By Jon Loomer

Part I | Part II | Part III | START YOUR LEAGUE NOW!

So far, I've taken you through the basics. What the game is, public vs. private, standard settings and scoring systems. Now, let's take a closer look at your options if you choose to create a private league with "Full Control."

League Size: Anywhere from four to 30 teams. In most cases, the larger the league, the greater the challenge since the player pool quickly thins.

Player Pool: Players eligible for your league from All NBA Teams, only the Eastern Conference, or only the Western Conference. Good for fans of a particular conference or to increase the difficulty for a more experienced league.

Commissioner Features

Free Keeper Leagues Trade Draft Picks Co-Owner Option Execute a trade involving more than two teams Full Commissioner Control Track contracts and salaries Auction waiver option Customizable position eligibility Create a Player option Fully Customizable Rosters and Scoring Five draft types including Live and E-mail Rotisserie, Points-Based or Head-to-Head

Divisions: If you are playing in a H2H league, you can have from one to six divisions depending on league size.

Co-Ownership: If you're in a league in which multiple owners want to manage the same team without using the same account name, you can do it. Simply add co-owners in the league set-up.

Commissioner Access: The typical league has one commissioner -- the individual who created the league. However, if this person wants to spread the power or doesn't have consistent access to the internet, they can grant commish control to any of the other league members. What this means is that all members with this access have ability to adjust settings, approve trades, perform transactions for other teams, etc.

Games Limit: If you're in a daily transaction league, you will probably want to limit the number of games played at each position (usually 82) to prevent owners from rotating in active players when one of their players has a day off. A games limit helps determine the league's best team, not necessarily the most active owner.

Roster Positions: The Commissioner can choose as many of the standard positions as they want (PG, SG, G, GF, SF, PF, F, FC, Util), and can choose to start more than one player at any and all positions. This and number of bench positions are completely customizable.

Draft Types: Offline, Live Online, Live E-mail, Single-List Auto and Multi-List Auto are the options.

If your league is going to congregate in one place and draft players without internet access, perform an offline draft and the commissioner will need to enter the players once the draft is over.

Otherwise, you can set a time for all owners to go online and draft players through a draft applet. There is a time limit for each owner to make a pick, which is customizable but defaulted for 90 seconds. If they do not make a pick in that time, the choice will be made for them based on their pre-rankings.

An e-mail draft is a version of an live online draft but it allows a much longer time limit to make a pick. This is good for people with busy schedules or differing time zones. When a player is chosen online, an e-mail is sent to all owners alerting them that a pick has been made and that another team is on the clock. The time limit is defaulted at 24 hours, but can be changed to fit the league's preferences.

Single and Multi-List drafts are both auto-pick options. All owners rank players in order of preference and a draft is held automatically at a specified time. If single list, the owners rank all players on one list, regardless of position. For multi-list, owners can choose to take specific positions in certain rounds.

Set Lineup Frequency: The typical roto or points-based league is daily transaction, which allows owners to change their lineup and add or drop players on a daily basis. Most H2H leagues are weekly, which prevents owners from changing their lineup during the week. That said, the commissioner has the ability to utilize daily, weekly, or monthly lineups. If weekly, they can choose which day of the week the scoring period begins.

Roster Lock: Rosters lock at a designated time to prevent the ability of a user to swap players in and out of their lineup after they have already begun accumulating statistics for the designated scoring period. There are three options for roster locks. You may choose to lock all rosters five minutes prior to the first game of the scoring period. If daily transactions, this process will repeat on a daily basis. If weekly or monthly, rosters will lock five minutes prior to the first game of the week or month. If you would like to allow the ability to swap out players who have not yet had their first game of the scoring period, you can choose to lock five minutes prior to the start of each player's game. The final option is to lock rosters at a time designated by the commissioner. You should make sure that whatever time you choose, it is prior to a typical start time.

Waiver Types: Waivers is the process a league follows to pick up players who are not currently owned by a team. There are six waiver systems that your league can use.

First, you can choose to have no waivers at all. In this system, all bets are off. As soon as a player is dropped, he becomes a free agent and another team can pick him up and insert him into their lineup.

If players are always on waivers, there is no free agency. Under other systems, a player will become a free agent after a designated number of days, whereby anyone can pick them up. If always on waivers, waiver claims are put in by each owner on a weekly basis, running on a day and time designated by the commissioner. Who acquires that player is determined by a waiver priority list.

If the commissioner is a control freak and wants to handle all waiver moves manually, he can do so by choosing the offline option. This is also helpful if you want to use a slight alteration of your waiver rules that we do not offer.

Waiver Priority List is typical for most leagues. Players who are dropped from rosters are placed on waivers for a specified number of days (usually two). During that time, owners can put in waiver claims for that player. If multiple teams put in claims on the same player, the team with the highest priority will get that player.

Inverse Standings attempts to help even the playing field. If a desirable player has been released and several teams put in a waiver claim, the team with the worst record will get that player.

The final waiver option is most popular in keeper and more complicated leagues: Auction, otherwise referred to as "FAAB." Under this scenario, players are always on waivers, and claims are run once a week at a specified time. Throughout the week, owners are allowed to put in a claim on any player. When they put in that claim, they also designate an amount of fake money that they would like to bid on him. The default for auction leagues is a $100 pool for each owner. What that means is that each league member has $100 to work with for the entire season and must use that money wisely. Whoever bids the most for a player gets him. But once they run out of money, they cannot pick up any more players.

Trades: If any two teams would like to swap like-valued players, they can do so. In addition, this game allows users to perform multi-team trades involving three or more teams. When making such an offer, you will need to determine which teams will be involved and who will receive which players. A complicated process, but oh so gratifying if you're able to pull it off.

By default, the commissioner has final say on trades. Once a trade has been accepted, the commissioner goes in and either allows or vetoes the deal. They have a designated number of days to review the deal (often two days) before it is automatically processed. You can also choose to have owners review the deals, with or without commissioner final approval. The deal can be vetoed, depending on the number of veto votes from other owners. The commissioner also has the ability to adjust the trade deadline.

Can't Cut List: Nothing worse than a league going smoothly midseason when an owner either accidentally or maliciously cuts one of the league's top players. To prevent this from occurring, you can implement a Can't Cut List. If a player is on the list, he cannot be cut from a roster. You can either choose to utilize the NBA.com list, which will be updated throughout the season, or update your own. Or, it is possible that you will choose to have no list at all.

Scoring Categories: Although there are eight standard categories used in fantasy leagues (FG%, FT%, Points, Rebounds, Assists, Steals, Blocks, 3-Pointers), you have an additional 29 categories to choose from. Regardless of your scoring system, you can choose to weight categories to make one more valuable than another. This is typical of points-based leagues, but you can also choose to make Rebounds more important than Assists, for example, in a roto league.

Believe it or not, we're not through with customizable features for those of you in a Full Control league. Read on to Part III.

Part I | Part II | Part III | | START YOUR LEAGUE NOW!