I am writing this as a VIP article for members only and am going to try to give you a little insight on the types of things I am looking for by showing you my “research”. This is all baseline stuff and really is something I try to do to start my day and then look into the “why” as to what lead to the research I found. I will do this by going to certain box scores and looking at the play by play to see where they entered the game and with what unit etc.
I also will dive into opposing defense and look at why they are so bad against opposing position and try to break down if it is a guy that can exploit their weakness. For instance, if a defense is bad against opposing SG and give up a lot of three-pointers and rebounds to the opposing SG then I’ll see who plays them today and if it’s a guy who is adept at getting steals and hitting the three. If the player can rack both of those up then they will get a boost not because of the DVP but because of the specifics of what makes them a great play.
I will be using a few specific examples and delve deep into the numbers to try to showcase my research process.
Let’s do an example!
Today, the Knicks are implied to score 110.0 points, which is good but there are six teams projected to score more than them so why would I start my research on the Knicks today? Well, two reasons clearly stand out. First off, they are implied to score 5.0 more points than their season-long average. Second, they have a nice pace increase because of their matchup with the Nets. This means they will be playing faster than usual which will lead to more possessions which mean more opportunities to score fantasy points. Vegas has already baked this into their implied total by projecting them to score more than usual.
Who stands to benefit from this matchup?
Over the last 10-games, the Nets are the second worst team in the NBA against opposing point guards. They are giving up 58.6 fantasy points per game and allowing 2.8 steals per game (worst rate in the NBA over that span of games) and 10.3 assists which is top five worst rates allowed. Two areas where Jarrett Jack has an opportunity to have a slight increase in fantasy output.
Here is where Jack is used wrong. People see the Knicks matchup, pace, implied, and Jack’s matchup over the L10 games and think he’s a great play. But when we look into Jack a bit more we see his usage rate is 17.9% and with the return of Tim Hardaway Jr., Jack has been wretched in fantasy scoring as his role with the team has been pretty much demoted to being a warm body running around on the court with two legs.
Well if the increase in implied scoring is coming from somewhere and not at the best DVP matchup over the last 10-games then who stands to benefit? We have to dive deeper. No lazy work, let’s go.
If we look into Tim Hardaway Jr. we see a massive price increase of nearly $1,000 on FanDuel over the past 10-games and his usage rate has hovered below 19% in 7 of those 10 games. Yuck. This isn’t the same THJ as we saw last year with the Hawks. Courtney Lee? Nope. A mid-priced shooting guard who has a low usage rate of 16.9% and doesn’t really have much of a ceiling to target him.
Enes Kanter has the second best DVP over the last 10-games and also has a pretty solid ceiling. The only issue is that his price has been baked into his matchup and production. At nearly 7k he just isn’t as appealing as he is at low 6k. I don’t even think I would contemplate going to him on this big slate with better options above and below him with the same floor/ceiling combination in some way shape or form.
Lastly, Porzingis, the GOAT. He has a terrible last 10-games DVP where the Nets are one of the best teams in the league against opposing Power Forwards. However, let’s look deeper. Who’s the starting PF tonight going to be for the Nets? It likely will be Quincy Acy because RHJ is currently nursing a boo-boo. Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner! To someone who didn’t look deeper into the situation, Porzingis isn’t an overly obvious play from the Knicks side of things. However, his usage rate will likely be around 30% and he should feast on Acy up and down the court. He also can rack up a handful of blocks for 3-point bonus’. Lastly, if we look DEEP at the Nets numbers against PF’s we will find that over the L10 games they have allowed opposing PFs to score on 53% of their field-goal attempts (third worst rate in the NBA). Porzingis is going to feast if they allow him to make over 50% of his shots and he can pad his stats in the other areas against Acy.
That is exactly how we identify exactly how good of a spot someone is in. Now do that for every player on every team and across the entire slate…for all 225 NBA Main Slates over the court of the NBA DFS season. Doesn’t sound fun? Well, good thing you are a member here and you have 25-staff, some outspoken and some behind the scenes, delivering deep data and advice. If you think this is decent research just wait until you see what we offer during the MLB season, it’s UNBELIEVABLE the depths we go to uncover the minuscule advantages on a daily basis.
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-Donuts