How Yahoo can improve Yahoo Fantasy NBA

I’ve been playing Yahoo! Fantasy NBA for years now–well–since 1999 anyway. Yahoo’s Fantasy NBA hasn’t really changed that much over the years.

The new drag-and-drop roster change functionality implemented this year is good.

What has improved it the most, however, is the onset of Firefox and Greasemonkey scripts. Those two things allow us that are inclined to interject HTML and AJAX pieces into the FBB pages.

I developed my game log link script not long after Greasemonkey came out.  It’s now been morphed into several other scripts by several guys more talented than I am. One script in particular is quite good: Yahoo Fantasy Basketball. It incorporates my game log link as well as live stats, etc. Very nice.

So, anyway, Yahoo’s Fantasy NBA is pretty stagnant, even compared with their own fantasy NFL system. Here are some things that I think Yahoo can do to improve it:

1. Implement the Talk Smack box like in Yahoo Fantasy NFL. I know the NBA season is longer, but the more interaction between the players, the better, IMO.
2. When a trade is being proposed, make the comment box text appear on the site and not just in the e-mail. Sometimes I want to make my case for the trade stat-wise, and unless the person reads their trade notification e-mail, they’ll never see it. Why not display it after they click the link to the view the trade proposal on the site?  I think it would make for more and better trades.
3. Please implement a Flash-based version of the StatTracker. The Java-based one is visually atrocious compared to it’s NFL counterpart.
4. Make the news icons next to the player links mean something.   The yellow post-it-note on fire means too many things.  It could mean they played a good game or that they are out for the season.