NBA GPP Leverage: Opening Night

We are back! Finally, after yet another tumultuous offseason and 134 days of trades and free-agency signings, the NBA is back — and so is NBA DFS.

If you’re new to NBA DFS, Establish The Run, or the column — welcome! In my opinion, ETR has the best content and projections teams in the industry, working around the clock to ensure we are better prepared than our competition. My goal throughout the season is to combine the quantitative (projection) with the qualitative (shout-out to Mike Gallagher), while helping implement strong lineup construction and game theory in large-field tournaments. As part of this, my focus will be geared toward shifting our mentality toward viewing things in terms of complete lineups as opposed to specific players or projections. The idea is to sharpen our slate-evaluation skills and think critically about the lineups we’re constructing.

For the newer players to NBA DFS…

A major part of what makes NBA DFS different from the other sports is a greater alignment between projection and outcome. There is far greater projection volatility in a sport such as football, where actual outcomes can very easily fall far below/beyond the median projection. There are simply more variables involved, where actual differences in any of said variables can materially impact the fantasy scoring results. NFL DFS scoring can also be strongly event-based, with one long touchdown changing the entire output for the game in one play. NBA DFS, on the other hand, is an accumulation of statistics over the course of the minutes someone plays during a game.

For example — Davante Adams is an incredible receiver, one of the best in the NFL, who typically earns about 10 targets per game, or 30% of his team’s targets any given week (one week even garnering 20 (!) targets). In Week 6 of the 2023 season, Davante only saw five targets for a pedestrian 16% share and just 4.9 DraftKings points. It’s almost impossible to predict all the dynamics that occur during an NFL game — changes in defensive coverage, an OL missing a block forcing the QB to adjust, other WRs finding busted coverages, poor throws from the QB, and many others. Davante could have gone the whole game getting four targets, but if his fifth target was a long TD reception, it would completely change the slate’s results. As a result, NFL projections are naturally going to carry a material degree of variance. NBA DFS is a much different game.

Of course, there will always be a degree of natural variance involved when it comes to certain rates and minutes (i.e., a player gets hot/cold from three, picks up three quick fouls, etc.) — but it’s highly unlikely that Nikola Jokic scores 4.9 fantasy points if he’s playing 35 minutes in a game. On the opposite side of the spectrum, minimum-priced players in NFL (such as $3,000 Wan’Dale Robinson in Week 5 this year) are oftentimes heavily owned and have a wide range of expected outcomes — which are typically strong fades in tournaments. But when Ja Morant was ruled out last year, and Tyus Jones was $4,000 and expected to play 35 minutes — it’s pretty hard to NOT play him at that cheap of a price.

For the first edition of Leverage this season, I want to discuss tournaments from a broader perspective as well as take a look at the first two-game slate to kick off the season.

In my 10+ years of NBA DFS experience — one of the most important, yet under-discussed, aspects of this game is how well we can quickly evaluate a slate and digest information on short notice. The number of games, player pricing, “chalk” lineup construction, multi-position eligibility, positional and salary allocation, anticipated start/sit news, rotation information, coach-speak (looking at you, Ty Lue), possible minutes and projection volatility, and potential contrarian options — which all change every slate — are just some of the things we need to consider in a quick time frame. I am a noted hand-builder, but slate evaluation is paramount for any play style. There are plenty of methods to have success playing NBA DFS, but it all starts with slate evaluation.

Do I pay up at point guard or center? How much chalk should I play? What kind of chalk is “bad”? Do I play “balanced” or “stars and scrubs”? How does the slate size impact optimal lineup construction? If a player gets ruled out after lock, how should I handle that? How is the field building their lineups? These are some examples of the types of questions we all ask ourselves when creating rosters, and some of the questions I hope to help us answer throughout the year with this column. Once we have a grasp on the slate, it not only makes building lineups easier but also highlights all of the ways we could possibly gain leverage on the field.

Speaking of gaining leverage, there are many ways to do so. None of them are more right/wrong than another objectively, but some may be better suited for certain slates more than others. This is one key reason why slate evaluation is so important. Using the same example above, not playing $4,000 Tyus Jones when Ja Morant was out last year is probably not the best way to get leverage in that instance given what we know is Tyus’ FPPM capability, despite his significant expected ownership. That’s not to say that every cheap chalk player is a good play necessarily, but being able to discern if that player has the requisite ceiling at his cost relative to the rest of the options on the slate is very important. Fading potentially underperforming chalk is just one way to get leverage, and we’ll be talking about this and other ways to gain leverage more in-depth as the season progresses. As I mentioned at the top, framing your perspective in NBA DFS as creating complete lineups, as opposed to a bunch of individual players, enables greater contrarian thinking.

Moving on to today’s slate….

Tonight kicks off the NBA season, with the reigning champion Nikola Jokic-led Denver Nuggets taking on commissioner-favorite Lebron James and the Los Angeles Lakers. That will be followed by a newly-formed superteam, the Phoenix Suns, visiting KD’s former team, the Golden State Warriors. Two-game slates are generally a bit trickier than a normal slate, as the overall lack of options both drives up ownership and simultaneously makes it difficult to find feasible lower-owned plays — there are only so many guys to choose from. Historically speaking, winning lineups on two-game slates look much different than normal, with total ownership ranging from 238.9% to 315.9% featuring between six and seven “chalk” roster spots (owned greater than 15% — I will use this threshold when discussing chalk throughout the season). Again, 15% ownership on a two-game slate is a much different threshold than it would be normally — but it shows us that a combination of the best-projected plays and uniqueness is optimal. Before we dive in from a DFS perspective, let’s look at the four teams on the slate and see what has changed from last season.

Denver Nuggets

The headline here really is the loss of Bruce Brown, who took a big contract with the Pacers this offseason. Other than impacting the team defensively, and potentially leading the second unit as a lead ball-handler, the fantasy implications here are fairly minimal — especially early in the season. The team also lost Thomas Bryant and Uncle Jeff Green while adding Justin Holiday and Jay Huff (Wizards DFS legend) in free agency and Julian Strawther in the draft. I’d expect the main fantasy contributors here to remain the same as we saw at the end of last season (Jokic, Murray, AG, MPJ), with potential for Braun, Strawther, and others to carve out a role as the season continues. From a macro-environment perspective, the Nuggets played quite slow last year (97.5 pace post-ASB) and I wouldn’t expect that to change.