When playing in an NBA daily fantasy league, you need to focus on more than just the star players. And while this should be common sense if you look at the scoring system that most leagues have, a lot of your competition will not take this into account. In fact, defense counts a lot more than offense. In this light, let’s take a look at what your best approach is to drafting a team.
At FanDuel, you can draft 9 players with the $60,000 salary cap they give you. The top three scorers in the NBA last year were Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony, and LeBron James. Of these three, James ranked #3 in points per game at 27.1, but had a higher assist per game (6.4) and steals (1.6). With the inflated point value, would James’s fewer points per game make him a better buy than the other two above him? Assists are worth 1.5 points, giving James an average score of 9.6 extra points here, and steals are worth 2 points, giving James another 3.2 points. That’s a total of 39.9 points in these three categories.
Durant had an average of 32.0 points per game, 5.5 assists, and 1.3 steals, or 42.85 points per game. Anthony had an overall score of 34.45 points per game with these three categories at FanDuel. Of course, this will vary from game to game, but on average, Durant is the better choice, followed by James, followed by Anthony. Turnovers will count against them, and Anthony has the lowest number here, but there were not enough of these for any of them to impact the positioning. They were also very similar in the number of blocks per game, and again, this had no impact on how the three players would have been ranked last year.
If you are trying to draft a team with only two forwards, though, you cannot draft all three, and the price of these players will dictate what you can do with the rest of your team. As the season progresses, there is a strong likelihood that there will be fluctuation between who the better choice is for your top forward, but this is a good starting point when making decision early in the season.
The same criteria should be used for drafting the rest of your team, but you will likely find that the two categories that we didn’t pay much heed to above become even more important. If a player is able to generate a lot of blocks per game, they will have a lot of value. Anthony Davis led the league last year in blocks per game for qualified leaders at 2.8 points per game. That ends up being an extra 5.6 points per game that he is creating, and when added to his 20+ points he was creating with his scoring, he is a solid buy and should be picked up if you can get him at a reasonable price for your center position.
Little things like this can give you an edge early on in the season when it comes to daily fantasy sports.Just remember that last season means little as the current season progresses. It does show potential, but not necessarily the current situation.
