Welcome back Loserball Nation!!!! After the success of our first NFL season, Loserball has launched our first cash contest — just in time for the NBA Playoffs!

In true Loserball fashion, you’ll be rewarded for all of the bad things that happen in a basketball game. Bricks bring you bucks, fouls will be fabulous, and turnovers are terrific! While the playoffs feature the best of the best talent in the league, there will still be plenty of basketball badness to cheer for.

So let’s preview the Eastern Conference for our NBA First-Round Fiasco contest:

How you use your 1000 “Sparks” will be important. You can pick the player most likely to top each category of futility, but the payoff won’t be as much. Do you go big and pick a bit of an underdog, or play for the big odds and try to advance to the top of the Leaderboard with a guy who surprises folks with how poorly he plays in the first round? Also, when picking the categories that reward you for the sheer volume of bad stats (as opposed to worst percentage), you also should take into account how long you think the series will go — as the more games they play the more chances for fantastic failures!

When it comes to point guards, the East is loaded with talent at the position, like Memphis’ Ja Morant and the Pistons’ Cade Cunningham. We know what you are thinking, “Hey, these guys are elite, they aren’t going to help us in Loserball Land.” Oh, you don’t realize how wrong you are! Cade Cunningham was second in the league in turnovers with over 4 per game. Ja Morant fumbled it away nearly four times a game, and you definitely want to keep an eye on ball hogs like Jayson Tatum and Giannis Antetokounmpo as top turnover targets.

And while the Eastern Conference playoff teams have five of the top 15 scorers in the NBA, a lot of them are serious chuckers. Jayson Tatum missed an eye-popping 800+ shots this year — that’s Loserball GOLD! Cade Cunningham wasn’t far behind with 770+ (that’s two categories he helps you with), and even top-seeded Cleveland saw Donovan Mitchell miss nearly 740 shots this season. If you are more of a missed field goal percentage fan, the top teams in the East had over ten players that missed 55% of their shots or higher.

Finally, a guy doesn’t have to be on the court the whole game to help you win. Kyle Kuzma in Milwaukee only plays 30 minutes a night but is quite the brickslayer as he misses more than 56% of his field goals and is even stronger from behind the three-point line, tracking off-target on nearly 70% of his attempts from downtown, truly bringing his former wizardry to Deer Central.

Hopefully, you’ve now got a better idea of strategy and some “stars” for the Loserball NBA First-Round Fiasco. Sign up today, pick the guys you think will shine in each category and get ready to start popping bottles when basketballs go clanging off the iron!

Even though some really disappointing teams are competing for a championship, the Western Conference is loaded with Loserball leaders — say that three times fast! Outside of being a pretty good free throw shooter and not so foul-prone, James Harden should be on the Loserball Mount Rushmore.

We are so thankful the fantasy sports deities got the Clippers into the top six seeds in the West. Anthony Edwards? Same deal! Top 15 in turnovers, and missed nearly 900 shots this past season.

Last, but certainly not Loserball least, is Russell Westbrook. He is a turnover machine while chucking up bad shots game in and game out! Westbrook is also quite mediocre from the free-throw line, truly an all-around best bet.

However, in this contest, you can’t just rely on the top guys all the time. You have to use your Sparks wisely, and also take into consideration how long a playoff series might go, and not just how terrible a guy might play. Sure, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is going to throw up a bunch of bricks in the first round despite likely being the top scorer, but is Oklahoma City going to breeze through the soon-to-be-determined #8 seed, perhaps limiting how many shots he will miss? Luka missed 11 shots per game and turned the ball over 3.5 times every contest, but will the Lakers be taken into a long series by Minnesota? That will be the strategy that will determine the best choices for each category.

We hope this gives you a little flavor of what to expect with Loserball’s NBA First Round Fiasco. We had so much fun with football that we had to expand into other sports! So now, clutch missed free throws will be cause for celebration, and those ticky-tack fouls are fabulous! Turnovers are also tremendous in a totally new way to look at pro basketball.

Be sure to check out the rules, put your thinking cap on, and get ready to root for all of the worst things to happen to the players you choose as we gear up for high-stakes playoff action. Good luck Loserball Nation!