Over on the NFL side of things, writer Graham Barfield pens a weekly column for us titled “3 Vital DraftKings Trends for Week X.” It’s a great article and great idea – our Trends tool is awesome and a useful way to backtest any theories you may have, as well as save interesting data trends you may find about situations, players, or teams. And because there is a big DK contest tonight – the $1M Return to the Court – I thought I’d steal Graham’s idea and do one for tonight’s NBA slate.
So without further ado, here are 3 interesting trends I’ve come across for tonight.
- When the total is really high (218 or more), both the favorite and dog exceed expectation.
Can I interest you in the Clippers-Warriors game to end the night? I expected this to be the case – even though the Clippers are dogs, and even sizable ones at +7.5 currently, when Vegas pegs the total at a number that high, all players are valuable. The reason is something I found in an article last week about high and low-paced teams. There’s an additive effect with high-paced teams – they tend to play at an even higher pace when matched up against one another, and that’s not something that is priced into DraftKings player salaries. There is value all around in this game.
- Road-Road Back-to-Backs are not good for fantasy value.
There are two teams tonight that are on the second leg of a road-road B2B – the Raptors against the Thunder and Magic against the Rockets. In those situations in the last year, players have been 0.33 fantasy points on DraftKings under expectation. That may seem small, but in a large sample – and in a big tournament tonight where we need all the upside we can get – this is meaningful. You shouldn’t completely fade the Raps and Magic, but you should really think about pricing and value.
- Players with a high projected Plus/Minus usually do really well.
Players in the last year who we have projected to outperform their salary-based expectation by six points or more have done exactly that. These are players that you definitely want in your lineup, as they not only give you a safe floor but also usually salary-relief that lets you fill in the high-priced studs and thus raise the ceiling on your lineup. Here’s the players with projected Plus/Minus’ of 6 or more tonight.
Good luck tonight. Hopefully a Fantasy Labber can take down the first-place $100k prize!
