If you haven't already familiarized yourself with the way Sports.ws scores fantasy games, read the Guide to Sports.ws Head-to-Head scoring. There, you can learn how each fantasy game is analyzed, what can earn points, how real life minutes and the order of your lineup factor into each game, and how to calculate the total score.

How are head-to-head matchups determined? And what happens when my team changes in the middle of the season? If I change my lineup today, when will I see my scores change? All of these questions are somewhat related, and all are answered in this article.

Again, it's important to understand that each fantasy game is based on a real life game. There are no weekly summaries and nothing as simple as adding up all your rebounds and comparing them to those of another team. Fantasy Game 1 uses results from each NBA team's Game 1 to determine a score. Every team plays a Game 1, even if it's not on the same night.

Let's take a step back and look at your head-to-head schedule. If your league has started the draft, the "Schedule" tab and page should be available. When you click it, you see your individual schedule for the entire year in calendar format.

You have probably seen similar schedules for your favorite professional teams.  The different colors represent home and away games, and each game is layed out in an easy-to-read format.

Take a look at the first game, on November 5th (11/05).  In this example, the box in the calendar reads "Deadline: 11/02 8:00pm PT."  You're probably wondering, "...the game's on the 5th, why is there a deadline 3 days earlier?  What do I to 'meet' the deadline?"  In this example, it takes 3 days for all 30 NBA teams to play their first game.

See all the first games stacked next to each other (you can click "NBA Games" to get this screen):

The bottom line is everything stands still for everything related to Fantasy Game 1 during these three days.  You can't change your lineup for Game 1, and you won't get the box score until all the games are done (though you will get updates, read more).  The first team to play a Game 'X' sets the "deadline".  In the example above, the Pistons and Rockets both play at 8pm on 11/2 so that's the deadline.

When a deadline passes, it will be transparent to your league home and the pages you surf.  Behind the scenes, your lineup at that exact time is frozen and saved to use in scoring.  The lineups of every other team in your league are frozen too.

Remember your lineup page, the order you set, free agents, trades, and waivers?  None of that matters until the deadline passes. You can change anything at any time and your score won't be affected unless a deadline freeze captures a snapshot and saves it.  This also means that if, at any point, you have more than 12 players on your team, you can keep all of them until the deadline.  In this case, your roster will be trimmed down to 12 and players will be automatically dropped.

There are 82 deadlines throughout the year.  It is a good idea to keep an eye on them, so that you don't get caught with a lineup you don't want for a game.  Alternatively, if you're saavy and know when the deadlines are, you could get away with dropping players, waiting for players to come off waivers, and not have to worry about scoring less because you don't have a full lineup.  At any point in time, you can see exactly what the order and positioning of the other lineups in your league by visiting the rosters page.

You may be wondering why you're playing certain teams on certain days, and how all of the schedules are generated.  Each league's schedule is driven by the number of teams in the league and the settings the commissioner uses to control playoffs and playoff settings.

Your commissioner gets access to features like this:

(note: some of the features are reserved for "Premium Commissioners.")

Your commissioner can change these settings until the first deadline passes.  You will be able to review the playoff brackets and schedule at the bottom of your team's schedule page.  Note: Playoffs use the same deadline techniques.  Fantasy playoff games, are, after all, still regular season NBA games.

Depending on the number of regular season fantasy games in your season and the size of your league and conferences and divisions, you might face your most likely rivals (division and/or conference members) at the very beginning of the season, and down the playoff stretch.

Even if all of the above seems clear to you now, chances are you have some questions on how it all plays out, and how you are supposed to work with a schedule to improve your team.

In the simplified example above, Fantasy Game 1 was analyzed.  One thing to consider is that a team like the Rockets or Pistons, who play on the first night (11/5), might play Game 2 on the next night (11/6), before the end of Fantasy Game 1.  What happens?  When the first team starts Game 2, the deadline freezes lineups to score for Game 2, and has nothing to do with Game 1or the results.  If you dropped a player between the deadlines for Game 1 and Game 2, they'd play for Game 1 and not for Game 2.  Don't worry - they'll have a game to play because every NBA team plays 82 games.  It might seem confusing, but there can be multiple, sometimes as many as three or four fantasy games going on at the same time.  Game 1's lineups are frozen during those three days, but games are affected.  Your schedule and partial box scores help keep you in the loop and up to speed on the progress of each throughout the season.

One of the biggest flaws of this scoring system is that, in order to be fair, all lineups need to be frozen from the time the first plays the game number to the time the last does.  In the example above, there is, at worst a 3 day delay.  If you find out one of your Pistons gets hurt 5 minutes before their game, you can make a change and take them out minutes before the deadline.  However, you'll have to make decisions on your Bulls three days in advance - decisions you can't change for Game 1.  Sometimes the lag can be as much as 7-10 days during the middle of the season, but it gets shorter and shorter at the end of the season.  We haven't figured out a way to work around this, but are still thinking (we don't want any solution to add to the already complex system).  Still, many rivals force you to set lineups a week in advance, and at the worst times of the season, only parts of your team have to endure that kind of delay.

How should you handle the schedule and are there things you should do between games?  Fortunately, the scoring system covers your butt during those times when you lose a major player.  If they're at the top of the lineup, you won't suffer to much (provided you have depth) because the bench will step in and fill up the minutes automatically.  Because of this, you can often cruise on autopilot for most of the season for most of your lineup.  You'll want to analyze your players' FPPG and FPPM and switch them around to maximize your minutes, especially when you make trades or free agent drops or pickups.

Really, there is nothing you have to do during the season.  Deadlines handle themselves and you are not required to do anything to freeze a lineup - when a deadline passes, the lineup is automatically frozen.  But, of course, you're not going to win any competitive league unless you're keeping an eye on your lineup the players' performance, adjusting accordingly.