RADIO
It's hard to believe that we are exactly one month into the NBA season, right? The season used to start right around Halloween but was moved up a few weeks this year. So by the time we sit down to eat Thanksgiving turkey next week and watch some NFL football, most of the teams in the league will have already played almost one-fourth of their games!
I have been covering the NBA pretty closely this season. I did content for nearly every preseason slate. I've played every DFS slate. I've been doing my NBA Best Bets column 3-4 times a week and crunching the numbers on a daily basis. I have been more immersed in NBA statistics this year than ever before.
So what I wanted to do here was take a step back and try to identify some specific trends that are seeing so far in the 2021-2022 season. Which teams are performing significantly better or worse than last year? Who's playing faster? Which teams have improved offensively or defensively? Which players have taken a step forward (or backward) as DFS assets? It's a new year and it's time to drop our preconceived notions of how we expected teams to perform and instead of focus on the data we have that show us how they are performing.
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NBA DFS: Biggest Changes in 2021
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Pace of Play
Pace is something I look at every day when making NBA DFS decisions. More possessions means more statistics, whether they are made baskets, rebounds, steals, blocks, etc. The average pace this season has been around 99.5 which means an average of 99.5 possessions total per game.
The top seven teams in pace this season are Houston (103), L.A. Lakers (102.7), Golden State (102.1), Phoenix (102), Charlotte (101.9), L.A. Clippers (101.9), and San Antonio Spurs (101.8). While we are used to Houston and GSW playing fast last year, the other five teams stand out (check the chart above) as teams who are playing considerably faster this season. That means not only are their players more attractive for DFS purposes, but when they face off against other fast-paced teams we get some game environments that can be really juicy.
Washington is a team that is playing significantly slower than last year and is no longer a "pace-up spot" for opponents. With Westbrook gone, this team has settled into a much different style of play and has been one of the best stories in the league so far.
Offensive and Defensive Rating
So these stats are a little hard to interpret because scoring in the NBA is down drastically this year (around 10 points fewer scored per game). The most likely answer to why that is the case is the new guidelines for calling fouls as we have seen free throw attempts per game go down considerably. So in some cases, we are comparing apples to oranges here when we are looking at a team's offensive or defensive rating compared to last season since there has been such a discrepancy in scoring. Just about every team is worse on offense this year with the exception of Miami and Golden State. Meanwhile, just about everyone improved on defense with the exception of Memphis and Philadelphia who were both stout defensively last year and have been mediocre this season.
Net Rating
The net rating simply measures a team's overall effectiveness by simply subtracting their defensive rating from their offensive rating. Since the offensive and defensive ratings represent how many points on average a team scores or allows per 100 possessions, the net rating gives us an indication of how many points better or worse a team's offense is compared to their defense on a nightly basis.
There are no real surprises here as the biggest improvements in net rating also coincide with teams who are off to really good starts in the win column. The Warriors have been the best team in the league and feature the best defense while having a top-5 offense to go with it. My Cleveland Cavaliers check-in as the second-most improved this season as they were one of the worst teams in the league last year and have surprised a lot of people with a 9-7 record so far, which is all the more impressive when you consider how many games they've been without key rotation players.
Miami, Chicago, and Washington have all improved quite a bit and are all off to strong starts this season with Washington being the most surprising of that bunch. Sacramento is no longer a cellar-dweller either and is a team that has been significantly improved this season.
The Pelicans and Bucks have seen the biggest drops in net rating. New Orleans has a much different looking roster this year and was without Brandon Ingram for a long stretch, I don't think they'll be this bad all year. And the defending champion Bucks have had one of the toughest starts to the season with Jrue Holiday, Brook Lopez, Donte DiVincenzo, and Khris Middleton all missing a lot of action. They're certainly going to improve and I would expect them to bounce back in a big way in the coming weeks.
NBA DFS: Defense vs. Position
I mentioned this in my annual strategy guide, but I think DvP can be one of the most misleading stats in NBA DFS. Yes, we definitely see patterns emerge over the course of the season where specific positions tend to score better against certain teams than others, but ideally, we would have a large sample of data where every team has played every other team (maybe even a few times) before we could feel really good about that data being predictive.
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This first chart is something I consult when playing DFS or making player prop bets. I think looking at teams and seeing which types of stats they are giving up might be more beneficial than just looking at a positional DvP rank. Try to think of NBA players and their skill sets and then apply those to the chart. Is there a strong rebounding big man facing the Timberwolves? If so, he stands to add to his usual rebounding numbers as they are giving up the most rebounds per game in the league. This chart tends to work well for specialists, players who excel at passing, rebounding, three-point shooting, or getting blocks and steals. The players who do a little of everything are guys who we are targeting on a nightly basis anyway, right? And you're likely boosting or deflating your expectation for their performance based on the game environment more than the individual matchup.
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If you must break it down to positional stats vs. teams, here's how I do it. Instead of looking at overall fantasy points allowed to each position, I like to look at points, rebounds, and assists. This is ideal for making prop bets and PRA bets are some of my favorites to make. But for DFS, again we can try to hone in on scoring point guards (great against Sacramento) and passing point guards better against Memphis or the Lakers.
