The 6 Secrets of Daily Fantasy Basketball

The 6 Secrets of Daily Fantasy Basketball

Transcript

Andy Baldacci:
Hey, how’s it going, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning in. Today, we are going to share the six secrets to beating daily fantasy basketball. NBA DFS is one of our favorite sports at SaberSim, and there is a lot of money to be made if you use the right strategy. And this is a video where we’re going to do our best to share what those strategies and tips are. My name is Andy Baldacci, I’m the CEO of SaberSim and I’m joined by DFS professional and SaberSim partner, Max Steinberg. How’s it going, Max?

Max Steinberg:
It’s going well. Excited to just jump right into this and talk about some DFS NBA, one of my favorite sports.

Andy Baldacci:
For sure. So, yeah, let’s just jump right into this and start with the first secret, which is staying on top of the news. And it might not be the best kept secret, but it is super important and critical to get this right.

Max Steinberg:
Yeah. So, NBA, there’s going to be a lot of news every day. There’s always going to be some sort of injury, some sort of late news. And I think this is going to be no different in the times of COVID. It’s probably going to be even more so. Players just being rolled out in the last minutes or hours coming up to lock. So, following the people and accounts on Twitter that are going to help you keep you up to date and up to the minute really, it’s going to be really important. I put alerts on my phone for specific accounts that have updates like FantasyLabs and following beat writers, or just following people who just have their eyes on things, it’s going to be really, really important.

Max Steinberg:
So, make sure that you do your research and find some of those people or follow SaberSimor be on our Slack channel as well. That’s going to help you get updates. And many of the sites, including DraftKings and FanDuel have a late swap function. So, if something comes up after lock, you want to make sure to look at projection updates as well as making your own judgements and to see if maybe your lineups are actually worth changing after lock, because sometimes a lot of good value can open up later.

Andy Baldacci:
For sure. The second secret is examine injuries. What did you mean by this one, Max?

Max Steinberg:
Yeah. So, I said this and I’ll repeat this again. Every day in DFS NBA, there’s going to be some sort of injury news that’s going to have a huge impact on what players minutes and their production. And this year with COVID, that’s not going to be an exception. It’s going to be even crazier. So, the places you were going to add the most value in constructing your lineups and to our projection model is going to be evaluating situations where there are big injury impacts with the teams. So, while we really recommend focusing on those areas where, okay, this player is out, let’s look at the projections. Oh, I like this player because X, Y, or Z. That’s going to be really important to actually adding value to the SaberSim process.

Andy Baldacci:
And that ties into this next secret, which is breaking down the components. Can you talk about that one, Max?

Max Steinberg:
Yeah. I think with NBA, more importantly than other sports, looking at the components of the player’s projection, this means minutes, points, rebounds, et cetera, and I think specifically minutes. That’s going to be the easiest place to add value, because if you’re going to adjust a player’s projections, and you want to know, “Why am I doing this?” And minutes, a lot of the times are the place where it’s sort of hardest to quantify. You have to say, “Okay, this guy’s…” There’s only so many minutes that a team can play in the game and you have to say, “Okay, which guy is going to get one more minute and which guy’s going to get one less minute.” And that’s really hard to do. And it’s something where projections, if they’re going to lack in anything are going to lack a little bit in that. So, looking at the depth of the team, seeing, okay, how many active players are there? That’s going to be really important.

Max Steinberg:
You’ll see some nights where a team might not actually have 10 active players. They could have nine or eight. These are the situations where there are lots of minutes available. And that’s maybe a place where you’re going to be able to project out some player’s minutes, because they can have those spike minute games.

Andy Baldacci:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Max Steinberg:
Another place is foul trouble. A lot of times due to entry, there’s going to be players who are going to have high projected minutes that they’re not used to having. And if these players are high fouls per 36 minute players, which is something you can see on a site like Basketball-Reference, these are players that could have their minutes cut short from foul trouble. And those are players that you want to keep an eye on and make sure that we’re not projecting their minutes too high, because they could get cut short real easily.

Andy Baldacci:
And for that one, Max, actually, I just wanted to stop on that quickly.

Max Steinberg:
Sure.

