Furry Basketball Association
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The Furry Basketball Association (FBA) is a fantasy sports league run by the furry community. Unlike most fantasy leagues, the FBA does not follow any real world sports. Instead, the FBA has established its own sports teams, divisions, conferences and 80-game schedule, with the team rosters filled by characters created by participants in the league. Game results are calculated by using a proprietary simulation engine, with daily updates being posted on FurAffinity and Twitter. The FBA borrows heavily from the National Basketball Association for inspiration, including Eastern and Western Conferences, an annual player draft, a 16-team playoffs bracket with best-of-7 series, and rules from the NBA including a 23 foot, 9 inch 3-point line. However the FBA has many of its own rules based on the wide variety of furry players in the league, including rules for tail-dribbling, tonguing the ball, and a one-flap rule for avian players.
As of December of 2011, the FBA has begun its third season. While this is its third season as an active fantasy league for the fandom, the FBA Universe has developed a history that places the beginning of the league in 1961. Within the FBA storyline, the 2011-2012 season is the league's 50th in existence.
On March 13, 2011, the FBA was announced as a finalist in the Best Game category for the Ursa Major Awards. It eventually lost out to the Junction Point video game title Epic Mickey.
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[edit] Beginnings of the FBA
The FBA was started in 2009 by Buck Hopper as backstory for his Buck Hopper character. At the time, the FBA only existed as a footnote in the character's description on TapestriesMUCK, suggesting that Hopper's team, the Layleaux Thrust, was part of a larger league of furry basketball players. Originally, it was not intended to develop into anything more.
Gradually, through role-plays on TapestriesMUCK and later through comments and questions posted to Hopper's account on FurAffinity, details about the league developed. A handful of teams and other players were referenced in the character's backstory and in art pieces, suggesting at growing detail in the league. The FBA's growth took off on June 3rd, 2009, when the first of three Be-Hope articles were posted on FurAffinity. The art pieces, made in the style of a sports magazine story, went into deep detail about Buck Hopper's character and his history with the league. Despite earning few looks or favorites, the art pieces inspired a swell of interest in the FBA by a handful of fans. That swell then inspired Baker to create the first seven episodes of The FBA Post Up Podcast, audio recordings produced in the style of a radio sportscast, to relate the story of Buck Hopper's team facing the Huntsville Mayors in the 2009 FBA Finals. Because the storyline was no longer being told from TapestriesMUCK, Baker decided to change the name of Hopper's team, replacing the Taps-only location of Layleaux with the name of the California county he grew up in, Stanislaus.
After the seventh episode of the podcast, interest in the FBA continued to grow. This success inspired Baker to take another step forward and design an entire league. In the fall of 2009, he invited his watchers on FurAffinity to come up with new teams for the league, eventually settling on 24 with 4 teams in each of 6 divisions. He then invited his watchers to come up with players to fill the rosters of each of the teams, organizing them in a Google Docs spreadsheet. Once the rosters were filled, remaining slots were set aside for a bundle of new players created for the 2009 FBA Draft. The first FBA draft was held on November 1, 2009, and filled the final slots in the FBA rosters, allowing for the beginning of the first season of the FBA.
[edit] 2009-2010 Season
The first real-world season of the FBA began on November 18th, 2009. As Buck Hopper's first effort in managing a fantasy basketball league, the season was marked by a very primitive system and a strong dependence on random die rolls to progress. However it also laid down the foundation that would shape the future of the league.
[edit] The 80-Game Schedule
In documents describing the FBA prior to the creation of the openly playable league, references are made to an 82-game schedule similar to that used by the NBA. However, once Buck Hopper decided on a 24-team league divided into two conferences of three divisions each, he found that an 80-game schedule was much simpler mathematically. It was decided that each team would play all three of its divisional rivals eight times each season (four games away, four games at home) for a total of 24 games, all eight of its remaining conference rivals four times each season (two games away, two games at home) for a total of 32 games, and all 12 of the teams in the opposing conference twice (one game away, one game at home) for a total of 24 games, making a total of 80 games per team. This has remained the standard for the FBA schedule since.
A schedule was not prepared before the beginning of the season, so the schedule was written out as the season progressed. This resulted in significant gaps between some games and no opportunity to look ahead to future games.
[edit] Team Ratings
Even before any games were played, it had been determined that like in any professional sports league, some teams were stronger than others. To maintain a sense of different strength in teams, the clubs were given rankings from six (minimum strength for a pro club) to ten (best in the current league). This fed into the die-rolling system developed for determining winners, and became the starting point for rating the clubs for the first two seasons.
[edit] Die Rolling
To determine the winner of each matchup, Buck Hopper developed a simple die rolling system. He would roll the number of dice given in each team's rating and select the six highest values rolled. In this instance, a team rated six would get the total of the entire roll while a team rated ten would get to throw out the four lowest die rolls. The home team was always given one extra die, and a team that had to play games on back-to-back nights would lose one die to indicate fatigue.
The team with the higher die roll won. In the event of a tie, another die roll would indicate the winner in overtime. The die rolls did not provide specific scores, so scored were invented by Buck Hopper based on the results-- as in a low number would indicate a low score and a high number would indicate a high score. Only the final score was reported.
This die-rolling system was demonstrated during episode #33 of the podcast Unsheathed.
