post-draft pool is not a land grab — it's one waiver round, and everyone gets a shot.

During the season. A dropped player goes onto waivers for 2 days.

The same-day exception. A player added and released on the same day stays a free agent instead of returning to waivers. This is ESPN's anti-cycling protection and it means a misclicked add can be undone without locking the player away from the league for two days.

The waiver window

While a player is on waivers, nobody can simply add him. The only move is to submit a claim. There is no bidding and no budget — claims cost nothing. You can cancel a claim until waivers process.

Processing

When the waiver period ends, ESPN awards the player to the claiming team with the highest waiver priority, and that team moves to the back of the order.

If nobody claimed him, the player clears waivers and becomes a free agent: first-come, first-served, added instantly, and it doesn't affect your waiver position.

Waiver order

• Opening order is set by ESPN when the draft ends.
• Weekly reset to inverse standings — worst record gets top priority — when the new fantasy week begins.
• Winning a claim drops you to the bottom of the order, regardless of anything else.

Transaction limits

Both waiver claims and free agent pickups count against the weekly limit. The counter resets with the fantasy week. Trades don't count against it.

The weekly cap stops streaming arms races, and unlimited churn would reward free time over roster building. There is no season-long cap, so a quiet week doesn't cost you anything later.

A worked example

A starting center goes down Monday night. His backup is on someone's bench and gets dropped Tuesday morning.

Had nobody claimed him, he'd have cleared Thursday and gone to whoever clicked first. That asymmetry is the whole game: claim the players others want, wait on the ones they don't.

Injured reserve

Only players tagged OUT (O) or IR by ESPN may occupy IR slots. If a player's status improves you have 48 hours to activate him or drop someone.

ESPN enforces this on its own: a healthy player sitting in an IR slot blocks every waiver claim and free agent pickup until you clear him. Stashing costs you the wire, not a commissioner ruling.

05Keepers, from 2027–28

The rule

Each team may keep one player from the prior season's roster.

Keeping is optional

You are never required to keep anyone. Each team declares one keeper or zero. Declining means entering the auction with the full $200 while everyone who kept someone enters with less. If your best value player costs $68 to retain, walking away with $200 of flexibility is often stronger. No penalty, no vote, no explanation owed.

Keeper cost

That amount comes off your $200 before the next auction begins.

Waiver and free agent pickups

Any player added during the season who was not bought at auction has a keeper cost of $16. This is deliberately cheap — finding a breakout on the wire should pay, and it offsets how painful expensive stars are to keep.

Escalation and term limits

• A player may be kept for a maximum of 3 consecutive seasons by the same team.
• Cost escalates +$12 each year he is kept.
• After 3 years he returns to the auction pool. His former team gets no special right to re-acquire him.

Traded players

Keeper rights and cost follow the player. Trade for someone and you inherit his price and his years-kept count. State the keeper cost in the trade thread so both sides know what they're taking on.

Declaration deadline

Declarations are due 7 days before draft day, submitted to the commissioner and posted publicly. Late or missing declarations mean no keeper that year.

Record-keeping

ESPN doesn't calculate the escalator, track years kept, or apply the $16 pickup price. The commissioner maintains a public league spreadsheet — started on 2026 draft night — recording every rostered player's acquisition method, price, owner, and consecutive years kept. That spreadsheet is the authoritative record. If it conflicts with ESPN, the spreadsheet wins.

Why it works this way

A flat $12 escalator on a $200 budget is meaningful without being crippling. Keeping a $56 star costs $68 and leaves $132 for twelve spots — a real trade-off. The rule rewards value, a cheap player who outperformed his price, rather than letting whoever won the auction hoard the best player indefinitely.

06Trades

• Permitted from draft day through the deadline: noon ET, Monday, March 1.
• Trades process 48 hours after acceptance.
• No commissioner veto for perceived imbalance. Managers are allowed to make bad trades.
• Trades reverse only for collusion — a transaction where one party isn't making a good-faith attempt to improve their team. Requires a 7-of-10 vote.
• Auction budget can't be traded.
• Future keeper rights may be traded if the terms are stated explicitly and in writing in league chat.

07Standings and playoffs

Weeks 1–21, one head-to-head matchup per week. Records are W-L-T; a tie is recorded when totals land exactly equal.

Tiebreakers, in order

1. Head-to-head record
2. Total points scored for the season
3. Total points scored in the last 4 weeks
4. Coin flip by the commissioner, witnessed in league chat

Bracket

Six teams qualify. Seeds 1 and 2 get first-round byes.

