How to win fantasy basketball on fanduel

FanDuel NBA Strategy - How To Win At Daily Fantasy Basketball

Jon Bales (JonBales)

Created 8 years ago, Last Updated 3 years ago

Known as the premier daily fantasy sports destination for heads-up and 50/50 leagues, FanDuel is a great choice for your daily fantasy basketball action. This Fanduel NBA Strategy Guide will help you learn the best practices for winning at FanDuel.

NOTE: This article is intended for novice daily fantasy basketball players. If you’re more experienced, check out the resources listed at the bottom of this content.

Getting started

There’s a ton of strategy that goes into playing daily fantasy basketball, and it’s also the most predictable sport on a night-by-night basis. Certain players have very high floors—it’s rare to see score fewer than 15 points, for example—and that type of game lends itself well to safer league types.

Because of that dynamic, many daily fantasy basketball players place a high percentage of their bankroll into FanDuel. Not only is there a huge selection of games, but you can also hand-pick your opponents, helping to increase your win percentage. The first step to dominance is understanding the NBA basics covered in this guide to master FanDuel basketball strategy.

Click Here to Get Started Playing on FanDuel

Thre are a number of game modes to play on FanDuel, including 50/50s, Multipliers, Tournaments, Leagues, Head-to-Heads and Beat the Score.

Once you’ve chosen your game mode, the next step is picking your FanDuel lineup. The FanDuel salary cap is $60,000. Player salaries range from $3,500 to $11,000+, and you must select a 9-man lineup made up of two players per position except for center (only one required).

Here are some thoughts for you to consider when picking your lineups:

• Consult playing time/usage stats – don’t go by name only
• Stay on top of injuries and roster cheap backups
• Use multi-stat contributors
• Choose consistent bench options
• Beware of inconsistent rookies
• Pay up for guards, not bigs
• Consider travel schedule and rest
• Find and use matchup statistics
• Start with value picks, then work to your studs

FanDuel NBA Starters

FanDuel requires you to start two point guards, two shooting guards, two small forwards, two power forwards, and one center. The starters fall into very rigid categories, unlike on the other major daily fantasy sites. That’s a characteristic of FanDuel in all sports.

Just as they have no flex position in football, FanDuel has no utility spots in basketball. You must start two point guards and two shooting guards, for example, as opposed to one point guard, one shooting guard, and two guards at either position of your choosing.

With no utility, you don’t really need to compare players at separate positions. The utility position in daily fantasy basketball is much different from the flex spot in football because NBA players score points in the same ways (as opposed to quarterbacks versus running backs), but the lack of a utility position will still cut down on your research time. You don’t need to figure out if centers are inherently more valuable than point guards, for example, because you need to start a fixed number at both positions.

Also note that requiring two starters at very specific positions means you’ll typically find yourself “digging deeper” for quality options. On a night when there aren’t a lot of quality point guard options, for example, you could potentially start more players at other positions on other sites. That’s not a possibility on FanDuel. It’s not necessarily a negative—it could reward player knowledge, actually—but it’s something you need to think about. It’s more likely that you’ll use a “stars and scrubs” roster construction approach, combining elite players with bargain big players, on FanDuel than anywhere else.

FanDuel NBA Scoring

Now let’s take a look at FanDuel’s NBA scoring system.

The points themselves are less important than how they compare to one another. If FanDuel gave two points for rebounds but five points for assists, rebounds would actually lose value, relative to assists, even though they’d give you more points.

To give you an idea of how FanDuel’s NBA scoring differs from the norm, let’s compare their scoring to that of two other daily fantasy sites.

All three sites give one point for a point scored, 1.5 points for an assist, and two points for steals and blocks. FanDuel gives 1.2 points per rebound, which is just slightly less than the 1.25 awarded by the other two leading sites.

The main differences here come in three-pointers, turnovers, and missed shots. FanDuel does not give extra points for three-pointers, so all buckets are treated the same (besides the obvious fact that three-pointers are naturally worth more). Thus, when you’re analyzing scorers, you should worry solely about pure points scored and not so much about how players score their points.

