Continuing on with my look into NBA DFS stacking, I wanted to take a look at a team with an elite point guard and an elite inside presence. The team that seemed like an obvious choice for this test was Sacramento, with Rajon Rondo and Demarcus Cousins each playing at a high level.
Before we look into any possible correlation between the two players, it’s first important to understand where Rondo’s fantasy points come from. Rondo has averaged 37.42 FanDuel points per game this season. Unsurprisingly, most of his fantasy points have come from points and assists. In fact, assists make up nearly half of Rondo’s total fantasy output:
Assists: 45.7%
Points: 32.9%
That matches up pretty well with Boogie, who generates about 86% of his fantasy points from points and rebounds. Rondo is a pretty good rebounder as far as point guards go, but just by looking at the numbers, it seems like these two are going to help each other more than they are going to take production away from one another.
Cousins
Points: 56.9%
Rebounds: 29%
As you might expect, Cousins is Rondo’s favorite target to pass to on offense – 21.9% of Rondo’s assists have come via Boogie buckets. In other words, around 10% of Rondo’s fantasy production comes from Cousins scoring.
To put this into perspective, about 22.18% of Jameis Winston’s fantasy production this season has come from throwing to Mike Evans (and obviously, nearly 100% of Evans’ production is tied to Winston). So again, even two players who benefit each other’s games in NBA DFS aren’t going to give you the same benefit as a QB-WR stack. But that was never the question here.
Cousins averages 25 points per game, but his season high is 40 points. If Boogie scores 40 and Rondo assisted on 21.9% of his field goals, Rondo gets about 6.5 fantasy points from Boogie. In reality, it’s probably closer to 10 fantasy points because if Boogie is playing well, Rondo is going to go to him more. In NFL DFS, most WRs score fantasy points by way of receiving yards and receiving touchdowns. In the NBA, fantasy points are much more versatile. In additional to the boost from Cousins having a good game, Rondo’s normal scoring, steal, and rebound numbers are in play as well.
Everything so far is somewhat theoretical, so let’s see how these two have actually performed during the other player’s three best games in 2015-2016:
Rondo finished right at his implied point total on 11/15, but other than that, the duo is 4-of-4 in exceeding value during the others’ best games. If you played Rondo-Cousins on 11/13, you got a double 60 burger with cheese and likely had a very good DFS night. On a related note, Rudy Gay did not play in that game.
So Rondo and Cousins are stackable in the right matchups, but are there any other Kings we should consider as stack candidates? There is one player who doesn’t always get huge minutes unless Sacramento is dealing with an injury, but he has a pretty nice scoring profile for stacking.
70.9% of Marco Belinelli’s fantasy production comes from raw points. Of the 10.9 points per game he scores in 2015-2016, 5.9 of those points come via catch and shoot opportunities. That number is by far the highest on the team. In other words, most of his fantasy points come from scoring – and most of his scores are assisted.
Despite being the Kings’ sixth leading scorer this season, Marco is Rondo’s third most frequent assist target. His ceiling is not very high, but he comes cheap and can be a nice correlation play with Rondo the next time Sacramento has someone out on the wings.
One King I would NOT be likely to stack is Rudy Gay. Of Rondo/Cousins’ five best games, Gay was absent for two of them. Those were the only two games he has missed so far this season. That fact in itself does not bode well for Rudy’s stackability with Cousins or especially Rondo. Rudy’s 1.8 assists per game this season are the lowest he has averaged since the 2008-2009 season – it’s no coincidence that this drop runs parallel with Rondo’s arrival. Similarly, Rudy’s usage percentage is his lowest since 2010-2011.
I think what we are seeing is that in NFL DFS, you can make blanket assumptions like “Stack QB with WR”, “Stack RB with DEF”, and most of the time, that will be the right call. In NBA DFS, stacking is in play, but you can’t make those same assumptions – you have to really think about the players themselves and how they fit together within a team’s offense.
