As a self described expert in all things Daily Fantasy Football I’ve been having some withdrawal symptoms since the end of the Fantasy Football betting season. I haven’t followed or watched much NBA basketball in quite a few years but recently DraftKings ran a promotion for a FREE $10 entry in one of their tournaments if you play in 5 consecutive $2 NBA Fantasy Basketball tournaments. Being a sucker for a good deal I figured I’d give it a shot. Damn you DraftKings. Just when I thought I was out you pulled me back in!
**Side Note** I have to say that of the Daily Fantasy Sites I frequent, Draftkings consistently has the most freebies and promotions. They literally have one or two NBA Freerolls per day as well as occasional promo’s for enter three get one free type combos. That plus the fact that they still offer a 100% initial deposit bonus when you sign up using this LINK
Obviously being that I don’t watch much Basketball this was going to be a challenge. For one thing I’m not familiar with the stars, I have no idea which teams are good at what. I was going in to it as a complete novice. To overcome the disadvantage I set out to find a site like this one that not only focused on Daily Fantasy Basketball, but compiled a match-up advice column like the ones I do here during Football Season. Unfortunately I’ve only had mild success on that front. Most of the sites seem to stick with just two or thee recommendations per position and therefore the practicality of using them is limited. Still not having a clue about Basketball I needed to find a way to glean advice off of the various experts and make mildly educated guesses for my lineups. I check a few sites daily for advice (including thefakebasketball.com and rotogrinders.com) but mostly I head to twitter and search Daily NBA and simply browse the articles that pop up.
So far the results have been mixed to bad. For one thing I’ve discovered that NBA Players get scratched from lineups often. I’ve had multiple occasions where I put together a nice lineup that looked to be in the money only to discover that a player I started was injured. I play the same system as I use for Fantasy Football. That means I make a lineup and enter it in both a 50/50 and GPP Tournament. I’m currently looking for an APP that gives inactive’s advice pre-game for my phone. I’ve downloaded a few promising ones but I’m not comfortable recommending anything just yet.
The Positives:
The game play of Fantasy Basketball in general is quite fun. You basically need your team to produce around a point or so per minute of playing time to hit the numbers you need to win 50/50’s. The scoring tends to be fast and furious and when you are sitting around the top of a tournament you are checking your “Playing Minutes Remaining” versus those around you and making calculations of what will happen based on that. It definitely gets the heart pumping!
The Negatives:
The biggest bummer is the fact that I don’t know the NBA very well and therefore am at a major disadvantage going in. Over the one week I made around 30 different lineups over the course of the 7 days. My winning percentage is sitting at sub 30% which is well below average (as expected I guess).
Still when I think about where I was at when I started at Fantasy Football so many years ago I recall it was a similar feeling. I always loved watching football but until you get heavy in to Fantasy Football you never really learn the specifics. Backup RB’s which teams have great defenses, etc.
The Strategy:
I still don’t have much of a strategy when it comes to putting together Fantasy Basketball lineups. I’ve been waffling between going with Star heavy top end lineups filled out with “punts” which I’ve learned are low cost players that can put up an average score, as well as more balanced lineups. I’m still not sure which strategy is best but it’s only been a week so I should have this figured out soon enough. Or not. Either way its been a fun undertaking. I actually found myself watching a Nets game last night and enjoying it. Hard to believe I know!
Conclusion:
Obviously this foray in to Fantasy Basketball is proof that I’m a Daily Fantasy addict and should probably be on some sort of medication for it. Still it’s fun to play and I’m keeping the wagers to an absolute minimum so no harm to fowl. I’m wondering if any of our Fantasy Football readers in a similar situation as me (Fantasy Football Withdrawal) play NBA Fantasy Basketball as well. Any advice on this journey would be welcome. For now I’m off to DraftKings to fill out a lineup for tonight’s DraftKings NBA Freeroll