FanDuel also takes away a full point per turnover. Turnovers are relatively random and difficult to predict each night, but you’ll still want to avoid players who are careless with the ball to a great extent.

Finally, note that FanDuel doesn’t penalize for missed shots. That means you can concentrate on finding high-volume players, regardless of their efficiency. has a whole lot more value on FanDuel, for example, because all you need to worry about is bulk points. If a player takes a lot of shots, that’s a positive; it doesn’t matter how many he misses.

The Big Picture

Since daily fantasy basketball is a nightly sport, the majority of your action will likely be head-to-heads, much of which can be played at FanDuel. In RotoAcademy, we have more advanced information on what wins in head-to-head and 50/50 leagues. Long story short, you want to pay for consistency, which probably involves a process a little bit different than what you might imagine.

Because basketball is such a consistent sport, nightly projections are probably more meaningful in the NBA than any other league. Whereas you can project a hitter to go 2-for-5 but he doesn’t even get on base, you’re highly unlikely to miss by so much on basketball players.

One of the easiest ways to project NBA players is by looking at minutes. There’s a very strong correlation between minutes on the floor and fantasy points. That’s useful information for starters, but it’s particularly advantageous when selecting backups who are thrust into the starting lineup. One of the easiest ways to secure value in daily fantasy basketball is to identify players who are set to see a dramatic spike in minutes, such as when a starter gets injured or is a late scratch.

When searching for bargain bin NBA players, you want to get the most production possible for the cheapest price. Knowing how a site prices backups is important; as we mention in RotoAcademy, you should be searching for a specific baseline of points for different types of players on FanDuel.

Based on how FanDuel typically prices their players, you normally want 5x a player’s salary for most guys. That means if a particular player costs $6,000, he should score in the neighborhood of 30 points to be considered of value. Elite players really only need to hit 4x their salary to be valuable, while bargain bin players should be closer to 6X.

If you’re considering a high-priced power forward who costs $10,000 on FanDuel, for example, he’s valuable if you have him projected anywhere around 40 points (4x salary) or more. A backup who costs only $4,000, however, should be expected to score 24 points (6x salary) if you want him in your lineup.

Additional Resources

We hope this was a helpful introduction to daily fantasy NBA on FanDuel. To continue to sharpen your game, we’d encourage you to check out the following:

— Fanduel NBA Daily Research Tools – Your one-stop source for projections, stats and picks each day, as well as our famous Lineup Builder
— The Main Forum – A great place to talk NBA strategy and ask questions.
— GrindersLive and Podcasts – We’ve got lots of great, daily media for those of you that don’t like to read!
— RotoAcademy – Both paid and free strategy courses from some of the sharpest minds in the industry.

Enjoy the games!

NBA DFS Strategy Guide for FanDuel & DraftKings

This is a strategy guide for how to select top plays, lineup advice, NBA DFS strategy, contest tips, and more for NBA DFS on DraftKings and FanDuel. For further questions, please join our Discord channel.

This strategy guide is not intended to go in-depth on the intricacies of the NBA, nor is it going to give DFS picks. Instead, it's meant to be a high-level strategy road map for FanDuel and DraftKings slates.

While NBA is a common DFS/fantasy sport to play, it is completely different from many of the other sports on DraftKings and FanDuel. Instead of relying on stacking like in football and baseball, NBA DFS relies more on your ability to monitor injury situations, evaluate matchups, and maximize projections. If you can incorporate these into your daily routine, NBA DFS has the potential to be a very profitable sport.

A big component of NBA DFS strategy is how closely you need to monitor injury situations throughout the day. In sports like NFL or MLB, we see injuries announced hours (or days) before game time. This allows a nice cushion to adjust lineups before the slate starts. However, in NBA DFS, teams can make an injury decision just minutes before tip-off. This creates the challenge of keeping up with news throughout the day and having back-up plans in place for last-minute injuries. 

After years of playing NBA DFS, we have broken down what the daily process should look like:

Mornings:

Review the injury news for the upcoming night. By recognizing which players are questionable, you can start to come up with back-up plans and which value options would jump into the “must play” category. 