Andy Baldacci:
But it’s not even so much saying that the average is wrong for how many minutes they’re going to get, it’s that it’s just going to be pretty high variance and there’s going to be a lot of outcomes where they get pulled early if they do get into foul trouble and there’s just going to be a lot of variance in the number of minutes that they’re playing.

Max Steinberg:
Right. That’s a really good point. It’s more the probability that this player might have their minutes cut short becomes a lot higher, and that’s going to be really key for GPPs, because if you have a player that’s going to be really popular, but 30% of the time he gets into foul trouble, then that’s going to really kill your lineups and going to be an important factor in deciding, “Okay, maybe I should fade this player.”

Andy Baldacci:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). And there was one other point on this that you had, which was around injury impact on a specific position.

Max Steinberg:
Yeah. I mean, this is a key factor that I’ve been looking at for years. And I think it’s really valuable is when there’s injury impact specifically to the point guard position, because a lot of time with teams, if there’s injuries, they’ll sort of find ways to fill the position. A power forward gets injured, they’ll play a small forward in a power forward. A center gets injured, they’ll play a power forward at center. When a point guard gets injured, a team likes to just use a point guard. They don’t try to fill it in with random players. If they have a point guard, they want to use this point guard. And they’re usually smaller players who can take a lot of minutes. And so, if you see a team that only has one point guard or just little point guard depth, and I’m going to show you sort of how to look at this a little bit later, that player is going to have to play a lot and that’s someone you can identify where you’re like, “Oh, maybe this player could have a really high spike minute game or really high minutes.”

Andy Baldacci:
And the next one is know when to fade and eat the chalk. And if you’re new to DFS, you might not be familiar with those terms. So chalk, it just means these are the most popular players on the slate. They’re going to have high ownership. Fading that means you’re going to be contrarian and not play those high on players. And then eating the chalk just means playing some of them as well.

Max Steinberg:
Yeah. And I think with NBA, there’s some times where you just know a player is going to be chalky. There’s going to be a slate where James Harden is projected for 55, 58 fantasy points. And there’s no one even close to him. And in those cases, he’s going to be over 50% owned. But in all likelihood, because NBA is such a predictable sport, he’s going to get probably 50 fantasy points. It’s very unlikely that he doesn’t get that. And so, getting tricky and trying to fade a player like him, if he’s the highest projected player on the slate, is usually going to be wrong. And you’ll see with the SaberSim builder, you’re just going to get that player a lot. And I think that’s correct. This is not like baseball where Mike Trout is going to go 0-4.

Max Steinberg:
This is not like football where a running back doesn’t score a touchdown and he just kills your entire lineup. James Harden is going to shoot his threes, he’s going to go to fifth. He’s going to get his points. However, I think there are good places to fade. And I think those are usually going to the players who are projected on the low side, but because of the lack of value options, are going to be popular. You’re going to have players who project at 24, 22 points, or close to mid salary that people are going to play a lot. And these are the guys that I think you want to consider fading, especially if you can find reasons that they might fail or their ownership might be out of control. Again, going back to the minutes thing with foul trouble, maybe they’re just not a very high production player and you think, “Oh, this person could just not get any fantasy points,” even though his average fantasy points are pretty good, there’s some low downside games there. So, those are some things you want to consider for sure.

Andy Baldacci:
And so, for that one, just to be clear, you’re kind of looking for situations where there may be some narrative that is driving what you think is going to be a high ownership for a player. But when you do some of the digging into the things that we’ve talked about already, you’re not so sure that there’s actually merit to the narrative that the public’s really all jumping on. Is that fair?

Max Steinberg:
Yeah. Or there could be merit. I mean, like I said, it is pretty predictable, so it’s not like you’re not going to see us project someone at 24 fantasy points and they really should be at 16 or something. That’s not going to happen. But I think, in general, if someone’s projected at 24, 16 isn’t the range of outcomes. And if you choose a player that just doesn’t get a lot of fantasy points, that can just kill your lineup, because there are going to be some value players that get 25, 30 fantasy points on a given slate. So, I think it’s more just taking into consideration, “Okay. This person would actually kill my lineup if they don’t get a lot of fantasy points. And are there avenues for that to happen?”