The remaining four teams go into ESPN's consolation ladder, which runs concurrently. It isn't a knockout bracket — winners move up a rung each week, losers move down, and head-to-head play continues through all three weeks.

The team at the bottom of the ladder after Week 24 finishes last and takes the punishment. Because it's a ladder rather than an elimination bracket, you can't be knocked out of contention for last place early — every week counts.

08Conduct

Abandoned teams. A team that sets no lineup for 2 consecutive weeks is considered abandoned. The commissioner sets optimal lineups on their behalf for the rest of the season, and that manager isn't invited back.

Tanking. Deliberately fielding a non-competitive lineup while eliminated is grounds for removal. Playing your bench because you forgot isn't tanking. Dropping your starters in Week 18 to spite a playoff contender is.

The commissioner plays in this league and is subject to every rule here. Any commissioner ruling can be overturned by a 7-of-10 vote.

09Dues and payouts

Payout splits are voted on and locked before draft day.

Last place is the bottom of the consolation ladder after Week 24. Punishment gets voted on before the draft, agreed in writing, and is non-negotiable afterward.

10Amendments

Rule changes are proposed and voted on in the offseason only — between the end of the NBA Finals and 14 days before draft day. Passage requires 7 of 10 votes. No mid-season changes, including by unanimous consent.

One exception: the commissioner may correct scoring or roster settings entered into ESPN incorrectly that don't match this document.

If you've only done snake drafts, an auction moves fast and takes some adjusting to. Twenty minutes of prep pays for itself.

01How it works

Managers take turns nominating players in a fixed rotation. Once a player is nominated, everyone can bid — not just the nominator. Highest bid wins, the salary comes off that team's budget, and the next manager nominates.

This repeats until all 10 rosters are full. You nominate whether or not you want the player, so putting up a star you can't afford early to drain everyone else's budget is a standard opening move.

02The clocks

Nomination. You get 30 seconds to put a player up. If you don't, ESPN nominates for you — the top player in your queue, or if your queue is empty, the highest-priced player still available.

Bidding. The offer clock starts at 30 seconds. Any bid made with 10 seconds or less remaining resets it to 10, and keeps resetting as long as people keep bidding.

The 10-second reset is fixed by ESPN and can't be changed; the commissioner only controls the starting clock. That base clock governs how fast uncontested players clear, which is most of the draft.

Expect 2 to 3 hours for 10 teams and 130 players. The first 30 players eat roughly half of it; the back half moves quickly once budgets tighten.

03Placing bids

• +1 — raises the current bid by a dollar. The default, and what you'll use most.
• Manual entry — type any legal amount. Use it for jump bids: going from $12 to $40 to clear out the incrementalists and end an auction fast.

The opening offer on any nomination defaults to $1. If nobody else bids, the nominator gets him for a dollar. Most of the late draft works this way.

04Your maximum bid

You can never bid so much that you couldn't fill your remaining spots at $1 each.

ESPN enforces this automatically. You can see any team's current maximum by hovering over their jersey icon in the draft room, or by turning the display on in the Options tab.

Watch it constantly. Knowing that only three teams can still afford a $50 player changes what you should bid.

If your max drops to $1 you can still nominate and still win uncontested players. You're not eliminated, but you've lost all leverage — try not to get there before your starting nine are filled.

05Before draft night

• 01Build your player queue. It's your safety net if you time out on a nomination, and it's faster than searching mid-draft.
• 02Run a mock. ESPN's Mock Draft Lobby hosts salary cap mocks. The interface takes some getting used to, and draft night shouldn't be your first look at it.
• 03Bring dollar values, not rankings. Rankings don't translate to an auction. RotoWire, FantasyPros and ESPN all publish auction values on a $200 scale — that's why we use $200. Print them or keep them on a second screen.
• 04Plan your budget shape. Decide before you sit down: how much for your top two, what you'll spend in the middle, how many $1 slots you can live with.

06Attendance

07Commissioner powers during the draft

The commissioner can pause the draft — the clock stops and everyone sees a paused message — reconfigure the clocks mid-draft, or reset the draft entirely.

A full reset only happens for a platform failure like a mass disconnect or an ESPN outage, and requires 7 of 10 managers to agree in chat. It won't happen because someone misclicked a bid. Read the amount before you press the button.

Setup guide for the commissioner. Work through it in order before invitations go out — several settings lock permanently when the draft starts.