Afternoon:

Check up on injury situations. Normally if a team has not alerted the media of a player's availability by 3 pm EST, then we likely will not know until around game time. We normally begin to build our lineups during the afternoon, but you should often build multiple lineups based on potential inactives.  

Pre-Lock: 

Injury news begins to roll in around 6:45-6:55 PM ET (yes, it's inconvenient). At this point, we can start to make adjustments to our lineup or select which pre-built lineup fits the mold. 

Post-Lock:

Another key difference with NBA DFS strategy is that our job is not done at lock. Most of the time, late game injury news is not out by 7pm EST. If we are waiting on late game news, we have two options:

• Purposely leave some salary for maximum flexibility to make a late swap -- a high risk option as the lineup could easily fold if the injury news does not go our way.
• Fade late game news -- a lower risk option, as you do not need to pray for the right news to be released and you can focus on the best players available before lock.

Generally, the best NBA DFS players are monitoring news throughout the night and adjusting their lineup(s) until the final tip.

If you're new to NBA DFS, some terms we use in our content may be foreign. Here's a quick rundown. 

Usage Rate:

According to Bleacher Report, Usage Rate calculates what percentage of plays a player was involved in while he was on the floor, provided that the play ends in one of the three true results: field-goal attempt, free throw attempt or turnover.

Now what does this mean from a DFS standpoint? We love to target players with a higher usage rate because it shows that they are touching the ball and are more involved than other players on their team. While NBA superstars obviously have higher usage rates than their counterparts, an important metric we look for is how much a player’s usage rate rises when a star player is out. This helps us decide which players become top options when an injury arises. 

Minutes:

This one should be pretty self-explanatory, but each player on a team will see a certain amount of minutes per game. Out of a 48 minute game, most starters will see around 32-35 minutes. The more minutes someone sees, the more opportunity they have to score fantasy points. Unlike other sports where players can reach value on a single play, extensive playing time is required in NBA DFS because of the incremental scoring. Another key metric we use is how many minutes bench players see when their teammates are injured.

Value Option:
When we call someone a “value option” we are referring to cheaper players who could hit 5-7X+ value on a slate. The “X value” metric is simply fantasy points scored divided by salary times 1000. For example, if a player is priced at $5000 and scores 35 fantasy points, that is 7X value. 

In NBA DFS, these options are normally must-play popular options, especially in lower risk contests. 

Defense by Position:
Another key metric we look for when picking players for our lineups is how well they match up with the opposing defense. Normally when a player is going up against a bottom three defense against his position we recommend them as a lower risk option, as historically other players in the same position have had recent success in the same spot.  

DK/FD Points per Minute:
A final metric we like to utilize in our lineups is DK/FD Points per Minute, which is simply fantasy points divided by minutes played in their current situation. Obviously, the higher this number is the better. We use this metric routinely when looking at injury situations because it shows how efficient a teammate is when someone is forced to miss a game. For example, a player’s DK Points per Minute may rise significantly when a star player is off the court. So if that star player sits out a game, we know his teammate is in line for a decent production boost based on historical on/off court trends.

Before you start building NBA DFS lineups, you must know the rules of the sites where you’re playing. Fortunately, most sites are extremely similar with the exception of a few minor scoring differences, roster limitations, and salary ranges. 

All sites:

• Require you to roster a player from each position: PG, SG, SF, PF, C.  
• Award 1 point per actual point and 1.5 points per assist. 

FanDuel specifically:

• Requires 2 PG, 2 SG, 2 SF, 2 PF, 1 C.
• Awards 1.2 points per rebound, 3 points per steal, 3 points per block, and -1 point for turnovers.

DraftKings specifically:

• Requires just 1 player per position with an extra spot for Guard (PG/SG), Forward (SF/PF), and Utility (any position).
• Awards 1.25 points per rebound, 2 points per steal, 2 points per block, and -0.5 points for turnovers, and bonus points for 3-pointers (0.5 points), double-doubles (1.5 points), and triple-doubles (3 points).

Yahoo specifically:

• Requires just 1 player per position with an extra spot for Guard (PG/SG), Forward (SF/PF), and Utility (any position).
• Awards 1.2 points per rebound, 3 points per steal, 3 points per block, and -1 point for turnovers.

