Introduction to The NIBL and how we play our little games

Intro

The NIBL is a fantasy basketball league located here in the heartland: Naperville, IL.

That's NIBL, as in:

• Naperville, Illinois... where we live
• Invitational... don't just show up
• Basketball... it's a fantasy basketball dealie
• League... there's more than one of us

We started in 1997.

How We Play

The basic idea is that you select a team of NBA players and compete based on the statistics of the NBA players that you have chosen. The NIBL has around 16 teams, and teams compete weekly based on the results of NBA games during that week.

Here's a quickie on how to play:

• You draft 10 NBA players to be on your team.
• Each team must draft 2 centers, 4 forwards, and 4 guards.
• Each week you play a different fantasy opponent head-to-head.
• You pick 5 players (1 center, 2 forwards, 2 guards) to play each week... along with a 6th man in case someone is sick or AWOL or whatever.
• The stats (points, rebounds, assists, steals, blocks) of those 5 players over a week of NBA games determine your fantasy team's score.
• You must play each of your players at least once during the regular season.
• The team with the highest score over the week wins. In case of a tie, the home team wins.

If you want more details than that, check these pages out the NIBL League Bylaws contain a formal (sort of) description of the rules. It's probably even easier just to click around the site to see how it all works.

For NIBL historians, here's that cool, ancient "intro" written for the first season: Old NIBL Intro