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This year, SBNation and popular fantasy sports website FanDuel are partnering up to bring you a chance to play daily fantasy basketball for potential cash prizes.
Disclosure: Even though this is a sponsored post with affiliate links, all of the opinions in this post are my own. And as an FYI, FanDuel gave me some cash to play its daily fantasy games.
FanDuel can be played either for free or for actual money, but I do have some kinda bad news for Arizona residents. You can't play for money if you live in Arizona or a few other states. Here are specific rules. They include this: "In order to deposit money to play paid entry games you must be able to represent and warrant that you are not a resident of any of the following states: Arizona, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana or Washington." Given the first-named probably covers the majority of readers here, that's a bit of a bummer. But there are still free games on the site, in which you can take part, without falling foul of archaic regulations. And I know not everyone reading the site lives in Arizona, so go to it!
The way Fanduel works is that you're given a set salary cap and tasked with creating a team of players for that night's action. You're competing with sometimes thousands of other players, and prizes are doled out on a sliding scale. For example in one contest with a $2 buy-in going on for tonight's opening action, the top prize is $6,000 for having the highest scoring team, but it scales all the way to $5 if you finished in the 1,501 - 6820 range. Here's a handy link to their NBA contest beginner guide.
The cool thing about FanDuel is that you can start over fresh each day, not having to worry about choosing a team once and riding them for the entire year. That also means you can play when you want, and not worry about tweaking your rotations every day to adjust for each game, injury, etc.
Later in the year we'll be bringing you some site specific tournaments so we can all play together, as well as specific fantasy advice regarding the players on the Suns. For now though, you can sign up for FanDuel by going here. Here's a link to FanDuel's rules, and remember that you must be 18 years or older and live in the US or Canada to play. Please note that residents of AZ, IA, LA, MT and WA cannot play for money.