For the most part, the scoring is somewhat similar between sites, with a couple key differences. For one, it’s easy to notice that DraftKings offers bonuses for Double-Doubles, Triple-Doubles and for every 3-point field goal made. While it’s super nice of DK to throw us a few extra points, we do not have to specifically target players who fall under these categories. The other main difference in scoring is Blocks/Steals and Turnovers. FD/Yahoo offer an extra point per block/steal but they also punish mistakes by taking a full point away for turnovers. 

Now that we covered the rules and scoring, let’s move onto how to specific NBA DFS strategy. 

Low-risk contest selection:

• The best ROIs will likely be found in single entry 50/50s and h3Hs, so look there first. Try to find h3Hs and small field double ups with inexperienced entrants.

Low-risk NBA DFS strategy:

NBA is one of the easiest sports to play low-risk contests due to the heavy concentration of ownership. When there is a big injury in the NBA and the backup option’s salary hasn’t increased, this player could be as high as 95% owned in double ups. With a vast amount of games per night, it is common to see a player in this situation on a daily occurrence. 

In NBA low-risk contests, you do not fade the chalk. In NBA DFS specifically, the chalk is chalk for a reason and many of these cheaper back-up options will end up hitting 7X+ value. After locking in the players that are affected through injury, you fill out the rest of your lineup with higher owned (20%+) players from our Occupy Model, players highlighted as low risk in our content, or players you expect to be popular when doing your own research. Normally, these players are seeing a boost from an increased role or a favorable matchup.

High-risk contest selection:

• Satellites, satellites, satellites -- look to play contests that award tickets to future contests first and foremost. This is especially useful for cross-sport contests (satellites for non-NFL contests), as they are slower to fill and usually come with overlay.
• Stick to Quintuple Ups, 10x boosters, Single Entry GPPs, Leagues -- especially later posting ones with less than 500 entrants -- and 3-Max tournaments unless you plan on making 20+ lineups.
• Do not enter a contest unless you can enter the maximum number of lineups allowed.
• For NBA DFS, we have found that Leagues are the best high-risk tournaments to play.

High-risk NBA DFS strategy:

Usually in a high-risk DFS contest, there is leverage in fading popular plays. However, NBA DFS is a completely different beast. As we highlighted earlier, most of the chalky options end up being in the winning lineup. So how do we differentiate?

In high-risk NBA contests, we like to keep a core of 3-5 low-risk players.  The Model is a great tool for high risk, as it was specifically created for this type of contest. Normally we target players in the 6% to 20% ownership range to round out the lineup. 

On average -- and this will vary from slate to slate -- but the average ownership of a winning high-risk lineup is in the 20-30% range. That is, if you add up the ownership of every player in your lineup and divide it by the number of players in your lineup, that figure will be between 20 and 30 percent. This is much higher than other sports, but it’s also significantly lower than the average ownership for winning low-risk lineups. It’s a perfect representation of playing the chalk while getting different in a few spots, so keep this number in mind while building for high-risk contests.

Mass multi-entry NBA DFS strategy:

Step 1, use our Lineup Builder. Step 2, adhere to the above high-risk lineup strategy rules. There are a variety of ways to successfully build 20-150 NBA DFS lineups. Playing multi-entry tournaments is a completely different game than playing in smaller low-risk (or high-risk!) contests. By studying what top NBA DFS players do when they max-enter a contest, we can easily determine the best way to use our Lineup Builder to create a dedicated multi-entry strategy for specific slates.

Utilizing Leverage

In simple terms, leverage in DFS is benefiting when our opponents are wrong - about anything. Mass multi-entering is less about predicting player performance and more about playing against the field. 

• As stated above, chalk is chalk for a reason. Because NBA is not an event-based sport (unlike other sports where a single event can exponentially increase a player’s fantasy point total e.g. a touchdown in NFL or a home run in MLB), ranges of outcomes are much tighter. As a result, the effects of variance are reduced and it’s much more difficult for the most popular plays to fail.  
• Therefore, our leverage in NBA DFS tournaments will come from a lower ownership tier.
• Speaking of ownership tiers, it’s best to think about NBA DFS ownership in buckets: chalk 30%+, leverage zone 10-30%, low-owned 0-10%. 

