Useful Tidbits and Miscellaneous Ramblings: NBA Edition
Greetings, everyone! With baseball on to the postseason, college sports no longer in the mix, and golf in its brief off-season, a lot of people are starting to turn their interest to the next sport to hit the docket — NBA basketball!
This article is intended to be a random mishmash of thoughts that might help you as you get ready for the NBA season, especially if you are relatively new to the NBA game. It’s always exciting to think about a new season, and we are just three weeks away from the opening tip-off of the regular season!
Ready? Let’s go!
25 USEFUL TIDBITS AS WE HEAD INTO NBA SEASON
1) Some of you are true warriors and like the preseason DFS game. While it might elicit a chuckle from some, there really is an edge in preseason NBA contests.
2) If you are looking for content for the preseason games, we have plenty of good stuff here on RotoGrinders to help you out. Contributor Seth Yates (@sethayatesDFS on twitter) is our preseason guru for all sports, and he’ll have you covered for NBA stuff too. There’s also quite a few blog posts that might be worth a read.
3) If the preseason games aren’t your cup of tea, it’s never too early to start planning for the regular season. Don’t be afraid to comb through preseason box scores to see who is generating some buzz around the league.
4) While getting ready for regular season action, it is imperative that you understand how to attack the DFS NBA game. It’s different from other sports. In my RotoAcademy Course, I discuss four foundation principles for NBA lineup building. They are very important, so I will repeat them here as the next four tidbits:
5) Foundation Principle #1 – Minutes are Golden
6) Foundation Principle #2 – Late-Breaking News is Paramount
7) Foundation Principle #3 – Understand the Concept of “Floor” and “Ceiling”
8) Foundation Principle #4 – Vegas is Your Friend
9) If you don’t get a firm grasp on those four elements, you won’t succeed at the NBA game. I can tell you that with 100% certainty without any idea of how good or bad you are at any other DFS sport. NBA is an entirely different animal. Yes, it’s entirely different.
10) How is NBA different with Foundation Principle #1, you may ask? Well, in no other sport is playing time more directly correlated with production. There are outliers, of course, but fantasy points are generally going to flow from playing time. If you put Brian Roberts on a basketball court for 48 minutes, he will at least do some good things for you. If you put Davante Adams on a football field for 60 minutes, he is not guaranteed to do jack squat. The same goes for a fringe NHL or MLB player.
11) How is NBA different with Foundation Principle #2, you may ask? Once again, in no other sport is late breaking news more common. Players get scratched from games ten minutes before tip-off. If you are playing on a non-late swap site, you WILL get a surprise zero thrown upon you at some point during the season. It’s frustrating, and it’s exhausting to monitor this news every day. If you don’t have the thirty minutes before tip-off to commit to checking your rosters, the NBA is not going to be your favorite sport to play.
12) That’s not even to mention the time that you have to put in on DraftKings or other late swap sites, where several strategies are possible for late swap on a nightly basis with tip times spread out across the country. It’s what makes DK fun for a lot of people yet frustrating for some (and their spouses or significant others).
13) As for Principle #3, we all like to use the concept of “floor” and “ceiling” in DFS. Basketball is where those terms apply the most. Let’s be honest, in baseball and hockey, every player has a floor of zero, except maybe Clayton Kershaw. Every hitter is capable of an 0-for-4 performance in MLB, and every skater is capable of a zero point performance in NHL. If a guy plays 24 minutes in the NBA, he has to have some sort of floor to go along with a ceiling. We always look for “high floor” guys in cash games and “high ceiling” guys in tournaments.
14) Of course, we always have to remember to look at Las Vegas for some guidance on games. If one game has a projected total of 230 points, it would be wise to target more players from that game!
15) The concept of stacking almost never works in NBA, yet I don’t understand why people are fascinated with it. You might get lucky with a double or triple overtime game at some point, but that’s about the only way a full game stack works to win a GPP.
15A) By the way, on those nights, it is very frustrating if you have a good GPP roster that doesn’t have much exposure to said overtime game.
15B) Seriously, the strategy doesn’t work. It maybe pays off twice a year out of about 150 days. Don’t fall into the trap unless the game has a massive projected total (like a Thunder/Warriors game, for example).
16) Fields get stronger as the season wears on. This happens in every sport as losing players stop playing. If you want to get softer competition in DFS NBA games, there’s no better time to play than in the early portion of the season. By February and March, the NBA game becomes much more difficult.
17) Bankroll management, as always, is another key to success! Don’t over-extend after bad nights and stay even-keeled throughout the year.
18) Schedule date nights for Thursdays.
19) Schedule date nights for Thursdays.
20) Don’t play on the two or three-game Thursday slates.
21) Schedule date nights for Thursdays.
22) Do play on the other six days of the week, which often have very nice sized slates.
23) Do remember to monitor injury news! Remember, minutes are a major key to success.
24) In relation to #24, it’s VERY hard to win any NBA contest or cash game if your roster has a DNP on it, especially if that DNP is a high salaried player.
25) One of the main reasons cash games are so appealing for NBA is because overall performance on a night-to-night basis is the most predictable in this sport.
With that, you have some information to get you going with NBA season! Remember, have those date nights on Thursdays (especially if you win a GPP on Wednesday). Happy Grinding!