DFS Fundamentals
This column details some of the most important topics to consider when building DFS teams for the NBA. As I’ve written before in DFS primers, there is no single ‘correct’ way to build your fantasy teams. It all depends on the scoring system for the site you’re using (DRAFT, FanDuel, etc.), the type of competition you’ve entered (e.g. tournaments vs. 50/50 leagues), your risk tolerance, and much more. The goal is to provide valuable tools for owners to use as they see fit – even experienced DFS owners should find this to be a useful refresher, with more than a dozen fundamental concepts compiled in one place.
1) Injuries and Roles. The most basic and valuable resource when building your DFS lineup is up-to-date information. The best sources for breaking news and updates are Twitter and Rotoworld’s player news blurbs. If a starter is ruled out due to injury, DFS owners should immediately determine which teammate(s) will likely step into bigger roles. If D’Angelo Russell misses a few games with a minor injury, for instance, Spencer Dinwiddie would likely be a must-start value play in DFS. Nor is an injury’s impact limited to the player’s own team – if they happen to be an above-average defender, you should consider which opposing player(s) could benefit from their absence.
2) Scoring Settings. I am generally referring to FanDuel settings throughout this column, but no matter which site you’re using, you should be perfectly knowledgeable of the scoring settings. Are missed free throws heavily penalized? Do two 3-pointers yield more value than three 2-pointers? How much value is assigned to steals and blocks? These questions will determine individual player values, and hence your DFS strategy.
3) Matchups. Matchups matter on both an individual and team level. Any team facing the Suns this season is likely to benefit from a frenetic pace, extra offensive possessions and fastbreaks, and therefore a defense that yields above average scoring, assists, 3-pointers, rebounds, etc. The same team won’t yield similar value to every position, of course, which is where matchups-vs-position data comes into play. Rudy Gobert’s defense makes the Jazz a team to avoid for centers, for instance, but on a light night they could be a reasonable opponent for PGs or SFs. RotoGrinders has a particularly useful tool displaying each team’s performance vs. positions throughout the season.
4) Recent Performance. Playing time and usage rates are good measures to use when examining a player’s recent performance. If their minutes and usage are up, they are objectively playing a bigger role and (assuming there’s no mitigating circumstance such as a teammate returning from injury) should continue to do so. Less compelling are raw statistics, particularly scoring. If Wayne Ellington is averaging 23.4 points on 57.5% shooting in his past three games, there are many reasons to be skeptical. First, a correction to the mean is inevitable. Second, the quality of his previous three opponents could explain the superior production. Third, the effect of ‘recency bias’ means that plenty of DFS owners might assume Ellington will stay hot, so his ownership rates in DFS leagues will be inordinately high. Unless it’s tied directly to a sustainable cause (e.g. a player starting for an injured teammate), DFS owners shouldn’t get carried away by brief spikes in production.
5) Home/Away Splits. Most players produce better during home games, but there are plenty of exceptions. For instance, Al Horford averaged slightly more minutes in road games in 2017, yet he produced fewer points (-0.8), rebounds (-1.2), assists (-1.1), steals (-0.3) and blocks (-0.1). At the other end of the spectrum, we find a guy like Hassan Whiteside. Unlike most players, Whiteside thrived on the road last year with increased points (+1.5), FG% (+5.7%), rebounds (+1.2) and blocks (+0.14). It might be a subtle concern, night-to-night, but being aware of players’ individual tendencies can make a significant difference on a season-long basis.
6) Days’ Rest. Another critical consideration is the impact of days’ rest. The league has moved up the start of the season to reduce back-to-back sets and eliminate four games in five nights, but rest will still be a significant factor. Certain veterans might fare better in the second of back-to-back games because they are warmed up and ready to go, whereas others might succumb to fatigue. An impressive rookie who thrived before the All-Star break could start to struggle during busy stretches due to rookie-wall-related fatigue. Every player’s tendencies are open for scrutiny on NBA.com, Basketball-Reference, and many other sites.
7) Vegas Spreads & Over/Unders. The odds-makers in Vegas have sophisticated models designed to strike the middle-ground in predicted spreads and over/unders. These metrics also provide a quick prediction of the pace of play – if you don’t have time to consider each team’s pace and respective matchups, you can default to looking at Vegas lines as a sort of cheat-sheet. Don’t be afraid to let Vegas do the grunt-work for you.
8) Minutes. As mentioned earlier under ‘Recent Performance,’ playing time by itself is an extremely important metric for projecting a player’s DFS value. In my previous analysis, for example (looking at 8-cat/9-cat leagues), the statistics showed a strong positive correlation between minutes and fantasy value – the more minutes someone plays, the more fantasy value they tend to have. This is as simple as it gets, but overlook it at your own peril.
9) Positional Scarcity/Abundance. This is particularly important on quiet DFS nights with only a handful of teams playing. If there is a huge disparity between the top center in a four-game slate (e.g. Nikola Jokic) and the next-best center (e.g. Willie Cauley-Stein), you can take two divergent paths – pay up for the elite center likely to return 40+ DFS points or go cheap at that position in the hopes that you’ll get an advantageous dollar-to-DFS Point ratio.
