Get Started Playing NBA Daily Fantasy SportsAn Introduction To Playing Fantasy NBA Games |
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Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) is about value. Those who do the best job of finding value in the players they select generally win. The NBA is the ultimate value sport to play in DFS. Sports like football, baseball, hockey and soccer have events like touchdowns, home runs and goals that drastically alter the amount of points each player scores and can ultimately decide the fate of your fantasy team as a whole. With the NBA, there are no such events. There are no major moments within games that hugely alter how your fantasy team performs. Instead, players are awarded small point totals for virtually every action they make during the game. Finding players who consistently perform at or above their value is the key when it comes to NBA DFS.
NBA DFS Overview
Before getting into the strategies of NBA DFS, an understanding of how it works is necessary. Over at DraftKings, for example, your lineup will consist of eight players; Point Guard (PG), Shooting Guard (SG), Small Forward (SF), Power Forward (PF), Center ©, Guard (G), Forward (F) and Utility (U). You are given $50,000 in salary cap money to spend on these eight positions. Players accumulate fantasy points for points scored, rebounds, assists, blocks, steals, three pointers made, turnovers (negative), as well as double doubles and triple doubles. Learning and understanding how the scoring system can affect the value of each player is key to setting a successful NBA DFS lineup.
How to Find Value
There are three critical factors in determining whether or not a player is going to be valuable on a given night. First and foremost is trying to gauge how many minutes a player will play. You can do this by looking at how many minutes the player is averaging on the year or over the last few years. Some player roles can change wildly based on what personnel changes were made by his team in the off season. Looking at prior years would only apply to players who are entrenched in a role they’ve had with the same team in recent years. Whether a player’s team is experiencing injuries can also be a huge factor in the amount of minutes a player will play. For example, if a player you’re considering using is the starting point guard and one of only two capable ball handlers on his team who is healthy, then he is likely to be on the floor a lot that night.
Another factor to be cognizant of when looking at a player is fantasy points per minute (fppm). This is simply fantasy points per game divided by minutes per game. The idea behind it is to identify which players are the most productive on average for every minute they’re on the floor.
Finally, the matchups from night to night can and should shape the way you look at nearly every player. To get an overarching look at the night’s matchups, the first place I go is Las Vegas. Well, I don’t literally go to Vegas. But I look at the betting lines and total score projections put out by the Vegas sportsbooks. You should identify the teams that are slated to score the most points. The players on these teams are generally going to rack up the most fantasy points of the night.
Building Your Lineup
There is a situation to look for when building NBA DFS lineups that is absolute gold. You will need to be attentive and ready to pounce when it arises. The situation I’m referring to is finding a player who typically doesn’t start for his team, preferably a point guard or big man, who is being thrust into the starting lineup and likely to play a lot of minutes due to an injury to the starter for his team. The reason it can be such a profitable situation is that the player in question often comes with a minimum or near minimum salary and is therefore very good value. You now have in your lineup a starter who could play 35 minutes at a very steep discount. This offers you flexibility to spend your money on studs where you wouldn’t have otherwise. It will give you a leg up on the competition.
My advice for finding these situations would be to get your butt on Twitter. NBA beat writers from all thirty teams are constantly tweeting out very useful nuggets of information that DFS players can use to their benefit. I follow one or two of these writers from pretty much every NBA team.
Minutes, per minute production, matchups and the all-important injury replacement player can and will be the key factors to your NBA DFS lineups. These are the things you need to be on the lookout for when setting lineups in NBA DFS contests. It all sounds a little intimidating, but you’ll get the hang of it. Just remember to think in terms of value. Whether a player is valuable for his salary should guide all of your choices in NBA DFS. Is this player’s likely combination of minutes and production good for the price I’m paying? If the answer is no, you can move on. If it’s yes, well then slot him in and get to work on filling out the rest of that lineup.
Best of luck!
My favorite sources of information on NBA DFS: twitter, nba.com/stats, rotoworld.com, and anywhere you can find the betting lines and totals for each game.
Find me on twitter @IanJ300 with any questions.
To put your new-found NBA DFS knowledge to the test, head over to DraftKings, where NBA contests are being run every night of the week. Every Wednesday, the site runs a $27 buy-in $200,000 guaranteed NBA contest awarding $20,000 to the winner.
If you’d like to compete but don’t have an account, sign up today. Card Player readers making their first deposit will be given a FREE $2 entry into the NBA $50k Layup contest. New users are also eligible for a 100 percent deposit bonus up to $600.
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