I wrote another article for the Yahoo Contributor Network that studies how stars in the NBA rebound from bad games. Have a look.

In the interest of full disclosure, I’m writing for the DraftDay NBA Blog. I thought it would be a good idea to write a post introducing daily fantasy to those fantasy enthusiasts not yet familiar with the format.

There is a battle brewing in fantasy sports between season-long games and daily (or weekly) games like the ones that DraftDay hosts. For football, the season-long format still makes a lot of sense due to the repetitive timeline of the NFL season (games, waivers, set lineup, rinse & repeat). But for the NBA, MLB and NHL, the daily format is attractive for a few reasons:

1. You don’t have to manage your team every day. Some NBA, MLB and NHL leagues require daily lineups/waivers and that can be too much for the casual fantasy owner. Daily fantasy allows owners to play on their terms. Have a rough day at work and don’t have time to set your lineup? No harm, no foul — the game will still be there tomorrow. And since there is no draft to attend, you can set your lineup whenever you want.

2. You’re not stuck with underperforming or injured players. Owners with Stephen Curry and/or Eric Gordon know what I’m talking about. Sure, your daily fantasy lineup could be derailed for a night by a surprise pre-game or in-game injury, but the next day you can start fresh with a new lineup. A bad (or injured) second round pick won’t haunt you for an entire season.

3. Want a particular stud? You can have him – for a price. Typical daily fantasy games give owners a salary cap that they can spend on several different players to set their lineups. That means if you want LeBron James or Kevin Love, you can have him, but you’ll have to sacrifice salary elsewhere. Should you go with a lineup that features several studs along with several cheap players? Or should you go with a balanced lineup that features solid, low-upside players across the board. These are the decisions you’ll have to make as a daily fantasy owner.

Let me walk you through the process…

This the draft screen for “World B Free,” which is DraftDay’s daily freeroll. The payout isn’t huge, but there’s no entry fee, so it’s a great way to get your feet wet and see how you do.

The list of players is on the right along with each player’s price. You start with $100,000 to spend. As you can see, I started my lineup with Kevin Martin (who has been hot), Derrick Brown (cheap starter for the Bobcats) and Shawn Marion (who has had to step it up with Dirk Nowitzki out). The site shows how much payroll you have left along with the average for each remaining player. That helps to minimize the guesswork when picking players since you know what kind of range you should be looking at.

So now I’ve filled out my roster with Tony Parker, Kemba Walker, Landry Fields, LeBron James, DeMarcus Cousins and Amar’e Stoudemire. Once I hit Submit Lineup, my lineup is…well…submitted. Now it’s time to see how my lineup fares…

My team is on the left while the winning team is on the right. I finished 126th out of 1500 entries with a final score of 230.75. This lineup was good enough to finish 14th out of 111 entries in DraftDay’s “Double-Double” — owners who have lineups that finish in the top 50 double their money.

Scoring is fairly straightforward, with one point for each point scored, rebound, assist, and three-pointer made, and two points for each steal and block. Players are penalized 0.25 points for each missed field goal, 0.5 points for each missed free throw and one point for each turnover. Complete scoring rules can be found here.

So it’s that easy. Why not enter DraftDay’s Friday freeroll and see for yourself?

I wrote my first fantasy basketball article for the Yahoo Contributor Network (YCN) which calculates the increase in production for players playing at home versus playing on the road.

I think it turned out well. Take a look. (Click the table in the upper right to see a bigger version.)

Tim Tebow creates controversy because he wears his religion on his sleeve. Non-religious people (and even some religious ones) don’t like being preached to and find the super-faithful quite annoying. The other issue with Tebow is that he is a completely non-traditional QB, and that opens him up to football criticism from people who don’t like him for other reasons, as well as his QB play.

I am a non-religious person but I don’t hate Tebow for his beliefs or lack of traditional QB skill. I root for him because I think he’s a good, genuine person. The world needs more good, genuine people. If he proves to be a hypocrite in his personal life, I will stop rooting for him.

If there is a God, I doubt he spends his time manipulating the outcome of football games. There are Tebow supporters who point to his success as proof that God exists. I find this notion to be ridiculous, but they are entitled to their beliefs.

I do believe that Tebow can find long-term success as a NFL quarterback. He brings enough to the table in the other areas of the job that make up for his shortcomings as a passer. As we’ve seen throughout the season, he can typically make enough throws to keep his team competitive, and he should only get better with practice.

No matter how the Broncos fare against the Patriots next week, Tebow’s season was a success. I wouldn’t describe it as a resounding success, but he showed enough potential, moxie and leadership to earn him QB1 honors in Denver to start the 2012 season. I’m interested to see where his career goes from here, as it’s always fun to see a player with an unorthodox style help to redefine a position, much like Steve Young, Randall Cunningham and Michael Vick did before him.

ECR stands for “Expert Consensus Ranking” at FantasyPros.
Updated 12/31/11

ECR stands for “Expert Consensus Ranking” at FantasyPros.
Updated 12/24/11

ECR stands for “Expert Consensus Ranking” at FantasyPros.
Updated 12/18/11

DT ROS SOS = Defensive Team Rest-of-Season Strength of Schedule

The table below shows the relative strength of the matchups for DTs for the rest of the season. The bigger the number (i.e. fantasy points), the better the matchup. Green indicates a good matchup while light red indicates a matchup to avoid. “ROS” averages the Schedule-Adjusted SOS for the remainder of the season, excluding Week 17.

This is simply strength of schedule and does not take into account the quality of the DT in question. Use this table to compare two or more similar DTs.

Note: 4for4.com offers Schedule-Adjusted SOS for QB, RB, WR, TE and K.

Fantasy football has exploded in popularity and is in large part to thank for the explosion in the popularity of the NFL. But what about fantasy basketball? If fantasy football is Arnold Schwarzenegger in the movie “Twins,” then fantasy hoops is Danny DeVito. There a way to fix it?

I think so. As a fan of both sports, I think fantasy hoops struggles for several reasons:

Problem #1: Roto or category scoring systems are convoluted and difficult to understand/manage.
Most fantasy basketball leagues utilize one of two formats. A roto format awards points based on a team’s rank in each of several categories. The team with the most roto points at the end of the season wins the leagues. Another format is category scoring, where each team plays head to head with another team in several categories, so one team might win in points, rebounds and assists, but lose in FG%, turnovers and blocks. Blah blah blah.

Solution: Go to a head-to-head fantasy points system.
My recommendation is to use the NBA’s Efficiency statistic to calculate fantasy points for each player. Here is how Efficiency is calculated:

EFF = ((Points + Rebounds + Assists + Steals + Blocks) – ((Field Goals Att. – Field Goals Made) + (Free Throws Att. – Free Throws Made) + Turnovers))

That may look complicated, but really it just adds up a player’s points, rebounds, assists, steals and blocks, while subtracting his turnovers, missed free throws and missed field goals. I like this statistic because it covers all the major stats while rewarding an efficient shooter more than a volume shooter. For example, a player that scores 20 points on 15 shots is probably going to have a higher Efficiency than a player that scores 20 points on 20 shots, because of the negative effect of missed field goals. Most importantly, a fantasy owner can look at a box score and have a pretty good idea about how his player performed that night.

Problem #2: There are too many games.
With NBA games goi