The 2021 WNBA season is just around the corner, which also means that the 2021 WNBA DFS season is just around the corner.
As RotoBaller's resident WNBA person, I'm here to get you ready for 2021. Some of you reading this have played WNBA DFS in the past, so you probably just need to be caught up on what's happened this offseason. Some of you are big WNBA fans who are just getting into fantasy, so you need to know what DFS even is. And others are DFS people who've probably never followed the W, so you need some help figuring out what this league is.
Whichever scenario you're in, great! I'm here to help ensure you get ready to win some fantasy sports contests in 2021. WNBA DFS is available on DraftKings and FanDuel, and I'll have daily lineup picks for you here at RotoBaller. Our premium subscribers will also have access to our premium Slack, where you can discuss the WNBA with me and some of our subscribers. You can use my code CARTER to get a discount on our premium services.
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What Is WNBA DFS?
If you play a lot of fantasy sports, you can skim or skip this section, because you probably already know a lot about fantasy sports.
So, let's start with this: what is DFS?
DFS stands for "daily fantasy sports." Lots of people's experience with fantasy comes in the form of season-long leagues, where you get together with your friends and you draft teams and then you keep those teams all year. For the WNBA, Sports.WS has season-long fantasy leagues, but none of the big fantasy providers have it.
That means if you want to play WNBA fantasy, your best bet is to play on DraftKings or FanDuel, where you can do daily contests. How those work: every day you go to one of those sites, you open up a contest, and you build a lineup -- or multiple lineups -- for that day's slate of games. You'll be given a set amount of salary space to use to build a lineup for that day. Better players cost more. You earn points based on their performance. All that basic stuff.
Here's the DraftKings scoring:
A DraftKings WNBA lineup consists of six players and you have to use players from at last two games. The positional requirements are two guards, three forwards, and one utility player, who can be at either position.
As for FanDuel, here's their scoring:
Your roster on FanDuel is larger than DraftKings, with three guards and four forwards. The prices might look cheaper than the prices on DraftKings, but that's partially because you have to roster an extra player and because the salary cap is smaller than on DraftKings.
So, those are the basics. There will also be single-game contests, but we'll talk more about those when we have our first one-game WNBA slate on May 20th.
What Should An Outsider Know About The W?
Ahh, so you're a fantasy player who wants to win some money on the WNBA this year? Awesome. Let's chat.
Purely from a DFS perspective, one thing you need to know is that the fantasy scoring won't be as high as it is in the NBA. Why? Pretty simple: NBA games are 48 minutes. WNBA games are 40 minutes. That leaves less time for players to compile numbers.
Beyond that, you probably want to know who the league's top players are, the building blocks of your DFS lineups, right?
Let's just run through some key players to know, list style:
- A'ja Wilson: The MVP last year, Wilson is the best traditional big in the league. Last year, she averaged 20.5 points and 8.5 rebounds per game.
- Breanna Stewart: Stewie is probably the best women's basketball player in the world. Last year, she came off a torn Achilles and averaged 19.7 points, 8.3 rebounds, and 3.6 assists per game on 45.1/36.8/89/4 shooting. She led the Storm to the 2020 championship.
- Arike Ogunbowale: Last season, Ogunbowale led the WNBA in scoring, averaging 22.8 points per game. That was the eighth-best single-season average in league history. She wasn't particularly efficient, posting the worst field goal percentage of any player to ever average 22 points in a season, but when it comes to fantasy, field goal percentage isn't a stat!
- Sabrina Ionescu: Ionescu probably would have won Rookie of the Year last year, but she sprained her ankle in the third game of the year and wouldn't play again. In her second career game, Ionescu went all the way off, with 33 points, seven assists, and seven rebounds. She has the potential to be one of the league's best players, assuming she's healthy this season.
- Elena Delle Donne: EDD might be the best player in the league when healthy, but she's been dealing with back injuries and sat out last season because of concerns about COVID, since she had a pre-existing medical issue because of her long-term impact from Lyme Disease. But at her best, she's a two-time MVP who averaged 20.3 points in 2019 and shot 43 percent from three. She's the only player in league history to have a 50/40/90 season.
- Brittney Griner: If you don't know a lot about the WNBA, you probably at least know who Brittney Griner is, because she was a legend in college at Baylor. Griner is one of the W's best centers. In 12 games last season, she averaged 17.7 points and 7.5 rebounds per game. She's averaged 20-plus points per game three times in her career, and she's the active leader in blocks with 658. She's led the league in blocks per game seven times in her career.
- Diana Taurasi: Griner's Mercury teammate, Taurasi is regarded by many as the greatest women's basketball player ever. I'm not going to take a stance on that position, but I will say that no active WNBA player has had a career as good as Taurasi. The 38-year-old still shot over 40 percent last season, averaging 18.7 points per game for Phoenix. Despite her age, she's still a very, very good player.
What's Changed Since Last Season?
Let's say you closely followed the league last year because of fantasy, but then didn't pay attention in the offseason since there wasn't fantasy to play. That's fine. Let's talk about things that are new.
The big one is that Candace Parker is now on the Chicago Sky. The former MVP had spent her entire career in Los Angeles, but the Sparks had their whole big three hit free agency this offseason. Two of them departed for elsewhere. Parker had a resurgent 2020 season, winning Defensive Player of the Year while averaging 14.7 points, 9.7 rebounds, and 4.6 assists per game. She also added 1.2 steals and 1.2 blocks per contest and upped her three-point percentage to 39.6. It was a huge year for Parker, who now joins a really fun Sky team and makes them one of the title favorites.
Some other changes:
- Players who sat out last year are back. There's the aforementioned Elena Delle Donne, but there's also Aces center Liz Cambage, who holds the record for most points in a WNBA game. Her ceiling isn't as high in Vegas since she's sharing a frontcourt with A'ja Wilson, but she's going to have some really good games and is just such a dominant force inside.
- The Mystics get a lot of players back in the fold. Aside from EDD, Natasha Cloud and Tina Charles return. Charles was traded to the Mystics last year but hasn't played for them yet. I'm really, really interested to see how she fits into things there.
- The Sun get Jonquel Jones back. I thought Jones was a top-three player in the league back in 2019, and while A'ja Wilson has surpassed her since then, she's still one of the league's best players.
- Now to free agency. Parker wasn't the only big name to change places. She wasn't even the only C. Parker on the move, as Cheyenne Parker moved from the Sky to the Dream. Cheyenne is a really intriguing player whose role should grow with the Dream.
- Natasha Howard moved from Seattle to New York, where she'll be playing a lot of minutes at the five in a versatile Liberty lineup.
- Chelsea Gray moves from the Sparks to the Aces, giving Vegas a high-end point guard for the first time since the team moved to Vegas.
- Vegas' best shooter, Kayla McBride, moved to the Lynx. Will Cheryl Reeve use her more effectively than Bill Laimbeer did?
- Some key players who will miss the season because of injury: Alysha Clark and Jocelyn Willoughby.
- Oh, yeah, there was a draft! The Wings had the first two picks, using them on a pair of bigs: Charli Collier out of Texas and Awak Kuier from Finland.
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