Andy Baldacci:
All right. And number five is optimizing for upside. And this is really about how to take all of this research that you’ve done, and the things you’ve looked into, and these other secrets to put it together and build proper lineups, build lineups that have a chance of winning. And Max, can you expand on that a bit?

Max Steinberg:
Yeah. So, just like any daily fantasy sport, they all have the same fundamentals and basketball is no exception. We want to have lineups that are correlated that take into account ownership and take into account those high range of outcomes that you want to win a big tournament. And so, with basketball, even though the correlations are not as strong, they definitely exist and they’re subtle. Sometimes they involve game stacking. Sometimes it involves point guards with big men or high assist players with players that get assisted field goals and things like that. And then the upside, players who can have those spike games. And luckily for you, SaberSim, using our simulation data and our simulator, we’re going to be able to help you quite a bit with that. And so, it’s something that you don’t need to think about right now or as much if you’re using your product, but it’s something that obviously is very important to winning a GPP in any daily fantasy sport and NBA is no exception.

Andy Baldacci:
Yeah. And that leads into this last one, which is using the right tools. And honestly, there’s just so much out there, even if you just focus on the secrets that Max has covered, there’s still a lot that you have to take in for every single slate. And ultimately, where I find players get led astray is they almost try to just like reinvent the wheel. They feel like a lot of this has to be harder than it actually is. And if you’re using the right tools, you still have to do work for sure, but there are a ton of great tools out there that make this process a lot easier. And the most basic one is just projections. What we’ve talked about is what really goes into building projections yourself, but that’s a pretty big undertaking. We literally have a team at SaberSim, that’s all we’re doing is just building out the models and working on those.

Andy Baldacci:
And it’s a full-time job. If you want to do that on your own, great, but there are ways that you can leverage other people’s work like ours or any of the other ones out there to give yourself a starting point, so that you can still go through all these other secrets and make adjustments rather than starting from scratch. But even for actually doing the research, there’s a lot of great resources out there. And Max, do you want to share some of those?

Max Steinberg:
There are a lot of great free tools for NBA and a lot of great websites. And there’s things that I use daily that I think really can help you adjust projections, see players that might be under the radar plays, and look at different factors that I think are really important. And so, one of my favorite websites is this website called popcornmachine.net. And this actually shows you a really good visual of how teams are using their rotations. You can see when players have entered the game, when they’ve exited the game, who started, who played in crunch time, and things like that. And you can glean just a lot of good stuff just by looking at these visualizations. You can see, okay, who played backup point guard? Yu can see here with the Lakers, it’s a little weird, because they actually played LeBron at point guard, but maybe in a team like this, you see Kendrick Nunn coming for Tyler Herro, and then Tyler Herro coming back in for Nunn, and then Nunn coming back in for Herro.

Max Steinberg:
So, you sort of are saying, “Okay, these are the two players are playing point guard. Is there a reason that one of these players might play more minutes or less minutes the next game?” You can see, “Okay, are there players that are just playing a lot that the coach just does not like to bring out?” LeBron James is one of these players. I mean, it’s not rocket science, but it’s an important factor. And sometimes you can see things where you can say, “Oh, okay, this player got into foul trouble at a specific time,” or some other factor and you can say, “Oh, interesting. This player played a lot in the first half, then got into foul trouble. Didn’t play a lot in the second half.” This player might be underrated for minutes, because maybe we’re just not taking into account how affected he was by foul trouble in the last game. So, it’s something to keep in mind. And I love these visuals, looking at the last couple of games for teams to just see if there’s anything I can find.

Andy Baldacci:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Max Steinberg:
Another site, Add More Funds. This used to be called NBA WOWY. And it’s really cool, because it has sort of what are called on/off splits for players. So, you can sort of say, “Okay, if Trae Young, let’s say in Atlanta is with John Collins, what are his stats? What is his usage rate? What is his total shot percentage?” Things like that. But then you can say, “Okay, John Collins is actually out this game, so how does he do without John Collins? How does his usage rate change? How does his total shop percentage change?” I usually like to look at usage rate, because it sort of shows, “Okay, does this player take more shots if this player is out or in?” And that can be at a really important factor at looking at who might be affected by what injury impact?

