Stacking Value in NBA Daily Fantasy

by Ethan Haskell (Ethan) Last Updated 2014-10-28 16:22:19

Another debate in daily fantasy hoops is the concept of stacking. The principles of stacking make sense in a sport like baseball, where players RBI’s and Runs scored depend greatly on the impact of their teammates. Or in hockey where most goals are accompanied by assists from fellow linemen. But in basketball that theory doesn’t necessarily hold true, and the only real connection between player points are assists for baskets between two players.

In this breakdown, we’ll look at which teams most often have multiple players scoring 30+, 40+ and 50+ fantasy points in a single game while proving that stacking in the NBA is not an advisable strategy, specifically for tournament play.

All scoring based on FanDuel’s scoring system

30+ Fantasy Point Games

Shown below are the number of games where teams had “X” players score 30 or more fantasy points.

• 30+ (1) – # Games where team had only 1 player score 30+ fantasy points
• 30+ (2) – # Games where team had 2 players score 30+ fantasy points
• 30+ (3) – # Games where team had 3 players score 30+ fantasy points
• 30+ (4) – # Games where team had 4 players score 30+ fantasy points
• 30+ (5) – # Games where team had 5 players score 30+ fantasy points
• 30+ (3+) – Total Games where 3 or more players had 30+ fantasy points
• 30+ (4+) – Total Games where 4 or more players had 30+ fantasy points

Table below is sortable

• Teams have 3+ 30 fantasy point scorers in 463 out of 1414 games played in the NBA this season, which is good for right around 33% of the time.
• Having 4+ 30 point performers or more is extremely rare, and happens in just 7.85% of NBA games this season (111 out of 1140 games).
• As would be expected, the odds of having 5+ 30 point games on one team is extremely small, with that event occurring in just 1.1% of games.
• The Clippers are intriguing, as they only have one game where just a single player had 30+ FP but they’ve had 26 games where 3 players had 30 or more fantasy points. Other good examples of teams whose player value seems more interdependent are the 76ers, Trailblazers, and Rockets.
• The Celtics, Bucks and Knicks are the only teams not to have at least one game this season where 4 or more players had 30+ fantasy points.

For the most part, this data shows that there are certain teams who you can trust stacking in cash games where a score of 30 is considered respectable. You shouldn’t go higher than 3 players on a team though, as the odds of getting 4 or more solid games on one roster are 7.8%, and even lower when you consider that you have to hit all four of those plays.

40+ Fantasy Point Games

Same premise as above, except instead of using 30 fantasy points as a cut-off, we’ll look at 40+ FP.

Table below is sortable

• No team has had 5 40+ performances in a single game this season, and only 1 time has a team had 3 players blow up for 40+ fantasy points. Out of 1414 games, that’s a 0.071% chance of it happening.
• Finding games where 3 players have 40 or more fantasy points is a challenge as well, and putting 3 players from one team on a GPP roster might not be the best course of action seeing as only 1.7% of games have teams with 3+ 40 fantasy point efforts.
• 13.44% of games have 2 players with 40 or more fantasy points on a single team.
• The Pistons are the only team to have 40+ fantasy points from 4 different players, with Brandon Jennings, Greg Monroe, Andre Drummond and Josh Smith all putting up 40 point efforts in a January 11th win over the Phoenix Suns.
• Two of the league’s worst defensive teams (and worst records), are tied for the most games with 3 players going over 40 fantasy points; Sacramento and Philadelphia with 4 games each. Houston is next up with 3 of those games.

50+ Fantasy Point Games

Same premise as above, except instead of using 30/40 fantasy points as a cut-off, we’ll look at 50+ FP.

Table below is sortable

• Finding a 50+ fantasy point game is rare to begin with, with only 18.46% of games having a player reach that plateau.
• The odds of two players on one team doing it are tiny, occurring in just 16 games out of 1414 for just around 1.1%
• The Clippers lead the league with 3 games where multiple players had 50+ fantasy points. Those 3 games all came in the span of a week between December 26th and January 3rd.
• Golden State, Houston, Minnesota and Orlando are the only teams to have 2 games where multiple players had 50+ fantasy points.

Since there aren’t that many games where multiple players had 50+ FP on a single team, here’s the full breakdown of each time it’s occurred this season:

December 26th – LA Clippers vs. POR – Chris Paul and Blake Griffin
December 28th – LA Clippers vs. UTA – Chris Paul and Blake Griffin
January 3rd – LA Clippers vs. DAL – Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan
November 13th – Minnesota vs. CLE – Kevin Love and Ricky Rubio
November 13th – Houston vs. PHI – Jeremy Lin and Dwight Howard
November 20th – Dallas vs. HOU – Monta Ellis and Dirk Nowitzki
December 3rd – Orlando vs. PHI – Arron Afflalo and Victor Oladipo
December 8th – Oklahoma City vs. IND – Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook
December 17th – Portland vs. CLE – Damian Lillard and LaMarcus Aldridge
December 22nd – Minnesota vs. LAC – Kevin Love and Nikola Pekovic
December 30th – New Orleans vs. POR – Jrue Holiday and Anthony Davis
January 2nd – Golden State vs. MIA – Stephen Curry and David Lee
January 8th – Houston vs. LAL – James Harden and Dwight Howard
January 15th – Orlando vs. CHI – Victor Oladipo and Jameer Nelson
January 21st – Sacramento vs. NO – Rudy Gay and DeMarcus Cousins
January 31st – Golden State vs. UTA – Stephen Curry and Andrew Bogut

Generally, it looks like hitting big scores and stacking don’t tend to correlate. Of course, this doesn’t take into account value stacking where 40+ fantasy points from a stud player and 30+ from a value play is sufficient, but generally it seems as if stacking two big time players on the same team will rarely work in your favor for tournaments. For head-to-head or 50/50 style games, you can likely get away with stacking a bit more often, which is contrarian to the stacking strategy used in daily sports such as baseball or hockey where a stack can be a better GPP move.