RotoAcademy Preview: Predicting Pace
I have played basketball my entire life. It was basically my first love. I played through high school, but I wasn’t a superstar by any means. I was the best player on a bad team who didn’t have aspirations to play college ball in some small town in Idaho. Instead, I went to a real college and took my skills to the rec leagues.
When I first started playing rec ball, my biggest asset was my speed and athleticism. The second my team got a rebound or took the ball out of the hoop, we were sprinting down the court making plays in transition. We played at a faster pace than anyone and due to that there were always enough shots to go around.
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 free/premium offerings and improve as a daily fantasy sports player!
These days, we are the old men of the rec leagues. Our pace has slowed dramatically and so has our style of play. We now have to impose our will on both ends of the floor. There aren’t nearly as many shots to go around, but we play as a team. It’s funny: We used to play like the Warriors and now we play like the Spurs. I bring this up because pace plays a big role in daily fantasy basketball.
The previous lesson was about using the Vegas lines to help predict fantasy production. While the lines are important, everyone uses them as a part of their daily research routine. In order to get an edge on the field, we have to go above and beyond when trying to predict favorable matchups and game environments. A good game environment is one that I describe as having a fast pace and is conducive for fantasy production. This lesson is about predicting pace and how to spot the most favorable game environments.
If you look strictly at implied team totals, you will get a basic idea of how that game should play out. However, team totals don’t always account for pace of play. Two teams can play at a fast pace, but if they aren’t efficient offensively then they will have lower team totals. If you use only Vegas lines, you will overlook games that have favorable environments on a regular basis. When two bad teams square off against one another, it can sometimes be the best game environment in the entire slate.
Before we dive too deep into predicting pace, I should probably define what it is. Pace is the number of possessions that a team uses per game. This includes made shots, missed shots, and turnovers. The higher the team’s pace, the more possessions they have per game. Pace is extremely important because there is fantasy production to be had (or lost) on every single possession.
There are two ways that you can try to predict pace and I highly prefer the latter. In terms of where to find pace, I grab my stats from John Hollinger’s team efficiency statistics on ESPN. If you need the link, refer back to the lesson on NBA resources. The quickest way to predict the pace of a game is to take the respective pace of each team and use the average. If you have a team like the Warriors averaging 102 possessions per game and a team like the Grizzlies averaging 96 possessions per game, you would project the pace at 99 possessions, which is the average of the two.
While this pace projection is better than nothing, it doesn’t account for what happens when two really fast or two really slow teams play each other. The Warriors may average 102 possessions per game, but their pace came against a wide range of opponents. So in theory the Warriors should average 102 possessions per game when they face a team that plays at an average pace, right? When they square off against another fast-paced team, we should expect them to have more possessions than their season average.
For instance, if you use the first calculation for a game between the Warriors (102 possessions per game) and the Kings (102 possessions per game), you would project there to be 102 possessions for both teams. Does that seem right? If the two fastest paced teams in the league were playing, wouldn’t we expect them to play at a faster pace than their season average? Of course we would.
Don’t worry, I have found a solution. Since my argument is that the Warriors should average 102 possessions against an average-paced team, we can use that in our formula. All we have to do is calculate the league average and subtract each team’s pace from it. If the league averages 98 possessions per game, the Warriors and the Kings would both average four more possessions than the league average. To predict the pace of games, I like to take both differences and add them both to the league average pace. So in this scenario:
Warriors (102-98) + Kings (102-98) + League Average (98) = 106 possessions
This calculation really helps highlight the extra or reduced possessions in fast- or slow-paced games. After you have a pace projection for the game, you can compare that number to a team’s season average to see which teams are expected to see a boost in pace and which teams are expected to see a negative pace shift. This process is similar to comparing a team’s implied point total to its seasonal average points per game.
Now, how do we use this information in DFS?
In general, we want to target the faster-paced games and teams that are playing up in pace. The more possessions there are in a game, the more opportunities there are to score fantasy points. We obviously want to look at the Vegas lines each day, but we also want to factor in the expected pace of play. Some of my favorite plays each day come from teams with mediocre implied point totals but enhanced pace expectations.
Keep in mind that Vegas lines and favorable game environments are just pieces of the puzzle. A player’s usage, minutes, and salary are all critical aspects when analyzing a potential play. These are all things that we will cover, but starting with the team approach can help you spot favorable matchups as a whole.
In Notorious’ Ultimate Guide to Beating NBA DFS, you’ll learn:
• Which resources to use for research
• The importance of Vegas data
• How to predict pace and favorable game environments
• The essential statistics for NBA
• How to adjust for late scratches and injuries
• The nuances of salary-based expectations
• The splits that add value to your research
To read the rest of “Notorious’ Ultimate Guide to Beating NBA DFS”, you must purchase the course!
