Hashtag Basketball User Guide

Your guide to getting the most out of the tools on Hashtag Basketball.

What tools are available for each format and platform

Different tools are available depending on the data we're able to receive from each platform. Here's a list of what's available:

sync with league data requires manual input not available (Cat = category leagues, Pts = points leagues)

	Yahoo		ESPN		Fantrax		Sleeper	Custom
Premium Tool	Cat	Pts	Cat	Pts	Cat	Pts	Pts	Cat	Pts
Premium Schedule Grid
Draft Tracker
H2H Matchup Planner
Fantasy Basketball Rankings
Waiver Wire Rankings
Trade Machine
Waiver Machine
League Scouting Report
Beast Mode
Smash Mode
Dynasty Mode
Auction Mode

Signing up and getting access to the premium tools

We're using Patreon to manage your subscriptions to the premium tools. Mostly, because when I first started this website, I didn't expect so many people to use it, and wanted to spend all of my efforts working on building new tools. Now, I'm at a point where I'm sticking with it because so many people are already using it.

You can sign up by following the Patreon link on the Premium page. Here's the link to the Patreon checkout page for the $2/mo plan for those reading this for the first time.

Access to the premium tools are tied to the email address you use to sign up to Patreon, so make sure create an account on Hashtag with the same email address used to sign up to Patreon. Try and not use an Apple-ID generated email since I'll have to manually map those to the email you're using on Hashtag.

Access usually takes a few minutes to automatically be assigned to your account. Once it's assigned, you'll see an option to import your leagues. You can import as many leagues as possible, and they'll appear on your dashboard.

Using The Dark Theme

If you think all websites should be viewed using a dark theme, you're in luck, because Hashtag Basketball has one. When you're logged in you'll see a icon in the top right hand corner, this is where your account settings are, and is where you can set the dark theme to be used by default.

This setting is used every time you log into your account, no matter which device you log in from.

Note: Moving forward, all screenshots and videos will use the superiour (in my opinion) dark theme.

Importing a Yahoo league (only available in premium)

You can import your Yahoo league by copying your league ID, clicking the import Yahoo option on your dashboard, pasting your league id into the correct field, selecting the available options, and clicking the import button. This will ask you to give read access for the website to import your league data.

NOTE: Using the quick refresh button option on your league dashboard will do a quick refresh of the roster data in your league.

Importing a Yahoo mock draft league (only available in premium)

You can import a Yahoo mock draft in a similar way, but you can find the league id to use in the draft room (the big number in the draft room website link, as seen in the video). You need to import it once the mock draft room has opened (if you do it while in the waiting room before all of the teams have been locked in then it won't import players drafted by those teams).

Importing a Fantrax league (only available in premium)

You can import your Fantrax league by copying your league ID, clicking the import Fantrax option on your dashboard, pasting your league id into the correct field, selecting the available options, and clicking the import button.

NOTE: If you're in a dynasty league that has already had its startup draft, select the "Original Dynasty Draft Complete" draft status. This will import your rosters and only show available players in the draft tracker. If you're in a standard redraft league, update your status in the settings page for your league and set the draft status as complete once your draft is over. This will tell the website to stop using the draft room to pull roster data from.

EXTRA NOTE: Only use the multi-division option if you're in a league that has multiple leagues spanning across different divisions, such as the Locked On Bowl.

Importing a Sleeper league (only available in premium)

You can import your Sleeper league by copying your league ID, clicking the import Sleeper option on your dashboard, pasting your league id into the correct field, and clicking the import button.

Importing an ESPN league (only available in premium)

Importing ESPN leagues requires pre-authentication. First you need to authorize your access. This is done using either our Chrome extension or Firefox add-on. You'll only need to do this once, and not every time you need to import a league.

The next step is to log into any ESPN league, and then click the red hashtag extension/add-on icon:

This will show you the cookie values you need to enter into our authorize page. Enter those values into the form and click the Authorize button:

Once you're authorized you're good to import as many ESPN leagues as you like.You can locate your ESPN league id by going to your league's home page and taking it from the URL. For the example below, the league id is 256268232:

Click on the Import ESPN League option, enter 256268232 in the league id field, select the other options (you can always change these later on), and click the Import ESPN League button:

How to select your team for an ESPN league (only available in premium)

For the H2H Matchup Planner and Beast Mode tools to work, the website needs to know which team is yours. Yahoo automatically detects it, but for imported ESPN leagues you need to select it manually (a one-off in the settings page). If you don't have a team selected, a banner should appear at the top of the manage league page asking you to do it. Click on the link, select your team, and click update. The banner on the manage league page will automatically be removed.

Setting your default categories and weighting (only available in premium)

When you import your league it should automatically import categories used for your scoring system, but you also have the option to change your default weighting of categories to be used across the tools for your league (useful for those who have punt strategies). You can access and edit settings via the settings page of your imported league.

Dynasty Mode (only available in premium)

There's a dynasty mode setting that, when switched on, displays my dynasty rankings along with the standard current season rankings. There's also options to view the order based on the overall set of my dynasty rankings.

NOTE: Dynasty rankings will appear across most of the premium tools, including the draft tracker.

Auction Mode (only available in premium)

There's an auction mode setting that, when switched on, will show an auction mode draft tracker, which includes the average auction bid of players, along with auction values shown on the website.

NOTE: Auction values are a guide on what a player is valued at to highlight whether a certain bid is seen as good value. The values aren't to suggest not bidding overs for certain players, but just be aware that you can often find value once the big names are off the board.

