Overall Daily Fantasy Sports Strategy: NBA

We have seen the commercials and heard the stories.  Play daily fantasy sports leagues and you could win hundreds of thousands of dollars.  Anyone can do it!  Well, I’m here to explain to you that you’re not going to win hundreds of thousands of dollars overnight.

Your chances of hitting that million dollar mark are slim to none.  In late August and early September, DraftKings and FanDuel secured a combined $111 million in funding from investors, and unless you failed any type of econ class, this should tell you that the daily fantasy sports world is taking the universe by storm.  If you do chase that immediate million, you are going to be refilling your PayPal account on the reg and find yourself reading strategy guides like this in about two weeks.  Long story short, the odds are stacked against you, especially if you are new to the DFS game.

Fear not, for there is hope.  Although you probably will not win the big money, there is no reason you cannot play the percentages in your favor and come away with more wins than losses. No matter if you are a beginner or a seasoned DFS vet, the following strategies can be applied, at least to some extent, across the various DFS sites.

Stalk Lineup Sheets

This one is a no-brainer and seemingly needs no explanation, yet it is a stone cold lead pipe lock there is one jabroni in every league that has not checked the pre-game lineups and actually picks a player that is injured or suspended.  Do not be that jabroni!  It goes without saying that a player who does not play cannot score points for your team and that is usually a bad thing.

The extra thirty seconds of research that could be done into the active rosters for the night is so easy that even an advertiser for Geico could do it. I find Twitter a very useful tool in assessing pregame lineups in a timely fashion. Be careful when selecting players that are listed as questionable and are due to play in the late- i.e. West Coast- games. As soon as the ball is tossed in that first game of the night, your lineup typically cannot be changed.

Check The Score

Yet another piece of advice for beginners: familiarize yourself with the lineup rules and scoring system. For example, if you are new to FanDuel, know that you have a $60k budget, you must select nine players and there are no flex positions, meaning that Demarcus Cousins is only available as a C and Nerlens Noel- as well as his stunning haircut- is a PF. Switching positions for players is a no-no. Typically this means there is less roster flexibility for players on FanDuel. However, it can also be somewhat easier to find better value at each position.

As far as the scoring system, it is absolutely imperative to make sure you know how much an assist, a rebound and a steal, among other stats, are worth when setting your team. Virtually every DFS site displays the scoring system for each game in a drop down box after you register, so it should be easy to find.

What Happens In Vegas...

As much as everyone wants to pick the legendary upset and roll the big, bad odds-makers in Las Vegas, everyone should know that there’s a reason the odds-makers in Las Vegas are employed in Las Vegas.  They’re good great smart the equivalents in sports of a bunch of Neil deGrasse Tysons in astrophysics.  Make sure to check those spreads throughout the day before making your lineup selections and be sure to use that information to your advantage.  If the Magic/Pelicans game has an over/under at 196 but the Houston/Los Angeles Lakers’ over/under sits at 206, obviously you’re going to want to target more players that are competing in LA over those in New Orleans.

If you look deeper into spreads you can even take your DFS knowledge to a whole new level and assess which games have “blow-out” potential.  Using the same games as stated above, Los Angeles is a 6.5 point home underdog while New Orleans is a ten point favorite.  Houston is arguably a more talented team than New Orleans (notice the word “arguably” was used) but because of the matchup, the Pelicans possess more potential for a blow-out win.  The game could be a laugher in the fourth quarter thus possibly reducing the minutes of New Orleans’ stars such as Anthony Davis.  In games that could be close- think spreads that are four or less- the best players will see the court more and give your team a better choice of racking up maximum points.  Unless of course Gregg Popovich decides to mess with the entire DFS world and rest his normal starting five, at which point good luck to you.

Much more often than not the odds-makers are going to be close enough for the smart DFSer to take advantage, so there is nothing wrong with being humble and letting the experts guide your team.