What the Pros Do

With excellent free resources like Fantasy Labs Contest Dashboard and RotoGrinders ResultsDB, we can easily look at historical slates and see what top NBA DFS pros did. Each NBA DFS tournament player has intricacies to their approach, but almost all of them do the following:

• Match the field on chalk players. If a player is 40% owned, they will play 40% of that player in their lineups. They rarely, if ever, play way more (or way less) than the field does on chalk players. 
• They get leverage in the, wait for it, leverage zone. They play anywhere from double to 4X the field’s exposure on players in that 10-30% zone. E.g. if a player is 10% owned, and they want leverage, they will play 20-40% of that player in their lineups. 

Core Plays

Pick anywhere from 3-6 players in that leverage zone that our Occupy Model (or your own projections or research) believes are great plays. Go overweight on them as the core of your lineups. 

Player Pool Size

Most top NBA DFS pros include 40 to 70 players in their 150-max pool on a normal-sized slate. For top 20-max players, that range drops to 25 to 45 players. The min/max player pool size decreases as there are less games on the slate. Top NBA MMErs have wildly different strategies here -- some routinely fall on the low end, some exclusively have large player pools, while others slide up and down the range depending on the slate. The key is to find what works best for you as long as you stay within the above recommendations. 

Lineup Rules

Because correlation isn’t as big of a factor in NBA DFS as other sports, we don’t need to implement too many rules when building lineups. The two main ones are:

• Max players per team: outside of situations where teams are decimated by injuries, you’ll only want 1-2 players from the same team in the same lineup. 
• Blocking players who cannibalize each others’ minutes: if two players share the same role or position, setting rules so they don’t appear in lineups together -- since you likely need one to outperform the other to hit value -- is important.  

Single Game NBA DFS Strategy:

Many of the same principles from classic NBA strategy remain in NBA single game contests. Ownership is usually very predictable, and narrow ranges of outcomes dictate different lineup constructions than other sports.

Note that on FanDuel, there is no salary multiplier with only 5 roster spots. DraftKings includes the salary multiplier and an extra roster spot. 

Our Occupy Model has incredible predictive power when it comes to single game contests, so lean on it heavily to build lineups while following the guidelines below. 

CPT/MVP selection

On FanDuel, you have three fantasy point multiplier spots: MVP (2x FP), Star (1.5x FP), and Pro (1.2x FP). Because we don’t get a salary break for rostering cheaper players in these spots, always spend up at these multiplier positions. You need players who will score the most fantasy points in the game, so play studs in these spots.  

For DraftKings, we have two main options: play a stud CPT who will score the most points on the slate or roster a value CPT who allows us to fit the maximum amount of studs in our FLEX spots.  

Value Plays

Outside of rare situations where there is legitimately zero value, a stars and scrubs approach is the most viable lineup construction on both sites. Play 1-2 cheap values in your FLEX spots that are guaranteed to see minutes. 

High-Risk Contests

For high-risk contests, you need at least one low-owned player in your lineup. On FanDuel, this can be as simple as swapping a popular MVP with a popular Pro selection. On DK, you’ll need to either roster an unpopular CPT or 1-2 low-owned FLEX plays. Like classic mode, chalk is chalk for a reason, so we can’t fade every popular option in single game -- we just need to be smart about how we pivot with 1-3 roster spots. 

Uniqueness in Larger Contests

If you’re playing large-field single game GPPs, you must also consider lineup uniqueness. Unlike other sports where you can leave tons of salary on the table or have uncorrelated lineups that, while unique, still have a shot to win, there is a dead zone in NBA single game DFS where your unique lineups have 0 chance of winning. So every lineup that is created must be carefully crafted to not only ensure that a ton of other people don’t have it, but also so that it’s not completely dead after the first tip. 

