Recently I had something that sparked my curiosity. I don’t remember exactly what caused it, but I began to wonder if there was a way to make our fantasy basketball league final standings look like a real 82-game season just occurred. Obviously playing 82 matchups was too much. So, I turned to mathematics to see if I could assign wins and losses in a different way to magically get it to total 82 “games.” No dice. The number 82 doesn’t divide up evenly, no matter how many weeks are in your regular season.

My next option was to actually assign different values to different matchups. I wanted the values to differ as little as possible though, and since I play in a 10-team league with 18 regular season weeks, I was committed to working within those parameters first. Fortunately, I was able to come up with a solution that really isn’t all that complex.

Within an 18-week season, everybody plays everybody else twice. Our league doesn’t have multiple divisions, but for this exercise I ended up having to divide them into two separate five-team divisions. With that, here’s how it works:

Instead of adding one to the win or loss column after each matchup, you add five when it’s a divisional matchup. When it’s a non-divisional matchup, you add four wins or losses. The final piece to this is to assign a rival to every team from the opposite division, and instead of four for that particular matchup, you go with five.

Big picture: Now you have 10 games each worth five points in the W/L column, and eight games each worth four points in the W/L column. This brings your final standings to a perfect 82-game total. So, for example, if a team ends up with a regular W/L record of 11-7, that will calculate to an NBA-style record of anywhere from 47-35 to 54-28, depending on which teams they beat during the season.

Why do this at all? Uh, you don’t have to. It’s just a fun little visual tweak to your fantasy basketball final standings. Having multiple divisions has its pros and cons, but rivalry games have often been a nice addition, and the added point value can now make them actually more meaningful in a tangible way.

Well, that’s it. Nothing much to it really. However, I did try doing this in 12, 14 and even 16-team league structures but just couldn’t find the right balance with point values and regular season weeks. So for now, this 10-team configuration is all I’ve been able to properly solve. Feel free to try it in your league, or even customize it further if you see something I haven’t. Cheers!