Dynasty fantasy glossary
The vocabulary of dynasty fantasy basketball, defined in plain English — from pick swaps and protections to aging curves and taxi squads.
- Dynasty league
- A format where you keep your entire roster from year to year and build a franchise across many seasons, rather than starting fresh each season. You draft rookies, trade veterans and picks, and manage long-term like a real GM.
- Keeper league
- A middle ground between dynasty and redraft: you retain a limited number of players (your 'keepers') from one season to the next, but re-draft the rest of your roster each year.
- Redraft league
- A single-season format where every roster is wiped and everyone drafts from scratch each year. There is no long-term roster building — the goal is to win this season.
- Pick swap
- The right to exchange draft-pick positions with another team, traded separately from the pick itself. For example, acquiring the right to take the better (or worse) of two teams' picks in a given round.
- Pick protection
- A condition attached to a traded draft pick that shields it if it lands in a certain range — commonly a top-N protection, where the pick only conveys if it falls outside the top N selections.
- Trade block
- A place to publicly signal which players you're willing to move. Interested managers can express interest privately, and deals start from there instead of spamming the league chat.
- Consistency scouting
- Evaluating whether a player produces steadily or swings wildly game to game, rather than judging by season averages alone. In Franchise it includes per-category breakdowns useful for head-to-head leagues.
- Aging curve
- A projection of how a player's production is likely to rise or decline with age. Franchise builds aging curves around your league's specific scoring settings so they reflect what actually matters to your team.
- Prospect board
- Your personal ranking of upcoming draft-eligible players. You can build it years in advance, compare it against staff consensus, and use it to prepare for rookie drafts.
- Draft capital
- The collective value of the future draft picks a team owns. Tracking draft capital by year and by team helps you gauge rebuild potential and structure trades.
- Taxi squad
- A reserve area for stashing young or developing players who don't count against your active roster limits, so you can hold prospects while they develop.
- Head-to-head (H2H)
- A scoring format where your team faces one opponent each week and the winner is decided by that matchup, either by total points or by winning the majority of statistical categories.
- Landing spot odds
- The probability that an incoming prospect ends up with a given team, used to anticipate where rookie talent will land and how it affects dynasty value.