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DFS Army NBA DFS Bootcamp: Back to the Basics!

Daily Fantasy NBA Bootcamp

WE’RE BACK BABY! It’s time for to attack another season of NBA DFS!  This is your guide to either learning or refreshing your NBA DFS strategy and turning your knowledge and skill into enough profit to take that special someone out to dinner a couple times throughout the season.

For starters, if this is your first rodeo with NBA DFS, it’s wise to start off slow and ease your way into it.  If this is your first go around with the NBA at all, then take it REAL slow…you know, like when you first met your wife or significant other, you took it slow, you progressed, and now you have a good solid foundation.  I have a unique way of looking at things and I’m going to try to allow you to dive into my thinking.  So sit back, grab a cup of your favorite drink, turn the TV off and enjoy.

To give you an idea of who I am and how I got here, I’d like to give you a Boomersdaddy bio.  I’m a sports guy, and my primary background is in baseball.  I consider myself a junkie (the first step to combating any disease is to first acknowledge, right?)  My mother used to tell me that if I ever found a woman that could put up or join in with my love and passion for baseball that I would have a keeper.  Luckily, I found exactly that.  I grew up playing football and baseball so naturally, after college, I started diving into fantasy sports.  Starting out by just playing in a couple of Yahoo season-long leagues and it grew from there.  I was a military brat growing up, and we moved around a lot. Although I’m extremely grateful for the sacrifice my parents made, it wasn’t always the easiest thing growing up.  Just when I would get comfortable and find my groove in a new place, we would have to pack it all up and head somewhere new.  Because of this, there were two constants in my life, sports, and numbers.  I love crunching numbers.  With fantasy sports, I found that I had a knack for reading stat lines and crunching the numbers well enough that I could predict better than most people I would be playing against what was going to happen.

 

I started my DFS journey on DraftKings, and then I added FanDuel.  Like a lot of you, I was instantly hooked.  With my sports background and love for competition, I drove myself to get better.  DFS, as we all know, isn’t always the easiest, but I hate losing.  I started out thinking it would be easy, but that is obviously not entirely accurate; this is a game of skill, after all.  Over the course of time I’ve learned, adapted, kept learning and got better.  I encourage all of you reading this right now to never stop learning.

 

There is always a little bit of a break between the end of the NFL season and the beginning of MLB season, so when NFL DFS was over I decided to dabble a little bit in the NBA.  How else is a good junkie supposed to feed the need? To be clear, I had no idea who the players were on any team other than the OKC Thunder, unless they were the guys that made the highlight plays on SportsCenter.  I also discovered that the scoring was a lot higher, a lot quicker, and A LOT more fun!

 

After getting my butt kicked a couple times, I decided to take a different route.  Now, I’m not proud of the route I took, but I had reasoning behind it.  I found a guy on Twitter and bought some lineups.  I was working a lot at the time, and although I was making good money, I wasn’t looking to learn another sport; especially one I didn’t really know or care about.  Really, I was just looking to pass some time until MLB Season.  Well, purchasing lineups lasted all of three days.  After buying the lineups, entering into some double-ups and watching, I knew I was in trouble on the second day when looking at the contest I noticed 9 people tied with me, ALL WITH THE EXACT SAME LINEUP!  I was done.  I had created what I viewed as a mortal sin in the fantasy sports world.  You will NEVER receive a free lineup here at the DFS Army.  I’m a big believer in karma, so I repay the Fantasy Gods, repay the community and make sure that if a player wins me a good chunk of money, I purchase some sort of memorabilia of that player.  In order to absolve myself of the sin, I decided that needed to give everything I had to NBA DFS.  I started reading, watching games, learning roster and learning the game.  It didn’t happen overnight, but eventually I continued to keep getting better and better.  That all has led me to become the host of the DFS Army Daily Dispatch, resident NBA and MLB pro and a stay at home dad.  I couldn’t ask for anything better and along with my partner on the podcast Al Walsh, and our spreadsheet guru Mr. Sconnie, we have created a package for the DFS Army that I would put up against anyone in the industry.

Want to try a month of DFS Army VIP Membership for free? Check out this great offer!

The Beginner’s Guide to NBA DFS

This isn’t by any means the end all be all to this platform, and you should do what works for you, but if I can teach you a thing or two that allows you to grow, then I’ve accomplished what I’ve set out to do.  You can give a man/woman a fish or you can teach a man/woman to fish, right?  I’m a firm believer there is no greater tool and lesson learned than that of personal discovery if you do it the right way.  I continue to learn, just like we all should.  Our competition is going to continue to keep getting better and better and if we just stay put, they will definitely pass us by.  This is designed to help you get a feel for what to look for and how to go about it.  We are building the foundation.