Fantasy Basketball Rankings (the free version)

As the name suggests, this page displays rankings for the season, with some notable custom options:

Z SCORE: This lets you choose whether to make the z-scores for each category visible or not
AGE: This lets you choose whether to make a player's age visible or not
BASED ON: Whether to view stats and rankings based on per-game averages, or totals (per-game averages x games played)
TYPE: Which ranking formula type to use. Standard is the formula that calculates rankings based on your selected categories and weighting, H2H is the same as standard, except it puts a floor on how low a negative category can go (the floor is set to -2), and Minus 1, which is the same as standard, except it removes the player's worst category

You also have the option to select which categories to use, and how much value you want each category to have using the category multipliers.

Fantasy Basketball Rankings (the premium version)

The premium version is specific to your league, so it automatically uses your league's scoring system, uses your saved weighting, and has the option to select rankings of any team in your league. You also get to set which data set to use by default, whether it be one of the in-season rankings or multiple different projection data sets.

Fantasy Basketball Projections (the free version)

This page is where you'll find the free version of my fantasy basketball projections. During the season you'll also get access to my blend projections, which are a blend of my projections with data from the season. BLEND 7 is a 50/50 split of my projections and data from the last 7 days, BLEND 14 is a 50/50 split of my projections and data from the last 14 days. You also get ADP data on display for your chosen platform.

Like the fantasy basketball rankings, you also get these custom options:

Z SCORE: This lets you choose whether to make the z-scores for each category visible or not
AGE: This lets you choose whether to make a player's age visible or not
BASED ON: Whether to view stats and rankings based on per-game averages, or totals (per-game averages x games played)
TYPE: Which ranking formula type to use. Standard is the formula that calculates rankings based on your selected categories and weighting, H2H is the same as standard, except it puts a floor on how low a negative category can go (the floor is set to -2), and Minus 1, which is the same as standard, except it removes the player's worst category

You also have the option to select which categories to use, and how much value you want each category to have using the category multipliers.

Fantasy Basketball Projections (the premium version)

The premium version provides an extended view, showing multiple different data sets all specific to your league, so it automatically uses your league's scoring system, and uses your saved weighting.

Draft Tracker (only available in premium)

This tool is your best friend during the draft. It gives you a list of the best available players based on your selected categories, weighting, and scoring type (standard, H2H, and Minus 1), a breakdown of the available categories remaining in the draft, and the ability to switch through multiple different views, providing you different information as the draft takes place. The draft tracker isn't available for ESPN leagues.

NOTE: It's best to refresh draft data at the end of the round if you want to get a good reflection of standings. Wait for the draft to have started before refreshing the league data.

EXTRA NOTE: V2 is the version of the draft tracker that gets all of the additional features, the original version is there as a backup in case something goes wrong with V2 (AKA. I'm too scared to remove it).

H2H Matchup Planner (only available in premium)

This tool lets you plan your weekly h2h matchup by letting you predict which players will be play on certain days and see what impact certain waiver wire adds to both your and your opponents team will have on the projected end-of-week matchup prediction (the AFTER section of the scoreboard).

NOTE: After selecting and unselecting days, click the SAVE CHANGES button to view the updated scoreboard.

EXTRA NOTE: Tick the days as the day have been completed to remove hide and exclude them from the planner. They will automatically reset at the start of each week.

Waiver Wire Rankings (only available in premium)

This tool lets you view the best available players on your waiver wire with some additional features:

CATEGORY SCARCITY: This gives you an overview of what categories are still available on the waiver wire, and an overview of the categories of the selected amount of players to be shown (on the top left hand corner)
INCLUDE TEAM: This lets you include any team in the rankings to help compare a team against the available players on the waiver wire, the icon is used to show that player is already on a roster

Note: This data is up-to date based on the last time you refresh your league data. Refresh it prior to using this tool for best accuracy.

Advanced NBA Schedule Grid (the free version)

This tool lets you view the fantasy schedule of your selected platform and lets you filter it based on specific days to see who is playing on those days (and who against).

Premium Schedule Grid (the premium version)

The Advanced NBA Schedule Grid, but premium version includes players available on your waiver wire, along with the option to include a roster to compare against. It also gives you a ranking for how a player's opponent matches up aginst their primary position. This tool is helpful to identify streaming targets by ramping up the weighting of categories you want to boost up the most.

Beast Mode (only available in premium)

Beast mode is a tool that lets you know how you compare against every opponent in your league for any selected week of the fantasy season. If you've managed to beat all teams in a week, you've hit beast mode (sorry, this was the best name that I could come up with for this idea).

Smash Mode (only available in premium)

Smash mode lets you compare any two teams in your league and matches them up against each other for every week of the season. Useful to identify patterns and to know which categories to potentially punt or target in specific matchups.

Trade Machine (only available in premium)

This tool lets you simulate potential trades to see what impact they have on all teams and their projected power rankings. The different ranking types are also available to better evaluate trades.

NOTE: You can add a player from the waiver wire to either side of the trade to better evaluate 2-for-1 type trades.

Waiver Machine (only available in premium)

This tool lets you simulate what impact a waiver wire move has on your team and projected power rankings. The different ranking types are also available to better evaluate trades.

NOTE: You can add a player from the waiver wire without dropping a player. Just select the "no player dropped" option in the player dropdown list.

League Scouting Report (only available in premium)

This tool lets you view the full rosters of any two teams using different ranking types and gives you a breakdown of where each team ranks in your league for specific categories.

NOTE: Overll ranking points in the power rankings are awarded based on their ranking for each category, but keep in mind that it will lower the ranking of teams punting multiple categories, so pay close attention to teams that might be top-3 in 6-7 categories, but bottom 2 in 2-3.