Dunkest NBA Fantasy Draft: Complete Guide

If you are looking for a different way to play NBA Fantasy Basketball, Dunkest Draft Mode lets you create a private League, draft NBA players and compete throughout the season with your own customized rules.

Unlike the traditional Fantasy Mode, every NBA player can belong to only one team in your League. The Commissioner can customize the main settings, while participants build their rosters through a Draft and manage them throughout the season with substitutions, Free Agents and trades.

Here’s everything you need to know to create and play an NBA Fantasy Draft League on Dunkest.

How to Create an NBA Fantasy Draft League

The first step is creating the League. The Commissioner must choose a number of settings that will determine how the competition works:

• League Name
• Player Selection Method: with or without credits
• Budget: the number of credits available to each participant. Credits can be used to purchase Free Agents or included in trades with other teams. The budget can also be set to 0. If the Draft uses credits, however, a budget must be assigned for the initial auction.
• Competition Type: Head-to-Head or Overall Ranking
• Captain Multiplier: x1, x1.5 or x2
• Extra Slots: up to two additional roster spots can be added and assigned to the desired position or positions

Once every participant has joined and the League has officially started, the Commissioner can customize two more settings.

Starting Matchday

The League can begin from the Matchday immediately following the creation of the Draft or from a specific future Matchday selected by the Commissioner.

Market Opening

The Commissioner can choose between two options: automatically opening the market between Matchdays, as happens in Classic Mode, or managing it manually.

With manual management, the Commissioner decides when to open and close the market, always respecting the windows indicated in the Dunkest Calendar. The market cannot be opened while a Matchday is in progress.

NBA Fantasy Draft Types: With or Without Credits

There are two different ways to build your NBA Fantasy roster in Dunkest Draft Mode: with credits or without credits.

Draft With Credits

In this format, the Commissioner assigns every participant a budget that must be used to build the roster through an offline auction.

Any credits left after the Draft will remain available for the market phase during the season.

For example, a League could start with 300 credits per participant. Using Dunkest’s Offline Auction Tool, participants take turns nominating NBA players, with every auction automatically starting at 1 credit.

The other participants can raise the bid, but they must manage their budget carefully enough to complete the entire roster.

The highest bidder wins the player. The Commissioner must then manually assign that player to the correct team, either during the auction or once the entire Draft has been completed.

Draft Without Credits

If the League chooses to play without credits, players are selected without any auction or bidding process.

The participants must agree offline on the selection system they want to use, such as a predetermined Draft order.

One possible solution is a snake draft. The initial order is determined randomly, and after every round the selection order is reversed. The participant who picked last in one round therefore gets the first pick in the next.

Since there are no bids, every selected player is immediately assigned to the participant who picked them. The Commissioner will still need to manually add each player to the corresponding Dunkest roster.

Even when the initial Draft does not use credits, the Commissioner must set a budget for the post-Draft market phase. This amount can also be 0 credits.

How to Manage Your NBA Fantasy Team

Drafting your players is only the beginning. Managing your NBA Fantasy team during every Matchday is one of the most important parts of Dunkest Draft Mode.

Every Dunkest Matchday (G) is divided into multiple Rounds (T1, T2, T3…), with each Round including a block of games played on the same day.

Draft Mode does not feature automatic substitutions.

If one of your starters does not play or finishes with a score you are not happy with, it is up to you to make the change before the next Round begins.

That makes lineup management a major part of the game: when setting your team, you should always consider when each player is scheduled to play and distribute your starters and bench players accordingly.

What Can You Change Between Rounds?

Between the final game of one Round and the beginning of the next, you can:

• Replace a starter with a bench player who has not yet taken the court
• Change your Captain by selecting a player who has not yet played
• Change your formation, provided that the new setup is compatible with the players available

Every change must be completed before the next Round starts. You can also undo a substitution or lineup change as long as the following Round has not begun.

If a team is listed as resting during a Matchday, all of its players – including unavailable players and the coach – will receive their average fantasy score in T1, calculated using the Matchdays already played.

Players from resting teams will not receive the Captain multiplier, even if they have been selected as Captain.

How the Bench Works

Substitutions can have a major impact on your final NBA Fantasy score.

When you replace a player during the Matchday, the player entering the lineup will score normally. The player moved to the bench will instead keep 50% of their fantasy score.

There is one exception: the Sixth Man, who receives 100% of their score despite being on the bench.

At the end of each Matchday, your team total will therefore include:

• 100% of the points scored by players on the court
• 100% of the Sixth Man’s score
• 100% of the coach’s score
• 50% of the points scored by the other bench players

Captain Multiplier

The Captain rules depend on the settings selected by the Commissioner when creating the Draft League.

The Captain multiplier can be set to x1, x1.5 or x2.

Since the Captain can be changed between Rounds as long as the new player has not yet played, this becomes another decision to manage throughout the Matchday rather than only before it begins.

Stands: An Extra Option for Your Lineup

Starting this season, the Stands slots are unlocked and effectively become an extension of your bench.

If you have a player in the Stands who has not yet played, you can move them into your active roster to replace someone who will not play – for example because of an injury – or even someone who has already played but produced a disappointing score.

This gives NBA Fantasy managers another option to react during the Matchday and makes the entire roster more useful.

There is one important rule to remember: players who remain in the Stands do not score any points.

If a player is still in the Stands when the Matchday ends, their fantasy score will not be included in your team’s total.

NBA Fantasy Market and Free Agents

Building your roster is only the beginning. During the NBA season, teams can continue to make changes through the Dunkest Draft market.

Players who do not belong to any team in your League are considered Free Agents and can be acquired during the available market windows.

How to Sign a Free Agent

To make an offer for a Free Agent, first select a player from your roster that you want to replace and then choose an available Free Agent in the same position.

If your League uses a budget, you can decide how many credits to include in your offer. The highest bid wins the player. If two or more teams submit the same offer, priority goes to the team currently lower in the League standings.

Once the offer has been confirmed, the player you are willing to trade away will remain visible on your roster with a different indicator showing that a potential move is pending.

The same player can also be used in offers for multiple Free Agents. In that case, Dunkest processes your requests chronologically: the Free Agent you bid on first has priority. If that move is unsuccessful, the system moves on to your next request.

All pending offers can be found in the Trades section and can be modified while the market is open.

When Are Free Agents Assigned?

Three hours before the market window closes, the team with the highest offer automatically receives the Free Agent.

The new player takes the same roster position and value as the player being replaced, plus any additional credits included in the offer.

The outgoing player becomes a Free Agent and will be available to the rest of the League starting from the following market window.

If two teams have made the same offer, the player is assigned to the team currently lower in the League standings.

If your offer is unsuccessful, the credits used in the bid are returned to your budget and the player you offered remains on your roster.

Trades Between NBA Fantasy Teams

Dunkest Draft Mode also allows you to make direct trades with other participants in your League, adding another layer of strategy to your NBA Fantasy season.

The basic rules are similar to the Free Agent Market, but there is one major difference: you do not have to wait until the end of the market window to complete the deal.

Once a trade has been proposed, the other participant can decide at any time whether to:

• Accept the trade
• Make a counter-offer
• Reject the trade

Between Draft picks, lineup changes, Free Agents and direct trades, Dunkest Draft Mode lets you manage your NBA Fantasy roster throughout the entire season and challenge your friends with a League built around your own rules.