Reverse Engineering: Volume 2

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Welcome back to the second edition of Reverse Engineering! Last week, we took a look at a winning GPP lineup and broke down the thought process that goes into building a winning tournament team. In GPPs, you’re constantly looking for that high-upside player that not a lot of the field will not be on.

I’ve always been a huge proponent of going back and analyzing your previous lineups to see what you did right and where you could have improved. Finding your weaknesses and fixing them by reviewing what you did the night before can be a huge benefit to your DFS game, but it’s also very easy to ignore, since you’re usually so anxious to look forward to the next slate.

While I can’t analyze your lineups for you, what I can do is take a look at a successful lineup, and try to figure out why that person may have chosen to roster the players they did.

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When I first started playing daily fantasy, I would go back each night and compare my lineups to some of the best players in the industry to try and reverse engineer what they were thinking. The goal of this article is to do that for you, but I highly recommend giving it a try yourself, because it’s an excellent exercise that will absolutely sharpen your skills.

This week we’re going to take a slightly different approach, and break down a successful cash game lineup. Double ups in the NBA get much more difficult when the NFL season ends, but if you’re a sharp player, you can learn a lot from the top DFS pros to improve your game and bring in a consistent profit to fund your GPP entries.

To prove this point, I decided to use the cash game lineup that Troll4MVP used on FanDuel (his username there is westbrook4mvp, but his RG username is @Troll4MVP). For those of you that don’t know them, Team Troll4MVP is a duo of friends who moved to Las Vegas a few years ago to make a living sports betting on the NBA, but quickly transitioned a lot of their focus to daily fantasy when they started to find some success. They’re mostly known for having won the DraftKings NFL King of the Beach Championship just a few short months ago.

Huge NFL success aside, these guys are NBA experts at their core, and if you’re looking for someone to study in hopes of improving your NBA game, look no further than team Troll4MVP. Now that the introductions are out of the way, let’s take a look at the lineup they used last night on their way to crushing every double up in existence.

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Let’s dig in position by position and try to reverse engineer (see what I did there?) what they were thinking when they were building this team.

Point Guard – Derrick Rose – $7,100

Oh boy, what a doozy to start off with. I’ll be completely honest with you, when I first looked at this pick I thought to myself, “Oh my, I’m not sure how I’m going to justify this one.” On the surface, I see a team in the Chicago Bulls that has a few different options that can make an impact on the offensive side of the ball, and a matchup that every point guard fears in Patrick Beverley. But I know that someone as good as Troll4MVP wouldn’t take someone on his cash lineup without good reason, so I dug a little deeper.

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The most obvious part that could justify the pick was the fact that the Chicago/Houston game had the highest over/under of the night and only a three-point spread, hinting at a pretty competitive game. With that in mind, it’s usually safe to assume that a guy like Rose, who leads the Bulls with a 31.4 usage rate, should be pretty involved in a lot of that scoring.

But even with that, I couldn’t get over the matchup. After all, the Rockets are the second worst matchup for point guards, according to our defense vs. position tool, allowing an average of a measly 40.92 fantasy points to opposing point guards per 48 minutes. So I decided that maybe I should look past the numbers to see if I can find a better reason.

The epiphany came when I was discussing this conundrum with our very own hambazaza. He pointed out that a quick guard like Rose gets a pretty big boost against a normally stingy matchup like Beverley because the Bulls offense runs so many pick and rolls. In these situations, Beverley often gets caught behind the screen and Houston is forced to switch defenders, leaving Rose to be covered by guys like Joey Dorsey or Dwight Howard (obviously Dwight was out on Wednesday, but you get the point), which is obviously a much better matchup for him.

While we were having this conversation, I remembered back to a few days ago when DJ Augustin went off for 28 points and 12 assists in the very same matchup. Detroit’s offense sets a lot of pick and rolls for guys like Greg Monroe. See what I’m getting at here? In addition to all of this, it seems that Beverley’s defense has been slipping in general as of late, since they’re the #2 defense against PGs over the course of the season, but they’re ranked all the way down at #18 over the last three weeks.

Now obviously I can’t know for sure if this is the exact reason that Troll4MVP decided to roster Rose last night, and this seems like an awful lot of explanation for a pick that didn’t end up working out in the end, but there is a lesson to be learned from all of this. It’s important when building your lineups to take the numbers into consideration, but remember that no stat is the be all, end all for determining if a player is a good pick. Closely watching the games and learning the tendencies of each team can really help you find weaknesses to exploit and give yourself that extra edge.

Point Guard – Russell Westbrook – $11,000

Don’t worry, not every player will have quite the wall o’ text of an explanation that Derrick Rose did. The fact that Russell Westbrook was almost 80% owned on a night with 11 games on the slate should tell you more than enough about how obvious of a play Westy was.

To put it bluntly, when Kevin Durant is out, play Russell Westbrook. In cash games you’re looking for consistency, and the single most consistent stat in the NBA is points scored. Secondary stats like assists and rebounds are fantastic, but a guy who can score is going to be much more consistent than one that relies on those other categories.

Westbrook averages a ridiculous 43.6 usage rate when KD isn’t on the floor, along with .97 points scored per minute. Yes, that’s real points scored, not fantasy points scored. ‘Nuff said.