Here are a couple ways to not tie with hundreds of other entries:

• Leave $500 or more on the table, but with good reason. Ideally, you’re leaving salary for 1 of 2 scenarios:
  • A mid-priced player outscores a lower-tier stud (and you opt to leave salary instead of paying up for that lower-tier stud).
  • A low-priced option outscores a mid-priced option (and you opt to leave salary instead of paying up for that mid-priced player).
• Playing lower-owned options, usually a mid-tier player, at CPT on DK. As stated above, you almost exclusively want a stud or value option at CPT, but playing a low-owned mid-tier player at CPT can automatically make your lineup unique-ish without being horrific. 
• On FD, the lower-owned MVP/Star/Pro route can just be to play a lower-priced stud in a higher multiplier position than a higher-priced stud (e. g. If a stud is $15K and another stud is $14K, playing the $14K player at MVP and the $15K player at Star immediately makes your lineup different than the majority of the field). In fact, this is the single biggest leverage point on FanDuel. Our friends over at numberFire have access to FanDuel data that isn’t publicly available, and they wrote this fantastic guide to single game contests that you absolutely must-read. 
• The last option is to play value players whose minutes are not guaranteed. Whether it’s matchup-specific or late breaking news, if a player who isn’t expected to play a ton of minutes actually plays and contributes, you now have a unique stars-and-scrubs lineup. Often, this player scores a 0 and you lose, but sometimes the risk-reward trade off is worthwhile in larger contests. 

NBA DFS is a projections-heavy sport where you must be agile before (and after!) lock when news breaks. By having a solid process, a reliable model or projections system, and a fundamental strategy, you’ll be more prepared than the field every night.

This NBA DFS strategy guide was produced by our NBA manager Tom Boyle with help from Occupy Fantasy co-founder Brian Jester. 

How to win the NBA Daily Fantasy GPP with one entry?

In , unlike daily fantasy football, the variance in NBA daily fantasy is much lower, which means that for those who love basketball and are good at it, the chances of winning a GPP tournament with just one entry are much higher.

And the first thing you need to understand if you want to be successful in NBA Daily Fantasy GPP tournaments is that you need to be sure that you can win with one team. This may seem trivial to some, but it is extremely important. Many players mistakenly believe that they cannot compete with players whose bankroll allows them to register many teams in the same tournaments. However, this is not true.

If that still bothers you, you can play single-entry tournaments (one-entry tournaments) where everyone has the same chance of winning. Otherwise, you must overcome this obstacle. Of course, in terms of mathematics, a person with 50 tournament entries is more likely to win than someone with only 1 team. However, the costs of participating in the tournament, and therefore the possible losses in the first case, will be much higher. Those players who register many times in a single tournament will most often build their lineups around a certain pool of players, thereby limiting the number of unique lineups that a player with one entry will play against.

In any case, you should first of all overcome the psychological barrier , which makes you think that you cannot succeed with only one command, since this statement is false.

Master the lessons in this article and you will be competitive with a single entry in the NBA Daily Fantasy GPP tournaments.

Build a GPP Lineup Based on Cash Game Teams

The good news for daily fantasy NBA players is that you can use your cash game lineups to register and into big tournaments. A good pick is always a good pick because there is no need to stack players in NBA Daily Fantasy. Except in rare cases, which were discussed in the last article about staking in the NBA. Some players simply duplicate their lineups from cash games to GPP tournaments. Although this approach is somewhat simplistic, it works.

The approach that allows single-entry GPP tournaments and is explored in this article is based on a slightly modified cash game lineup. Below you will find a few tricks that are used when adjusting the composition for tournaments with a large field.

If there is an obvious pick, use it.

Strategy advice in daily fantasy sports often talks about avoiding players with high holding percentages in GPP tournaments. And in certain cases, this advice really works. If you don't take a player that 50% of the tournament participants have included in their rosters and he fails that night, you will be able to extract a lot of advantages from this situation.

The only problem is that such players don't usually fail . The percentage when they perform successfully is much higher than the percentage of owning them. This means that you will be in a losing position if you refuse such players every day.

Use obvious top options and then diversify your squad with less popular players in other positions.

If the latest news can help you find a value spade, put him on the team. Yes, we have already written about this several times, but nevertheless, many players do not like to make late substitutions right before the start of matches. This is especially true of the European pool of players, since the start of matches in the NBA for many occurs late at night.