 

Get to know the game

If you have never watched a full NBA game, I recommend doing so. And as you watch, analyze your team and how the scores correlate.  It’s one thing to know what a basket or a rebound is; it’s another thing to know that Reggie Jackson and Andre Drummond work really well together on the high pick and roll, or that Russell Westbrook and James Harden could be battling it out for the MVP race all year with their projected roles on their respective teams.

There is no hardcore this guy hurts or helps this guy in the NBA. Since you can score fantasy points in multiple ways in the NBA, you have to start learning what a player’s strengths are.  I’m not saying you have to know them inside and out, but as you watch, you will start to pick things up.

 

Start your research process

I’m not going to go too deep into this one, I will give you my daily research process later in the week.  But you have to be able to go back each day and look at the same things every day.  The only way to know if something is working or isn’t is to be able to break things down.

Vegas is the first place you start. You have to know the total of the games.  Notice, I only said TOTAL.  The higher the better but we like to target the games with totals above 200.  Notice, I have not said one thing about the actual line of the game.  I don’t try to predict blowouts, and I don’t let Vegas try to predict them for me either in the NBA.  The only place I pay attention to the Vegas line is when it concerns the San Antonio Spurs.  I’ll explain a little later.

 

Understand Scoring

DraftKings and FanDuel are the two main sites that we love playing on, so learn their scoring. They have the most games and the biggest prize pools.  If you are looking to play on other sites, I say give it a whirl, but I would only play two sites at a time at most.  Too many can get really hectic unless you have a secretary.  (I am currently accepting applications)

The biggest difference between most sites is going to be the turnover difference, and whether or not the site has bonuses for achieving certain milestones. For example, on DraftKings you get a .5 point bonus for each 3 point shot that your player makes. You also lose only .5 points for turnovers. They have double-double and triple-double bonuses as well.  Returning to DraftKings this year is multi-positional eligibility, which will allow us to be more creative when it comes to roster construction.  They have also done away with “Late Swap” so no longer will you be able to change any players due to later breaking news once 7 pm ET rolls around.

Understand which stats are important.

 

Minutes

Obviously, this is the most important thing you have to have- minutes on the court mean fantasy production in the NBA.  The more he’s in the game, the more upside he has.  Minutes = Money

 

Usage Rate

This is probably the most important statistic outside of minutes. Usage Rate basically allows us to see how much a player has the ball in his hands during a game.  The higher the usage rate, the higher the ability to get points and assists.

Since NBA players play in rotations, starters aren’t always playing with who they started the game with. Sometimes they play with the backups and vice versa, so if a key starter is out, then you want to be able to have an idea of what a player’s usage rate will look like when that player is out.  The best example of this in recent years is when Russell Westbrook played without Kevin Durant.  Statmuse.com is a great information site to find all of this

NOTE: Later this week, there will be a 10 Commandments for NBA DFS so keep an eye out for that.

 

Pace

Pace of play is one of the biggest indicators on how many possessions teams are going to have in a game. For example, the Sacramento Kings lead the NBA in pace last season with 102.2.  So that means that they have 102.2 possessions on offense per game on average.  The higher the pace, the faster the game.  Which means more opportunity to score fantasy points!

 

Player Efficiency Rating (PER)

This is pretty self-explanatory. Player PER is a great way to look and see exactly how productive a player has been this year.

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Defensive Efficiency (DEF EFF)

I use this before I look at Defense vs. Position. The reasoning is that a team’s total defense will usually depend on whether or not I want to target that team, because I typically only like targeting players that are facing the top 12 or so in DEF EFF, especially for cash games.  Even though these numbers are in the Projections Sheet that we put out, I basically take the numbers from the Hollinger Stats page off of ESPN.com.  All we do is put it in excel form for everyone.

 

Defense vs. Position (DvP)

We all know this stat very well. This is the last thing I’m looking at as far as pure stats to figure out the games I’m going to target.  The reasoning is since teams don’t always play PG vs. PG, this stat can be a little miss-leading.  This is why it helps to watch the games as much as you can.

 

Watch relevant news through the day

The first thing you want to do is create a Twitter account. Even if you never plan on tweeting anything, you can find a lot of great information on Twitter.  You can follow me @boomersdfsdaddy and go to my account page.  I have some lists that I’ve subscribed to for each sport and a list called DFS.  The one you are going to want to watch the most is the one named NBA Beat Writers.  It is a fantastic source- unlike the MLB or NFL, the NBA is not required to announce actives or in-actives by a certain time before the game or give us any news on any players.  NBA DFS players rely on the beat writers for the teams to pass along information.  This can be vital leading up to the final moments before roster lock.