Shooting Guard – Giannis Antetokounmpo – $6,200

DFS NBA is (mostly) about two things: Supply and Matchup. We knew with relative certainty throughout the day that Zaza and Illyasova would be out for the Bucks last night, which was then confirmed at 6:33 EST via our NBA Newsletter Alerts.

With these injuries, the starting five were in line to get more run (read: more supply) and were in a dream matchup with the woeful Lakers. All five Bucks starters had decent floors, and at the modest price tag of $6,200 the Greek Freak was a pretty safe bet to meet value.

Shooting Guard – Kevin Martin – $6,300

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Here’s another interesting play that clearly many not people were thinking about (as shown by his 4% ownership). This is yet another case where you have to look past the data to learn why this was a good play.

On paper, Miami is a slow paced team that ranks as one of the top defenses against the shooting guard position. But when you dig a little deeper, you’ll find that since his return to action at the end of January, KMart has played at least 30 minutes in every game (with the exception of his first game, where he only played 29 minutes, but one can assume they were easing him back into the rotation) and has scored double digit points in every one of them.

In the past, Martin has been a little inconsistent with his scoring, but the combination of his solid recent performance, moderate price tag, and noticable size advantage over Mario Chalmers (Martin is 6’7” while Chalmers comes in at 6’1” – that’s a big difference for a guy who makes his bread and butter scoring the basketball) KMart looks like a pretty safe play overall.

Small Forward – Khris Middleton – $5,800

The logic behind this pick is extremely similar to the logic behind the Alphabet. A cheap wing player who can score with a matchup against the Lakers. I’m not going to waste your time rehashing everything I said before, but the supply was there for the taking, and Middleton was cheap.

Small Forward – Tobias Harris – $5,800

This is another pick that, at first glance, seems a bit questionable based on the difficult matchup with San Antonio (the #1 defense versus Small Forwards).

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However, as we know, value is king when it comes to daily fantasy. Tobias is an extremely talented player and the Orlando offense runs in large part through him. Recently the Magic’s coach had been messing with his minutes by making him come off the bench, which lead to a pretty large drop in his price.

When the news broke that Aaron Gordon would not be playing last night, Harris’ minutes became much more solidified, greatly reducing the risk of being burned by Jacque Vaughn’s shennanigans. This pick took some stones, but the value was there, and it certainly helped him fit Westy in comfortably.

Power Forward – Brandon Bass – $5,300

The nice thing about cash games is that not everything has to work out in your favor in order for you to win. In theory, Bass was a pretty easy play.

Dirt cheap, starting, matched up against Denver, who comes in as the third best matchup for power forwards. The difficulty here is guessing the roultette that is Brad Stevens’ rotations. With that said, clearly Troll4MVP took a calculated risk for a player in a good matchup. Obviously it didn’t work out, but since he was so cheap, the risk was minimal.

Power Forward – John Henson – $5,000

See Giannis and Khris Middleton. The difference here is that Henson isn’t a wing player, but big men against the Lakers have just as good of a matchup.

In general, rostering three Bucks can seem like risky business, but the thought process here is that at least two of the three out of Giannis/Middleton/Henson are going to get their stats, so taking all three of them raises Troll4MVP’s floor significantly.

Center – Hassan Whiteside – $7,400

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There are a lot of things I like about this pick. Since being inserted into the Heat’s starting lineup, Whiteside has been an absolute monster, and the fact of the matter is, his price simply hasn’t caught up to him yet. He’s had double digit points in 6 straight games (7 now if you count last night) and we know by this point why we like players who can score. Another thing worth noting is that Dieng isn’t exactly known for his perimiter defense, as he allows opponents to shoot 61.7% from 9 feet or less from the rim.

Plus, have you seen the picture of this guy flexing? Dude is a 7 foot tall monster.

Wrapping Up

As you can see, analyzing a past night’s lineup can be a lot of work, whether it’s your own or that of a well known daily fantsy pro. But trying to get in the mind of a daily fantasy player that you believe is better than you is a fantastic way to discover new aspects of the game that you didn’t even know were there. It’s extremely easy to fall into the trap of following a very simplistic formula and hoping for the best, but you need to find every edge you can to be successful in this game we all love.

Of course, I’m not saying that you have to devote hours every day to meticulously break down an entire lineup. Instead, find a player that someone you trust and respect decided to roster that you didn’t even consider. Then, focus on that one player and try to figure out why they took him. Trust me when I say this: No great DFS player takes someone just because he fits into the salary cap. There is always a reason, and finding that reason will unlock new ways of thinking that will improve your game leaps and bounds.

Hopefully you enjoyed the “cash game” version of Reverse Engineering. I think it poses a nice contrast to last week’s article, while still providing insight to one of the best players in the game.

So which game type breakdown did you prefer? Is there a certain daily fantasy pro that you want me to take a look at next week? Let me know in the comments!

About the Author

CruzinToVictory
Brian Hourigan (CruzinToVictory)

Brian Hourigan, A.K.A. CruzinToVictory (CruzinToVictry on Twitter), started playing fantasy sports his freshman year at UCONN and never looked back. He’s related to Babe Ruth, and is an odd mix of nerd, musician, and sports fanatic. Cruzin is a life long Giants, Yankees, and Huskies fan, and he has a Bachelors degree in Music, along with a Masters degree in Computer Science.