NBA DFS: Fantasy Points Per Minute
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Let's talk about some individual players and which guys have been the biggest surprises, most improved, and biggest disappointments. I am going to use what I consider to be the most important DFS metric to do this - fantasy points per minute. For the sake of this analysis, I am using DraftKings points per minute, and pictured above I have all those players who have increased their output by at least. 1 DK PPM or decreased their output by .15 DK PPM or more.
Let's focus on those guys trending in the right direction first. Ja Morant and Dejounte Murray have both taken the leap from good (1.1 FPPM) to great (1.3-1.4 FPPM) players this season and are now being priced accordingly (both are around 10k on DraftKings these days. Two other guys who have made similar jumps would be LaMelo Ball and Paul George, who have been both been DFS superstars this year. Morant, Murray, and Ball are all young guys who are coming into their prime, while George is enjoying a renaissance as an elite fantasy player mainly due to Kawhi Leonard's season-long absence in LA.
Let's not forget about Nikola Jokic, who was already one of the best DFS plays last season but has been simply incredible this year with 1.81 DK PPM. Whether or not that is sustainable is yet to be seen, but the Joker is one of only a few players who is capable of pushing 2 DK points per minute with Giannis and Steph Curry being the others.
Jakob Poeltl, Cole Anthony, and Miles Bridges are three young players who are enjoying breakouts of their own. All three were under the one-point per minute threshold but are producing in the 1.1 range which makes them very attractive targets in DFS and guys we should expect to see around 7-8k range on DraftKings for the foreseeable future.
Ricky Rubio and LaMarcus Aldridge are interesting guys to make this list. Rubio is having a great year and has been logging heavy minutes for the Cavs this season while Aldridge has settled into a high-usage bench role and has been productive for the Nets' second unit in 22-24 minutes a night.
Now we have to address some of these big dropoffs and we have to start with Russell Westbrook. Many of us at RotoBaller warned you that Russell Westbrook was going to see his production drop in a big way in L.A. and that's certainly been the case as he's dropped from an elite 1.6 FPPM rate all the way down to 1.27. What's even troublesome there is that LeBron James has missed most of the Lakers' games this season and Westy still hasn't flashed the type of ceiling we expected from his in OKC, Houston, or Washington.
Nikola Vucevic has really seen his efficiency take a hit in Chicago and has been affected a lot more than I anticipated. He hasn't been worth his price in DFS this season and I'll be curious to see if that trend continues once he returns to the lineup from a lengthy COVID absence.
Robert Williams (also known as the TIME LORD to DFS players everywhere) has dropped under 1 FPPM this season and it's due to having to play alongside the stat-hogging Al Horford. We can still target Williams when Horford sits out, but when they are both in the lineup you can safely fade him.
Other big names who have seen big drops in production this year are Clint Capela (-.25), Joel Embiid (-.21), Damian Lillard (-.22), DeAaron Fox (-.20), and Domantas Sabonis (-.20). Surely some of these guys will bounce back and see some positive regression but I would be cautious about deploying them for the time being and certainly don't overpay for them based on their name recognition and previous performance.
Sportsbetting Trends
If you have followed my content at all this year, you'll know that I pay a lot of attention to trends for betting purposes. I wanted to highlight some of those trends today and make this article about more than just DFS. Here are some results from the first month that you should keep in mind when making those bets over the next few weeks.
Best records ATS (Against the Spread)
- Miami (11-4)
- Cleveland (10-4-1)
- Golden State (9-4)
- Chicago (10-5)
- Washington (9-5)
Worst records ATS (Against the Spread)
- Houston (5-9-1)
- Minnesota (5-9)
- Orlando (5-10)
- Detroit (6-8)
- Dallas (6-8)
Biggest Margin of Victory
- Golden State (13.6)
- Utah (8.6)
- Miami (7.6)
- L.A. Clippers (5.9)
- Phoenix (5.6)
Highest Percentage of Totals Going Over
- Miami (60%)
- Charlotte (56%)
- L.A. Lakers (56%)
- San Antonio, Toronto, Orlando (53%)
The rest of the league has been under 50% on going over their totals. As I said before we are seeing a massive drop in scoring across the league this year. Last year, the average game total was around 224 points and that has dropped all the way to 214. So while we regularly saw games in the 225-235 range last season, a game with a total that high today would be well above the normal range. We've even started to see some totals as low as 200 points. This is a trend to keep an eye on and if you have been betting the under in games so far this year, you've likely done well. Vegas is adjusting but will we see offenses improve or is this a new normal that we should expect to last for the rest of the season?
Wow, that's a lot of stats but I am really glad I was able to share them with you today and I hope you are able to take something away from all of this that helps you win some DFS contests of sports bets in the near future. Keep following me for more DFS and betting analysis this season and make sure you check out all of our other awesome NBA content at Rotoballer!
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