RotoAcademy Preview: Intro to Daily Fantasy Basketball
So… you want to play daily fantasy basketball, huh?
Let me start by saying that this is by far my favorite daily fantasy sport. While there is nothing like an NFL Sunday, I prefer the grind of the NBA season because it gives us more opportunities to succeed. As an added benefit, there are basically games every night for the better part of eight months.
This is meant to serve as a refresher course for daily fantasy basketball. If you already have plenty of experience in the sport, feel free to move on to the more advanced courses (Injuries, Value, or the Blueprint Volume 2). However, it never hurts to try to take your DFS game to the next level and anything that you can learn from this course will be more than worth the small investment.
Editor’s Note: This is one of the many valuable DFS lessons that can be found over at RotoAcademy. Click here to browse through all of our offerings and improve as a daily fantasy sports player!
Basketball has always been my favorite sport to play, but that’s not the reason why it’s my favorite sport in DFS. The main reason is the predictability of individual players in the sport. The average NBA game includes around 98 possessions per 48 minutes. There are fantasy points that can be scored on every single possession. Compared to other sports, the number of opportunities to score fantasy points is much greater. In the NFL, an offense typically runs about 65 plays per game, but half are usually allocated to the run and the other half are allocated to the pass. The best running backs in the NFL see around 25 touches per game, while the best receivers are lucky to see 12-15 targets each week.
In baseball, hitters usually see between 3-5 at-bats each game. Can you imagine trying to predict the production of an NBA player if they played on 3-5 possessions per game? Given the number of opportunities in basketball, fantasy production is much more predictable than it is in other sports. In the NBA, every possession provides an opportunity for points, rebounds, assists, blocks and steals – all of which contribute to fantasy production.
Daily fantasy basketball is a sport that is centered around value. You need production from every single roster spot in your lineup to have a chance to win each night. In fantasy football, we can get away with rostering a minimum-priced receiver that gets five fantasy points, as long as someone else on our lineup makes up the difference. In fantasy baseball, there are going to be zeroes and negative fantasy points (on FanDuel) every single night, yet we can overcome it with the help of a player that has a multi-home run game.
The NBA is a different animal. If you get a zero from one of your players, to quote the great Dan Back “you are just going to lose.” Fantasy production is much easier to come by in the NBA, as a decent score is usually around 275 points. If one of your players puts up a dud, you are basically kissing any chance of cashing in your leagues goodbye.
In the NBA, fantasy production all comes down to opportunity. I like to break opportunity down into three different areas:
1. Minutes
2. Usage
3. Peripheral Stats
If you are going to play – and succeed at fantasy basketball, you are going to need to get familiar with all three of these terms.
Minutes played are as important as any predictive statistic that you are going to find in the NBA. There is a linear relationship between minutes and fantasy production, which should be obvious, because the longer a player is on the court, the more opportunity he will have to score points and get assists, rebounds, blocks, and steals. However, not all players provide the same level of productivity, which is why we need to include usage and peripheral statistics as well.
Usage is defined as the percentage of possessions a player “uses” while he is on the floor.
If you are a statistics nerd such as myself, you probably want to know the formula, so here it is:
USAGE = {[FGA + (FT Att. x 0.44) + (Ast x 0.33) + TO] x 40 x League Pace} divided by (Minutes x Team Pace)
Simply put, a player’s usage rate tells you how involved he is in his offense. The higher the usage rate, the more times during a game that a player has the ball in his hands.
While a player’s usage rate is a great predictor of offensive statistics (points and assists), this only takes care of half of the fantasy production equation. Players also get fantasy points for rebounds, blocks, and steals. I like to refer to these as peripheral stats.
A popular saying in golf is, “You drive for show, but putt for dough.”
I’ll tweak that a bit for fantasy basketball and say, “You score points for show, but get peripherals for dough.”
Yeah, it’s a lame saying, I know. However, if it helps you remember to target players that can contribute in all areas of the stat sheet, then it was worth reading. Players that contribute in all areas of the stat sheet are less volatile on a nightly basis, because they can still rack up fantasy points even if there shot is not falling. Conversely, a player like J.J. Redick is going to have larger swings in his production, because nearly 70% of his fantasy production comes from points scored.
In Notorious’s Blueprint to Daily Fantasy Basketball, you’ll learn:
• An introduction to NBA DFS and why opportunity is everything
• How to use Vegas lines to gain an edge
• The biggest differences between FanDuel and DraftKings and why they matter
• How to handle each different position in NBA DFS
• Basic tips like bankroll management and general strategy
To read the rest of this content, you must purchase the course!