10) Fantasy Points Per Dollar/Minute. An easy rule of thumb is to deploy players/lineups which will yield 5.0 fantasy points for every $1,000 salary-cap dollars (varying depending upon sites). FanDuel has a $60,000 salary cap, for instance, and a team score of 300 FDP will net you a victory more often than not. Star players typically won’t score 5x, but the right scrubs can blow past that mark. This isn’t an iron-clad rule and isn’t always feasible during nights with a light schedule. A related consideration is fantasy points (FP) per minute. NBAWowy is one of many sites that provide free FP/min data, which is especially great if you’re deciding how a low-end player might fare in a bigger role. Boban Marjanovic averaged a stunning 1.4 FP/min last season, for instance, and if Marcin Gortat goes down he could emerge as an overnight DFS bargain.
11) Adapt Your Strategy to League Types. If you’re playing in head-to-head or 50/50 leagues, you can afford to be more conservative. You don’t need to find multiple needle-in-a-haystack players who will net 8x value – a simple 4-5x should get the job done. In large GPP leagues/tournaments, however, you’ll have better luck taking calculated risks. A slumping player should see his price drop and his ownership plummet – if he draws a terrific matchup, however, why not bet on a bounce-back performance that only 5% of tournament owners might benefit from? Avoiding recency bias (discussed above) can often help you find under-owned players in tournaments.
12) Consider Stacking. The strategy of ‘stacking’ isn’t as prevalent in the NBA as it is in other sports, but it’s still viable. Particularly in tournaments, it often makes sense to load up on players from specific teams to capitalize on a favorable matchup – this could be a single team facing an awful defense, or two teams with a high combined over/under and (ideally) a low scoring spread. If Vegas projects such a game, you might think about stacking your lineup with players from one or both teams – if they both cruise past 100 points, you’re probably going to fare well (especially if you luck out with an overtime game). Be mindful that FanDuel limits owners to four players from a given team, which comes into play when stacking or building a lineup on a schedule with few games.
13) Be a Contrarian. You’ll often see the word ‘contrarian’ pop up, referring to owners who go against the grain by picking players who aren’t super popular. If Russell Westbrook is on a five-game triple-double streak and 70% of owners are paying $11.5k to get him, a contrarian owner might take Kyle Lowry for $7.7k and use the difference to pick other solid guys WB owners can’t afford. This can be effective in any style of league, but is typically deployed in tournaments where swimming upstream can be a path to success.
14) Studs & Scrubs. Some owners start by deploying one or more expensive stars who they think will erupt on a given night. The rest of the roster is filled out by mid- or low-tier players with promising per-dollar outlooks. Personally, I let nightly circumstances dictate my lineups. Rather than immediately targeting superstars, I build from the bottom up by identifying the most undervalued players first. This doesn’t mean they’re always guys who cost $3,500 – a pricy player like Khris Middleton could become must-start if Giannis is ruled out, a mid-tier guy could be a must-start if thrust into the starting lineup, etc. This approach often results in enough cap space to secure those tantalizing star players, which is great. Sometimes it doesn’t, but I can still be confident that I’ve maximized the per-dollar potential of each roster spot.
15) Emphasize Players Who Score. You should be intimately familiar with the scoring system used in your leagues. In multiple analyses over the years, I’ve shown that ‘points’ as a category account for approximately 50% of all ‘fantasy points’ on DRAFT, FanDuel, DraftKings and Yahoo! Daily. That makes a scoring-centric player like Andrew Wiggins much more palatable than he might be in a roto league, for instance. Players whose value comes predominantly from scoring can be more boom or bust (with little else to rely on during a rough shooting night), which underscores the importance of matchups.
16) Throw out preconceptions from H2H & Roto. If you are used to season-long leagues, take your time adjusting to DFS – it’s a completely different game. Percentages themselves do not matter, so if Clint Capela goes 3-of-9 at the FT line you’ve gained 3.0 FDP and lost nothing. Ditto for guys whose FG% makes them anathema in standard leagues – Lonzo Ball, Dennis Smith Jr., Marcus Smart, etc. Turnovers are rarely a big concern (they subtract 1.0 point in FanDuel, the same amount that’s added by a single point scored), and defensive stats are nice but nowhere near as crucial as they are in H2H or roto leagues.
17) Don’t be Afraid to Stay with the Same Player. Prices are often slow to change on DFS sites, allowing you to take advantage of a player’s sudden prominence. A good example is Richaun Holmes in 2017-18. Holmes was quiet coming off the bench but he took full advantage of 17 starts in place of Joel Embiid (knee), averaging 14.0 points, 7.2 rebounds, 1.5 assists, 0.9 steals and 0.8 blocks. That adds up to 25.3 FDP per game, which was more than enough to post 5x value relative to his cheap price. Yes, his ownership spiked which limited the advantage in tournaments, but his price stayed low enough that he was a strong, affordable option for a few weeks.
18) Use All Available Resources. Some DFS sites have incorporated their own ‘advice’ and news sections. RotoGrinders is a terrific community resource, and their writers contribute to Rotoworld’s own DFS content. With the explosion of popularity there is no lack of resources available to owners, from subjective advice columns, to in-depth spreadsheets, and everything in between. Explore it all, and discard what you don’t like.
19) Have fun. Fantasy sports are terrific entertainment, allowing you to build, manage, and perform post-mortems on teams of your own choosing. Play in free leagues and/or bet only what you can afford to lose, and you’ll be assured a challenging, rewarding DFS experience. Good luck this season, and again...have fun!
