Daily Fantasy Basketball 2015: DraftKings Strategy Changes for NBA Playoffs
Fantasy sports used to end when the sport's regular season did. Daily fantasy sports have changed that. In fact, not only does it extend the action, it can make it better—and more profitable—too.
This slideshow breaks down the DraftKings strategy changes for the NBA Playoffs, giving you five nuances in handling the daily play after the regular season. The postseason is not only a different beast for the players and teams, but DFS players, too.
DraftKings is hosting one-day NBA Playoff contests! Claim your free entry by clicking on the link and making a first-time deposit!
Less Games Mean Less Variables to Stumble, Err Maul, over
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Daily fantasy basketball players love those Wednesday night tournaments during the regular season with those huge prize pools. DFS analysts hate them—at least this one does.
It is far easier to wrap your head around all of the angles of a four-game slate, like the ones we are presented with on a nightly basis in the NBA postseason.
Those regular season Wednesday nights just leave us with too many variables to manage. If there are 15 games on the schedule, there are 30 starting lineups to sort through. That is 150 players to know their health and projected minutes—and that is just the starters.
If you are a daily grinder in basketball, you understand how difficult it can be to know every nuance throughout the league on which backups are getting added minutes at a fraction of the DraftDay cost. With four postseason games per night to weigh, it becomes far easier to understand the ins and outs.
We love having a tighter pool of players—and variables—to manage. The less variables, the more precise our lineup calculations can be; and therefore, the better our profitability and efficiency.
Stars Get Their Minutes and Get Their Production
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The postseason comes just days after some of the most frustrating nights on the daily fantasy basketball calendar, the end of the regular season. Those waning days and weeks feature a slew of injured players shutting it down for the season without notice. Also, teams heading for the postseason rest might have whimsically decided to rest their veteran star, so he has less tread on the tire in Round 1 of the playoffs.
Then those opening series start and the question marks because clearer, crisper answers.
Take the Chicago Bulls' Derrick Rose (knee) for instance. He was a crapshoot play down the stretch, coming off his latest knee surgery and just barely working his way back into game form. He could start and get 10 minutes...or 30.
Now that the must-win games of the postseason are here, we have the real Rose. He even played 48 minutes scored 59.25 DraftKings points last time out Thursday. Yahtzee!
There was little to no chance of those things happening in the semi-meaningful games down the stretch of the regular season. The NBA postseason is "go time" for the teams and players. Even if players are injured, the beat writers and media coverage of each series is amplified and more accurate, especially with regard to lineups and injury status.
The best players play full time. They don't get nights off. And they get the ball like there is no tomorrow...because there just might not be!
Familiarity Makes for Some Potential Statistical Consistency
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Similar to the note from the two prior slides, analysts and statisticians like a manageable set of variables. We know there will be nuances to consider, but the postseason pits two teams against each other in a series.
The regular season changes the opponents, matchups and potential value opportunities on a game-to-game basis.
We can all become closer to "expert" status on matchups when the teams are playing a repetitive set of games in a series. We won't have to reinvent the wheel in knowing how Anthony Davis is going to be defended, or whether the Golden State Warriors are going to lean on the outside shooting of Klay Thompson.
The familiarity is a beautiful thing for DFS analysts and players alike. We just have more consistent information and that can lead to more consistent production. Consistency in numbers makes for more efficiency in our bottom lines.
Since Defense Wins Championships, Defensive Play Is Better
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The layman might believe pitting the best NBA teams mean the game scores—and fantasy points—shoot through the roof. That isn't necessarily the case.
In fact, the NBA postseason series tend to be won by the teams that play the best defense, not score the most points. This is a noteworthy difference. The best teams are playing, yes, but they are also playing against the best teams.
There are few mismatches and lopsided scores. Games tend to be competitive through the end of the game, the defenses tend to be stingier and the shooters play a bit tighter.
Like the slide(s) where we say less is more in terms of the number of games and variables on a given night, less points can also be more in terms of winning those bigger-pool DraftKings tournaments.
Lower high scores make it less likely a lucky sole will win. A skilled, consistent player can thrive in daily fantasy basketball in the postseason, because they can cash with a reasonable 250-point lineup instead of having to find lightning in the bottle with a 300-point DraftKings lineup.
Pros Have Turned Their Efficient Money-Making Ways to Baseball
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Jack of all trades, or king of none. You do not want to be the latter. The NBA Playoffs run concurrently with daily fantasy baseball, which is very, very popular with the DraftKings pros like Jonathan Bales, as we wrote in Bleacher Report's 10 Things DFS Players Should Never, Ever Do.
It is not just the best players turning their focus away from daily fantasy basketball either. The average daily grinder might continue to play DFS basketball along with baseball, but there are only 24 hours in the day. The time spent studying for baseball lineups is no longer used studying for basketball lineups.
We won't be so foolish to say stick to one specific sport—play they all—but there are great opportunities to cash in DFS basketball during the NBA Playoffs if we stay honed in on the prize...in many cases, the big cash prizes that can be had in basketball as others are watching Mike Trout and the Angels play a 1-0 snooze-fest against the Oakland Athletics.
DraftKings is hosting one-day NBA Playoff contests! Claim your free entry by clicking on the link and making a first-time deposit!
Eric Mack, one of the giants among fantasy writers, is the Fantasy Football Lead Writer for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter, where you can ask him endless questions about your team, rip him for his content and even challenge him to a head-to-head fantasy game.
