The Theory Behind a Value System

Of the major daily fantasy sports, basketball is by far the most predictable on a nightly basis. There are more possessions in an NBA game than there are plays in an NFL game or at-bats in an MLB game. The higher number of possessions leads to more opportunity, which leads to a larger sample size. Additionally, the success rate in the NBA is much higher than it is in other sports. In baseball, you can be considered a Hall of Famer if you get a hit in one-third of your at-bats. In the NFL, a running back can get 20 carries with very little to show for it.

The difference between the sports is important to realize. The NBA doesn’t have that big play potential that some of the other sports do. A home run in baseball or a long touchdown in football can be the majority (or all) of a player’s fantasy production that day. Even if an NBA player gets a steal, an offensive rebound, and a three-pointer on the same play, that’s still only a small portion of his total fantasy production.

Rather than focusing on upside, we should concentrate on opportunity. Minutes played and a player’s usage rate both have a linear relationship with fantasy production. Being able to predict minutes and involvement in a team’s offense will allow us to be more consistent with our player selections. We will cover the aspects behind predicting minutes and usage throughout the courses. The main purpose of this course is to simplify your decision making when building lineups.

When I first started playing daily fantasy basketball, my strategy was to target the star player in the best matchup that night and then surround him with the best cast that I could. This makes sense logically, as you would typically want to select your most important players first. However, I quickly learned that building from the bottom up is a much better strategy. I always start my team with the best value player(s) and then see what salary and positions I had left and go from there.

This may seem like a bass-ackwards approach to lineup building, but the thing that you have to realize is that you want to maximize your exposure to the players that have the best chance at outperforming their respective salaries. It also helps because if you start with value players, you will have more salary to spend on each remaining player. If you start with a superstar player, you may be force yourself into taking a cheap salaried player that may not necessarily be a good play.

More than in any other sport, you will hear the term “reaching value” a ton in daily fantasy basketball. As mentioned above, the sport is more predictable, which allows us to set expectations for our lineups, both as a team and at the individual level. The concept that really helped take my DFS skills to the next level was developing a value system for expected fantasy point production.

The reason for creating a value system is simple. If we know what it takes to usually cash in a certain type of league, we can set a goal for our lineup each night. We can then use the salary cap to determine what type of fantasy production we need for each dollar spent. This goal should vary by league type, as there is a different threshold for what it takes to cash in a double-up than it does in a large field tournament.

For simplicity, let’s use the goal of 250 fantasy points. This is generally a good enough score to cash in double-ups on both FanDuel and DraftKings and it’s a nice round number that is easy to work with. If you take the salary cap of $50,000, we basically need five fantasy points for every $1,000 of salary spent if we are going to reach our goal of 250 fantasy points.

This may not mean a whole lot on the surface, but it is very useful when comparing players to roster. Basically, if you can get 5x production out of each player, you will reach your goal of 250 fantasy points. For instance, if a player costs $8,000, then he will effectively need to score 40 fantasy points (8 times 5) to cover his share of the overall lineup’s goal.

The 5x value system is extremely simple to use and while it does have its setbacks, it’s a nice tool to use when building lineups. If you don’t think a certain player can reach 5x their salary in a certain matchup, then you shouldn’t consider using that player. Now that we have the ball rolling, let’s get into some more complex techniques for determining what “value” should be at each price point.

About the Author

Notorious
Derek Farnsworth (Notorious)

Derek Farnsworth (aka Notorious) is a lead RotoGrinders Expert and one of the most recognizable names and faces in all of DFS. Before joining the RotoGrinders team, Derek received a Master’s Degree from the University of Utah. When he’s not busy providing content, he’s dominating the DFS industry as evidenced by his consistent top rankings in several sports and multiple Live Final appearances. Noto provides expert NBA, NFL, MLB, and PGA analysis for RotoGrinders Premium members on a daily basis and has also been nominated for five different Fantasy Sports Writer’s Association (FSWA) awards. Follow Noto on Twitter – @RG_Notorious