FanDuel Announces Changes to NBA Format
NBA season is upon us, which means we have yet another DFS sport to digest on a daily basis. The start of the NBA season marks one of the busiest times on the sports calendar, as we have playoff MLB, regular season NHL, golf, MMA, NASCAR, tennis, and of course NFL all rolling along at this time of year. Throw NBA into the mix, and the calendar is jam-packed.
For those of you who may not have noticed, many DFS sites have announced NBA changes for the 2018-2019 season. There has perhaps been no more hotly debated topic on this site than the use of late swap in NBA. DraftKings has brought that concept back for the current season, to the hoopla of some and the dismay of others. There is no certainty on this topic other than the fact that there will never be complete agreement on it. Some love late swap. Some hate late swap. Personally, I like having options — meaning I liked the fact that DraftKings would allow late swap while FanDuel would not. On nights where I can follow news closely, I’ll play more on DraftKings. On nights where I can’t follow news closely, I’ll play more on FanDuel.
Then, on Friday, October 5th, FanDuel dropped the bombshell news that shocked the DFS community, and in true 2018 fashion, they announced the changes in a Tweet:
Initial reaction to the news was — not surprisingly — very mixed. I am going to put my personal feelings aside for a second and give FanDuel complete credit for diligently searching for a compromise result. They knew moving to late swap would cause the same uproar that the DraftKings news caused, and I think this is a reasonably well-thought out solution. For that, FanDuel gets a nice round of applause.
This absolutely appeals to the casual player. People have jobs. People have families. People look to eat dinner around lineup lock time. Even though I am more of a high volume player than the casual one, I really like the change after thinking about it for a few days. It adds a new layer of strategy to the game that we didn’t have before, and it’s not the same game that they had before. Let’s take a second to break down that argument.
At first glance, the optimal nightly strategy will simply be to completely punt one roster spot. This leads to the main argument against this new format change. If everyone is completely punting one spot, then a late scratch still becomes a late scratch. You aren’t getting many points from your total punt, and then you are still stuck with a low score when you have a late scratch. I do agree that this will generally be the route most people take.
However, this change also opens up tons of angles to play the strategy game, especially in tournament formats. A balanced lineup approach should be contrarian most nights, especially on nights where there is a clear-cut punt play. I actually think you might be able to take the strategy of building lineups the same way you always have — making that “drop lowest score” truly what it is intended to be, and that is a buffer against a late scratch and/or complete dud. There is no doubt that stars and scrubs builds are going to be much more common than they have been in prior years, and that makes the contrarian angle a much better leverage play. I am of the opinion that there is a lot more strategy to this than the masses are implying.
Whichever way you slice it, this has people talking about FanDuel NBA, and it will be exciting to see how it all plays out over the course of the 2018-2019 season. The optimal strategy just might evolve as the season gets going. We’ll have you covered here at RotoGrinders Premium as the season tips off on October 16th!