Before I begin, I would like to thank Kevin (@ffootballgeek, CHIEFST) for giving me the opportunity to be the NBA pro for the DFS Army. When I joined this group, I never imagined that it would take my career in this direction. I joined, just like the rest of you, to improve my knowledge and strategy. In addition, I thank you, my fellow DFS Army members, for giving the NBA VIP membership a try and for entrusting me to be your “Bootcamp” Sergeant, as it were. To that end, I hope that this NBA Primer answers some questions and gives you a good base to begin your journey into NBA DFS.

Let me begin by saying that if this is your first rodeo with NBA DFS, then take it light and slow. If this is your first go-round with the NBA at all, then take it REAL slow. 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 sports 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 and after college starting diving into fantasy sports. I started 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 parent’s 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. Out of necessity, over time I’ve learned, adapted, kept learning and got better.

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 a reason 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 3 days. I bought the lineups, entered into some double ups and then watched. 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. 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 I needed to give everything I had to NBA DFS. I started reading everything I could get my hands on, watching games, learning rosters, and learning the game itself. It didn’t happen overnight, but eventually, I continued to get better and better. It was probably the best thing to happen in my career, and now you have all entrusted me to at least start you in the right direction.

I’m going to call this 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 someone a fish or you can teach a 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.

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Get to know the game.

If you have never watched a full NBA game, I recommend doing so. And as you watch, watch 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 two players work really well together on the high pick and roll. 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 basically gave a rundown of my research process already. You can find that here. 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 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.

. 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. The biggest difference between most sites is going to be the turnover differential, 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 a double-double and a triple-double bonus as well. Some sites are shooting efficiency sites, so if your player only hits 4 out of 15 shots, he could lose points.

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 a player is in the game, the more upside he has.

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 starters. 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. Statmuse.com is a great information site to find all of this

*NOTE: Later, there will be a 10 Commandments for NBA DFS article written by myself and Al Walsh, so keep an eye out.*

Pace

Pace of play is one of the biggest indicators on how many possessions teams are going to have in a game. 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.

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. These numbers are in the Projections Sheet that I put in excel format 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.

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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 since, unlike the MLB or NFL, the NBA is not required to announce active or inactive players 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 going 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 (OKC); 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 players 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! Last spring, 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 they were going off. Roster lock for NBA is 6 pm Central. 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 any way of getting the news other than watching Twitter. So my wife learned, that between the hours of 5 pm to 6 pm, I’m out of touch.

Nowadays, we aren’t quite so dependent on 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 calculate that happens about 5 nights a year. There isn’t anything we can do about it, so I tend to do everything I can to prevent getting burned by those instances. 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. 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.

Put 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. Players that are getting an increase in minutes that are priced like backup players 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 hard at it. You will not 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.

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