In addition to the late start of the matches, many are hampered by the feeling of concern that the new squad will be worse than the one that was assembled initially, and substitutions made just before the start of the game may not be as well thought out as we would like. This is another psychological obstacle that you need to overcome .

Be sure to stay tuned for the latest news before matches start. If a team has two starting guards out and the coach is forced to play a 40-minute substitute on a low salary, use that to gain an advantage over the field.

Don't expect to win every night

GPPs are fickle. When you play with only one tournament entry, you won't always win. The main goal is to get into the top players and take most of the prize pool, and this cannot be done every day. However, when this happens, you can easily recoup your previous less successful gaming days.

Since you only play with one entry, you won't risk much of your savings every night. Learn to cope with emotions, do not fall into tilt in difficult situations, and do not fall into euphoria in case of victories. Both can play a cruel joke on you. It is better to take a few days off after such an event and restore your mood for the game.

Look for players with a high ceiling

This is one of the best ways to transform your team from a cash game to a GPP tournament. In cash games, players with a high gender bring stable results, the choice of which gives the very security. At the same time, the ceiling for such players is usually quite low precisely because of their stability.

GPP lineups, on the other hand, are great for players with low floors and high ceilings, who can also have the advantage of an affordable price or low ownership percentage. If you take a couple of these players on your team and they show a great game, getting into the top is guaranteed to you .

Don't think about what others are doing

If you're playing in a big tournament with only one entry, it's very easy to overthink yourself. It's easy to convince yourself not to take LeBron James or Kevin Durant because the other members will take them too. Try not to think about it. Try to overcome the psychological barrier that makes you think you can't win the tournament with one entry.

If you follow all these tips when recruiting for GPP tournaments, you will definitely succeed in NBA Daily Fantasy with one entry. This strategy is the safest for your bankroll and is great for beginners.

Want to read more NBA Daily Fantasy Strategy articles? They are available to you by Tag: Basketball.

Fantasy basketball is the best way to follow the NBA. The main thing is to add a commissioner, a lottery, fake news and a ring - PRO Basketball - Blogs

American Fantasy Basketball is a great way to follow the NBA, your favorite players and get the latest news.

I only discovered this thing last year and immediately made a league of friends. Among them are amateur basketball players, a VTB United League player, coaches and just fans. Age of participants from 20 to 36 years. Someone has been following basketball since childhood, and someone started thanks to fantasy. The main thing is that everyone is equally interested. And in this article I will tell you why.

You will be interested in the article:

• if your idea of ​​fantasy ends with a Sports.ru tournament;
• if you don't know what fantasy is;
• if you don't play because you don't speak English;
• if you want to know more about the NBA;
• if you have been playing fantasy for a long time, but you do not have enough real NBA attributes: draft lottery, news, commissioner or ring, for example.

What is fantasy

Let's take the ESPN.com tournament as an example.

Fantasy is a virtual game for basketball fans. They recruit real basketball players from the NBA to their team and act as a general manager: they carry out the draft, form the starting lineup for the week, expell, sign and trade players.

The essence is the same - every week to score more points than the opponent in the league, to win, to rise in the standings and at the end of the season to become the strongest in the playoffs.

This is the result of a match from last season and two fantasy line-ups.

Fantasy basketball is based on player statistics in real basketball matches. It is important for the manager to gather the most effective players in the squad. After all, besides the fact that the effective action of a player in a real match brings points to the fantasy team. His losses and misses take away these points. Therefore, Russell Westbrook, with his triple-doubles and trash throws, is not the best option for fantasy.

The fantasy site or application calculates players' fantasy scores in real time. Therefore, it is convenient and easy to follow. For example, a 3-pointer scored by Luka Doncic earns the team manager five fantasy points, and a Miles Turner block gives four points at once.

The table shows all the scoring actions of the players who score in fantasy:

And this picture shows how the player's statistics from a real match are translated into fantasy points:

As you can see in a single confrontation, the center and point guard can be equally valuable.

The most important thing about fantasy on ESPN is the interface and the possibilities. Everything resembles the official NBA website and helps to feel involved in the basketball world. And each real basketball player can only be on one team. Therefore, the number of teams in the league is limited - from 4 to 20.

