One of the most ground breaking things in fantasy basketball in recent years happened last night. Collectively, this is probably bigger than Amare getting injured this pre-season or the Palace Brawl with the Pacers last year. It may not seem like it at first hand but with the NBA removing the Injured List and the fantasy leagues following suit, this is pretty big news. This means that managers can no longer stash their injured players on the IL and pick up a replacement. For example, my thesis on Amare (the previous post) pretty much goes down the drain with the removal of the IL slot. Unless you league allows for a large bench in relation to the number of starters, how are you going to be able to keep someone on your bench that is not going to play 2/3rds of the season? It is simply a pain in the rear. Three things come into mind when analyzing this development and each has a subtle but collectively, large effect in how one should draft and later how you should start/bench your players. Gurus will be able to benefit from this new development and amateurs will not even know that they were affected until it is too late (if they know it all). Here they are:

1) Injury prone players' (i.e. Baron Davis, A.I., etc...) value goes way down. See Amare discussion above. You should simply not even draft injury-prone players since you should be able to find a comparable player instead. Most people will probably not have priced in the IL development in their drafting strategy yet. Amare become undraftable unless you want to take a stab and a bench spot in the last 2 rounds. A.I. should not be drafted in the first round.

2) Rare position values go up. If your league plays 2 centers, center-eligible players go up in value., especially if they are not injury prone. Multiple-position players go up in value too.

3) In roto leagues, most people should play more games earlier in case they do not finish all their games by the end of the season. In H2H, this does not change.