We truly believe here at FantasyLabs that we have the most unique tools and data available to DFS users. However, we also realize that those tools and data are only as awesome and helpful as our ability to effectively communicate how to use everything. As such, we will continually listen to feedback of what you need and try our best to teach our subscribers how to use all of the cool things we have to offer.

With this in mind, we’ve begun a “Trend of the Day” series. Every weekday we’ll walk our subscribers through an important trend for that day’s slate of games.

Last night it was announced that DeMarcus Cousins would not be playing in tonight’s game. I thought that it would be likely that most people would wonder how the players on the Kings would be affected by his absence. Currently, there is no filter in the Trends tool (yet) that allows us to simply select all games where Cousins has played zero minutes. Recently I have noticed that I am commonly being asked, “How can I set a Trend for when player X is out”, “How do I see how player Y performs when player X is scratched”, and “Hey Jon, you look great, have you been hitting the gym?” Okay, I might not have gotten that last question, but the other two I have.

Justin and the NBA guys do a phantastic job with the NBA projections – each player’s minutes and usage projections will be reflective of any relevant news. I typically will use the “Proj. Minutes” and “Proj. Usage” filters to see how a player has performed when I see they are projected higher than their season average. Today, we are not going to do that. Instead, I am going to answer the question “How do players on the Kings perform when DeMarcus Cousins does not play?” I will also show you exactly how I did that using data from the Trends tool.

Trend: Sacramento Kings without Demarcus Cousins

First, I took a look at Boogie’s game log to see which games he had not played in. Next, I wrote down the game number of each of those games onto a little piece of paper.

Not my greatest display of handwriting. Fun Interesting Useful Random Fact: I got what is the equivalent of an F in handwriting when I was in elementary school. I was pretty upset and my Mom told me that doctors have terrible handwriting. Apparently so do freelancing DFS writers.

Anyway, now I opened up the Trends tool.

Step 1: Team Filters > Team > Select “Sacramento Kings”

Step 2: Time Filters > NBA Season > Select “2015-16”

Next, I had to reference the previously pictured tiny blue piece of paper. I can see that Cousins did not play in the fourth game of the season. Now I can set another filter.

Step 3: Time Filters > Game Number > Set to “4 to 4”

Now that I have selected the fourth game of the 2015-16 season, I can take a look at each player’s performance in that game.

Step 4: Player Filters > Player Name

Once on this page, we are looking at how each player on the Kings performed in the fourth game of the season, a game in which DeMarcus Cousins did not play. Now, here comes the tricky part.

Step 5: Enter Data into Excel

It is time to open up Excel and enter this data into a spreadsheet. I have the benefit of using two computers to make the process a bit easier. If you don’t have two monitors, you could make the size of the windows smaller to help quicken the process.

If you were doing this yourself, you would then need to enter the data from the other eight games this season that did not see any minutes from Demarcus Cousins. You would do that by repeating steps three through five.

Alright guys, follow those steps, do a little math, and boom, you will have an answer. Let me know on Twitter which one of these players I should target tonight. Thanks!

I’m kidding; I went ahead and entered all of that data into a spread sheet for us. Next, I sorted it for each individual player until I had something looking like this.

You would get the numbers on the bottom row by taking the average of Avg. Points, Avg. Plus/Minus, Consistency, and Upside. You would get the count by simply adding, but you really don’t need to enter that because you could just count how many times the player shows up in the trend. After doing that for each player, our trend is complete. Here are the results. I have sorted them by Plus/Minus.

There we have it. This was a bit unconventional but I think it will answer a question that was bound to be asked.

Good luck tonight!