[edit] Results
An entire season was completed using this system. It lacked any significant control over the teams by the GMs and provided only final scores for the games. While the system worked, GMs asked for more control over their teams and for more detail in the games, as in scores per quarter and individual box scores. These would become new goals for the following season.
[edit] 2010-2011 Season
After the success of the first full season of the FBA, Hopper was encouraged to hold another. He made it a priority to add more detail to the die rolling system, allowing the FBA contributors to help decide the quality of the teams as well as find a way to reward teams that promoted defense over offense. The result was a complex new die rolling system, along with many new features.
[edit] FBA Engine 1.0
[edit] 2011-2012 Season
[edit] The FBA Universe
[edit] Howlereen
Every FBA season begins with the Howlereen Invitational, the league's customary first pre-season match. Howlereen is always played on October 31st in Montana against an invited opponent, usually the defending league champions.
The first Howlereen Invitational was played in 1968 in the inaugural year of the Montana Howlers. Being the first expansion team of the league, the introduction of the Howlers franchise unbalanced the conferences by putting 4 teams in the Western Conference with 3 teams in the Eastern Conference. As an effort by team management to ease tensions in the league over the unbalance, the Howlers held the league's first ever pre-season match on October 31st, 1968. The event was such a success, the Howlers held a pre-season match on Halloween every year, until it's become the FBA tradition it is today.
[edit] FBA Details
[edit] Teams
The FBA currently consists of 24 extant teams. 23 are from the United States and 1 from Canada.
[edit] Western Conference
[edit] Northwest Division
- Alaska Arctics
- Montana Howlers
- Idaho Mounties
- Spokane Rapids
[edit] Midwest Division
- Dakota Bikers
- Des Moines Blanks
- Kansas City Clefs
- Winnipeg Voyageurs
[edit] Southwest Division
- Galveston Sand Dollars
- Santa Ana Spectrums
- Santa Fe Whips
- Stanislaus Thrust
[edit] Eastern Conference
[edit] Northern Division
- Albany Alphas
- Bangor Bantams
- Newark Pride
- Plymouth Taproots
[edit] Central Division
- Baltimore Spirits
- Loraine Firestorm
- Pittsburgh Keystones
- Williamsburg Minutemen
[edit] Southern Division
- Biloxi Mudpuppies
- Huntsville Mayors
- Tallahassee Typhoons
- Tennessee Moonshiners
[edit] Historical Teams
- St. Paul Mayors (founded in 1961, became the Huntsville Mayors in 1984)
- Hamilton Mariners (founded in 1920 as part of the Great Lakes Basketball League, joined the FBA in 1980, became the Albany Alphas in 1995)
- Rocky Mountain House Royals (founded in 1974 as an amateur team, joined the FBA in 1980, became the Rocky Mountain Rabble in 2004)
- Santa Cruz Clefs (founded in 1961, became the Kansas City Clefs in 2009)
- Tucson Demons (founded in 1961, became the Galveston Sand Dollars in 2009)
- Springfield Fusion (founded in 1995, became the Pittsburgh Keystones in 2010)
- Rocky Mountain Rabble (Changed their name from the Rocky Mountain House Royals in 2004, became the Rocky Mountain Royals in 2010)
- Rocky Mountain Royals (Sent to FBA D-League in 2011)
[edit] Champions
1961-1962: St. Paul Mayors
1962-1963: Plymouth Taproots
1963-1964: Santa Cruz Clefs
1964-1965: Plymouth Taproots
1965-1966: Tucson Demons
1966-1967: Biloxi Mudpuppies
1967-1968: St. Paul Mayors
1968-1969: St. Paul Mayors
1969-1970: Santa Cruz Clefs
1970-1971: Biloxi Mudpuppies
1971-1972: Plymouth Taproots
1972-1973: Montana Howlers
1973-1974: Tucson Demons
1974-1975: Tucson Demons
1975-1976: Montana Howlers
1976-1977: Montana Howlers
1977-1978: Montana Howlers
1978-1979: Baltimore Spirits
1979-1980: Tucson Demons
1980-1981: Montana Howlers
1981-1982: Montana Howlers
1982-1983: Baltimore Spirits
1983-1984: Baltimore Spirits
1984-1985: Montana Howlers
1985-1986: Tucson Demons
1986-1987: Plymouth Taproots
1987-1988: Montana Howlers
1988-1989: Montana Howlers
1989-1990: Plymouth Taproots
1990-1991: Biloxi Mudpuppies
1991-1992: Loraine Firestorm
1992-1993: Dakota Bikers
1993-1994: Santa Cruz Clefs
1994-1995: Dakota Bikers
1995-1996: Huntsville Mayors
1996-1997: Huntsville Mayors
1997-1998: Huntsville Mayors
1998-1999: Huntsville Mayors
1999-2000: Huntsville Mayors
2000-2001: Newark Pride
2001-2002: Loraine Firestorm
2002-2003: Williamsburg Minutemen
2003-2004: Dakota Bikers
2004-2005: Albany Alphas
2005-2006: Santa Fe Whips
2006-2007: Newark Pride
2007-2008: Dakota Bikers
2008-2009: Huntsville Mayors
2009-2010: Dakota Bikers
2010-2011: Stanislaus Thrust
[edit] See also
[edit] External Links
- Furry Basketball Association
- FBA on Twitter
[edit] Mentionings in media
- There's A Pittsburgh Furry Basketball Team, PSAMP sports blog