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| "NBA Referee" by Keith Allison is licensed under CC by 2.0 |
How do I build the Optimal DFS Lineup for NBA?
Now that NFL is winding down, we are going to start shifting to NBA analysis. There are quite a few things that go into an optimal NBA lineup build, and we will dive into those various aspects. The perfect build takes into account all types of factors, and how you weigh each factor to come up with your projection numbers. You can easily go and grab point projections from various sites and run strictly off of those, but so can everyone else you are going up against. The way to differentiate yourself is how much you weigh each factor when comprising your projections.
Minutes Played
- P.J Tucker - 35 Minutes played per game - 21 DraftKings points per game
- Julius Randle - 29.5 Minutes played per game - 37.1 DraftKings points per game
These two players are anomalies on each side of the spectrum. Tucker sees a ton of minutes but only averages just over 20 DK ppg. Randle on the other hand is the first player when sorting by DK points per game that comes up under 30 minutes. That means everyone else that averages over 37 DK points per game, averages over 30 minutes per game as well. It's more common to see players like Tucker that play a ton of minutes but don't provide much fantasy value. This leads us to our next stat to look at.
Usage percentage
There is a long complicated formula that goes into computing a player's usage percentage but luckily for our sake these numbers are readily available on the internet. All that we need to know for fantasy purposes is that this basically refers to how much a player is involved in a team's scoring. A high usage percentage correlates with larger fantasy output. Combine a high usage rate with high minutes played per game and you should get high fantasy output. Let's look at the players above as examples while taking in their usage percentage.
- P.J. Tucker - 9.8 Usage percentage
- Julius Randle - 25.9 Usage percentage
As we can see Tucker has such a low usage percentage that even though he plays so many minutes he isn't really involved in the offense and is more of a role player for the Rockets. He also plays with James Harden who leads the league in usage percentage with 38.7. On the other hand, Julius Randle has a solid usage percentage (second highest on his team) which is why we can see that even though he doesn't play a load of minutes, when he is in he is very involved in the offense.
Injuries
While this obviously isn't a stat, a teammate's injury can play a huge role increasing a player's production. This is especially true when you see a player is ruled out and they have a high usage percentage and typically play a lot of minutes. Let's again look at our two players from above to give an example of what we are talking about.
- P.J. Tucker - 12.6 Usage percentage (when on the court without Chris Paul, Clint Capela, and James Harden)
- Julius Randle - 31.4 Usage percentage (when on the court without Anthony Davis)
Currently the Rockets are without Chris Paul and Capela, and Harden soaks up all the usage from those two. Tucker wouldn't see much of an increase in usage unless Harden was out along with Paul and Capela. He also plays heavy minutes regardless, so the only injury we would look for to help Tucker's production would be if Harden was ruled out for some reason. On the other hand, Julius Randle sees a sizeable usage increase when Anthony Davis is off the court. So when we hear that Anthony Davis has been ruled out because of a broken nail, we should flock to Julius Randle because the stats tell us that he sees an increase in minutes and an increase in usage percentage, therefore leading to an increase in fantasy production.
We will continue to dive into NBA strategy so look out for future articles. We will also start to post our cash game lineups very soon and track our progress as we go along!! Questions or comments, you can reach us here, on Facebook, or on Twitter @DFSToday .
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