Max Steinberg:
These are how we can evaluate an injury impact on a game to game basis. So, I think this is a really good website as well. FantasyLabs, this is not up actually at the moment, I think, but they have a match-ups dashboard. And I look at this every morning, because it just shows me okay, who are the projected starters, given maybe the injuries or whatever. And this can be really important just to look at every day and see, “Okay, who’s starting that I didn’t expect to be starting?” Because then you can go say, “Oh, interesting, this player is injured or there’s a new starter, how might the lineup be affected? How did this play out last game?” So, you can sort of use all these tools together.

Andy Baldacci:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Max Steinberg:
As for advanced stats, NBA actually offers these advanced stats on this website called stats.nba.com. And they have a lot of stuff actually. They have touch rate, they have points per touch. They have a lot of stuff, secondary assists. They have so many stats. And I think you can use a lot of them. I think the touch stats are really good, secondary assists are really good. And you could spend hours on this website. I think it’s really good, un-assisted field goals. It’s just a great website to see a lot of advanced stats that might be able to add value to your process. And then lastly, I think Basketball-Reference is a great site, just because I like looking at the per 36 minute numbers, specifically as we were talking about fouls per 36, because this can help you identify high fouls for 36 players and find those players that might have a lower downside than you might think. And all of these tools are free. They’re great I use them every day. I recommend you do too.

Max Steinberg:
And maybe we can put the links to these in the comments section, so people can find them themselves. And then obviously SaberSim. This is our product that I use every day, obviously. And SaberSim is great, because we’re going to optimize for upside for you. So, after you’ve done all this research, looking at all the stuff, you don’t have to spend more time jury-rigging settings and rules just to get the lineups that you want that are going to account for this research. That’s a lot of time that you might not have, and you might not want to spend. When there’s 30 minutes to go and a slate and there’s a really significant injury, you don’t have time to make an entirely new set of rules and an entirely new set of settings.

Max Steinberg:
We’re going to do all of that for you. So, that means you’re going to spend a lot of time, like I get to do, adding value to the process, doing fun stuff like researching, looking at advanced stats, and adjusting these projections, and the ownership projections. And it’s going to make the process a lot of fun. And you’re actually going to be able to add value in the ways that you like.

Andy Baldacci:
Yeah. And it’s really where… When it comes to the tools, there is a lot out there and you’re really just trying to find ways to leverage your time as best as possible and focus on those areas where you can add value. With SaberSim, you’re getting a strong projection system where we’re going to do our best to be on top of everything. But there are just always things that you, through your own process can do to add value that Max and I have talked about today, but we also then take all of that and look at correlations, look at ownership, look at the range of outcomes, and make it very easy for you to build those high upside lineups, so that you don’t have to spend hours and hours fighting with outdated tools or trying to do all this by hand. And one of the big things that’s important to us at SaberSim is we know that not every tool is going to be perfect for everyone.

Andy Baldacci:
We have spent a ton of time on building the best tools that we can, but we want you to try it out for yourself and see if this is right for you, see how it fits into your process. And that’s why we offer a free three day trial. So, you can sign up, play around with it, see how this fits in your DFS process, see if it helps you get better results, and make up your own mind before shelling out a single cent. So, to sign up, all you have to do is just head over to SaberSim.com and you can get started in seconds. And you’ll get access to all of the sports that any of the major sites offer as well as our projections.

Andy Baldacci:
And you will also get access to our Slack channel where you can talk to our partners, like Max and his brother, Danny, and all the other people in there and bounce off ideas from them, get even faster access to injuries and everything else, and really have that collaborative community, so that you can add the most value to your own DFS process. If you have any questions at all, we are always happy to help. And you can contact us at [email protected]. And Max, I know you’re also very active in Slack, but also on Twitter, how can people reach you there?

Max Steinberg:
Yeah, you can find me on our Slack channel or @MaxJSteinberg on Twitter. I’m happy to answer any questions.

Andy Baldacci:
Awesome. Well, thank you guys for tuning in, and as always, if you have any questions, just let us know and we’re happy to help. Thanks again.

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