Why play fantasy

Understand the NBA. Fantasy Tournament is a great introduction to the NBA. Even for those who played basketball only on the console and most of the players do not know at all. Such fans begin to deal with fantasy, select lineups and develop their own tactics. And they organically immerse themselves in the NBA: they start watching matches, find out the names of the players, understand the difference between role players and the main team, and gradually understand the rules.

At the start, managers will definitely make mistakes and learn. For example, in our league, a basketball rookie gave away Drew Holiday and got Buddy Hill. This trade jeopardized the fantasy rookie season and helped the opponent win the championship.

Closely follow the regular season. Fantasy motivates you to follow all regular season matches. The manager of a virtual team must know everything about the players of his team and a little about the players of the opponent: who was injured and how much, who is on fire now, and who fell on the bench.

At the same time, the manager monitors free players, reads the news and understands who is substituting for whom in real matches in order to sign the most valuable free agent. Therefore, every morning the fantasy manager checks the results of the matches, sometimes watches the games, finds the best players and changes his roster.

Watch matches with excitement. The manager gathers players from different teams. Therefore, he can always choose a match with his players and worry about them. For example, the outcome of a fantasy duel is decided by the match between Indiana and Chicago. The manager in the Sabonis team, and the rival Lavigne. Whoever plays better will win. The manager turns on the match, worries about every productive action of Sabonis and gets angry from every hit of Lavin.

Learn English. The site and app offer an English interface: main tabs, news, injury reports, statistics and forecasts.

At first it is difficult to navigate, but then the manager begins to understand basic basketball terms, watch broadcasts with his players and understand American commentators.

7 Tips for Making Fantasy Interesting

To make fantasy exciting, you need to create an entourage of the real basketball world around it.

1. Come up with a legend. When I launched the PRO League, I invited members through a letter from the NBA. The letter contains the date and time of the draft, highlights of the organization, and the commissioner's name and signature. Legend has it that Adam Silver appointed Kobe Bryant our heavenly commissioner. But a legend is nothing without live reinforcements.

2. Appoint a secret commissioner. In real life, one of the league members or an outside observer is hiding behind the commissioner's mask. Kobe Bryant was commissioner last year and Wilt Chamberlain this year.

The commissioner explains the rules to the participants, runs the draft lottery, helps with the application, resolves conflicts and takes comments from the managers.

3. Create a Telegram channel and chat for discussions

The commissioner writes to the league members on Telegram and asks them about tactics, trades, player injuries, match results and draft expectations. He turns it all into stories and publishes it in the closed Telegram channel "Office PRO League". And he makes it all look like cards from the NBA on ESPN Instagram account.

Chat managers discuss each other's comments, matches, injuries and agree on exchanges. Sometimes they gather for a joint viewing. But most often they swear and tease each other in a comic manner. Therefore, the most reckless atmosphere can be created only in a chat with friends and acquaintances.

4. Hold a draft lottery. One of the most important attributes of fantasy basketball. By default, the computer distributes spades randomly. But in our league, the commissioner runs the draft lottery two weeks before the draft. Managers have time to swap picks if necessary, prepare a draft strategy, draw up a list of desirable players and complain a little about bad picks.

The commissioner runs the lottery backstage and then shoots a video of the draft order. It looks spectacular because the participants do not know the place in advance and do not know the person under the mask.

This is how the lottery went this year:

5. Call and conduct a draft. One of the most exciting parts of the fantasy tournament. The draft takes place on a certain day and a certain hour. So everyone should join. To make it more interesting, we arrange a video conference, because the participants live in different cities. This is how we show emotions when we take away other players or take away someone very desirable. At the same time, we have time to discuss our thoughts on teams and players. You can also get together live and assemble lineups face to face.

6. Place bets and forecasts. This is optional. We play fantasy for fun and have not yet connected the financial part. But they began to think about paid participation and the purchase of various valuable prizes with the money raised. You can also add weekly motivations. For example, advance bets on the outcome of fantasy fights. Or a weekly cash transfer from the manager of the worst team to the manager of the best.

7. Give the champion's ring. Fighting for such a prize is much more interesting than just playing for money.

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