Using sites to keep updated on the injury news is key through the day.  Typically, one of the first things I do every morning is go through and write down every injury that could affect fantasy news for the day.  That way I have a list that I can keep close and update through the day.

 

Know the Elite of the NBA

There are a handful of players that on any given night can put up 60+ fantasy points. As you can probably guess, these players are also the most expensive on any given night.  We get about 15-20 nights a year where all of them are playing.  These nights are great go against the crowd in GPP’s.  If everyone is talking about one or two of the elite players that have better matchups, it is wise to get another elite player at a very low ownership.

Keven Durant (GSW), Russell Westbrook (OKC), Stephen Curry (GSW), LeBron James (CLE), Anthony Davis (NOP), James Harden (HOU), DeMarcus “Boogie” Cousins (SAC) are the elite of the elite. These are players that are typically going to be the most expensive players of the night.  These players are the best of the best and are about as matchup proof as you can get in the NBA.

Injury news on an Elite player’s team is vital. When one of their fellow starters is out, it is always good to go to StatMuse and find out what their usage rate is with the starter off the floor.  If you see a significant uptick, then it might be a good idea to target him.

 

The Final Countdown!

This is what I like to call crunch time. This is the time of the afternoon where I don’t answer questions, phone calls, or anything.  I mean ANYTHING!  In 2015, tornado sirens started going off in Broken Arrow.  Since I live in Oklahoma that isn’t shocking.  What was shocking; however, was how much my mother in law started freaking out.  The issue wasn’t the fact that the sirens were going off; the issue was the TIME.  Roster lock for NBA in Central time is 6 pm.  The sirens started at 5:30 pm.  Needless to say, there was no way to get out of all the contests and some news had just come out that I was working through, so I stayed.  I don’t recommend this.

My whole point is that at that time, we didn’t have ways of getting the news to us other than watching Twitter. So my wife learned, that the hours of 5 pm to 6 pm, I’m out of touch.

This year, we aren’t quite so linked into Twitter. RotoGrinders has developed a great app that’s available for your smartphone that you can end up getting alerts straight to your phone.

Dealing with the way the NBA runs their league isn’t fun some nights. Before you get into the NBA, you have to understand, there will be a handful of nights through the year that players will be scratched for no apparent reason, without any word throughout the day that there was anything wrong with them.  I chalk up five nights a year.  There isn’t anything we can do about it, so I tend to do everything I can to prevent it.  It still happens. I generally try to get done with the building part of my lineups about 15 minutes before roster lock. The reason for this is that I get overwhelmed easily, sometimes.  I don’t want to be tinkering with one lineup and have news come out that will make me have to work on another lineup and then end up having two lineups that are garbage.  Giving me that 15 minutes also keeps me from tinkering too much.

Putting Everything Together

One of the hardest things to master is roster construction. I will touch on this a little more at a later date, but there are some basics that you need to know.

There isn’t a hard number lineup projection that you need to have for cash games or GPP’s. The one we try to shoot for is 300.  MOST nights, if you can hit that number you will cash.  Some nights, 340 won’t cash in GPP’s, other nights, it will win it.

One thing to keep an eye on is the value opening up throughout the day. Which are players that are getting an increase role in minutes that are priced like backups are huge in NBA DFS.  If you look at the winning lineups each night in GPP’s, you will typically find a player that is coming off the bench that has reached 7 or 8 times their salary.

 

I’m a firm believer if you want something you have to work at it.  There is no way to always win in DFS.  I will, just like everyone, go through hot and cold streaks at times.  There is also no way to speed up the learning process in NBA DFS, so you should always be learning.  You should always be looking at lineups and how to get better.  An integral part of my process is reading as much news as I can on each team.  During NBA season, my TV doesn’t move from the NBA Channel in my office.  It’s something small, and it’s not fantasy centered, but you hear things every once in a while, about teams that the fantasy community will not hear about.  Plus, you start to hear about things that could help you learn the game.

Well, there you have it. I hope your foundation is built.  From here we will continue to build the house up, and I look forward to being a piece of that process.

Join the DFS Army

Do you want access to the most advanced Daily Fantasy NBA cheat sheet in the industry? How about the chance to talk player picks and lineups with our NBA DFS Pros and like-minded players? DFS Army VIP Members get all of that PLUS access to our best in the industry NBA projections, the NBA Research Station, and the DFS Army Domination Station optimization tool. Go to DFS Army VIP membership and use promo code 10-OFF to lock in at 10% off the monthly membership fee. You won’t find a better deal or a better DFS team!

Want to try a month of DFS Army VIP Membership for free? Check out this great offer!