How To Play Daily Fantasy Basketball

If you are familiar with season-long fantasy basketball, you’ll have no problem playing daily fantasy basketball. But if you are new to daily fantasy sports (DFS), here is a quick and easy primer. Daily fantasy basketball leagues allow you to compile your hand-picked imaginary team of NBA or NCAA basketball players to compete against others in a one day contest. You may play head-to-head against a single player, or against hundreds or even thousands of players in leagues and tournaments. And you do not make a season-long commitment. When your real world player scores, tallies an assist, blocks a shot or performs some other notable action, your fantasy team is awarded points.

At the end of the day’s action, if your players outscore your opponents, you are immediately paid cash money. That is how simple playing daily fantasy basketball is. And if you want to get started immediately, simply click through the links we provide, and head over to the top rated daily fantasy basketball sites. Sign up for a free account and begin playing for as little as $1, or enter freeroll contests which pay you money when you win, without any investment on your part. Of course, to consistently win money, you need to understand the strategies and tips the professionals use to pull in five and six figures per month.

Winning Fantasy Basketball Strategy

Consistently rated as one of the top 10 players in the world, Peter Jennings entered 2014 as the #4 ranked daily fantasy basketball player on the planet. He routinely wins five figures per month playing fantasy basketball at sites like FanDuel, DraftStreet and DraftKings. And many of the winning fantasy basketball strategies provided below are the very same methods Jennings uses to give himself a competitive winning edge each and every day. The other tips listed here have been proven by the top daily fantasy basketball players at the three previously mentioned websites, and can instantly transform your game overnight to show more profits and fewer losses.

Consistent Winning Means Consistent Research

Very broadly put, you have to research to win. If you simply want to play with hunches and “feelings”, you will never be a consistent winner at fantasy basketball. Every major daily fantasy basketball site offers a research section. And the power of the World Wide Web these days delivers literally hundreds of dependable websites with more statistics than you could ever possibly digest. Pick your favorite research resource, and if you decide to play in a league or tournament today, choose a contest and find out which games will be used. Then begin crunching numbers until you intimately know each and every aspect of the players and teams involved.

Take Advantage of the Predictability Factor of NBA Play

In baseball, hockey and even football, good and even great players can get shut out from time to time. That is because of certain game flow elements and other factors which are inherently integrated into the way those games are played. The NBA is much more predictable fantasy-wise. The professional DFS experts understand that the big-name players are pretty much going to get their fantasy points, whether that be through assists, field goals, three-pointers, blocked shots or some other method. That is why there is less risk when you choose a stud in fantasy basketball than some other sports. That leads us to our next tip.

Pay For a Stud

Because of the predictability factor of fantasy basketball we just mentioned, you’ll see the smart and continually successful daily fantasy sports players “paying up” for at least one expensive stud on any given night. As with all fantasy sports, finding value is extremely important, and this is one way to do so. (Fantasy pro tip: And as we just mentioned, the value of a player that can give you 30 or 40 fantasy points on almost a guaranteed basis is huge, even if you have to pay more for him.)

The NBA Injury Announcement Process Can Be Deadly

In daily fantasy football NFL play, you will know well ahead of game time if a player has been scratched. This is not always the case with the NBA. Surprise injury scratches can happen literally at the last minute. This goes back to our first fantasy basketball tip about research. Especially if you play on a site which offers late game player swaps, you need to know if your players are playing. There are plenty of resources on the web which can give you a last-minute injury information.

Twitter Is Your Friend

This is one tool that the pros use, which the typical daily fantasy basketball player never thinks about employing. Among pro athletes, basketball players seem to be more in love with Twitter than their counterparts in other sports. Typing a team’s or player’s name into Twitter, you can quickly learn information about injuries, personal events (just got married, just got divorced, wife is in the hospital, last minute scratch, etc.) and disgruntled players quicker here than anywhere. Use this to your advantage.

Understand How Substitutions Offer Opportunity

Besides hockey, the National Basketball Association substitute players in and out more than any other professional sport. That means that starters will be sitting on the bench from time to time. Minutes on the court equal production, and effective tools like the daily research software at the top DFS sites will show you how many minutes each NBA player plays per game on average. Substitutions offer opportunity, and this is usually in the form of less expensive players. (Fantasy pro tip: Monitor recent box scores to see if a backup has been getting more time recently because he is performing well, or because a star is slumping.)

Defense Versus Position Rankings Is Huge

Read that again. When you were filling out your roster with individual players in 2012, it paid to know that the Denver Nuggets were horrible at stopping opposing centers. Again, statistical research tools are everywhere. If you are not using them, you are simply throwing away money. (Fantasy pro tip: Of all the stats you can find, team defense versus an individual position will reveal to you those opportunities you have to spend less on a player that has a great chance at overperforming against his seasonal averages.)

The Basics to Constructing Your Lineup

We mentioned above that you should definitely pay for at least one stud. That will take a huge chunk out of your salary. How can you afford those expensive players? You need to fill your lineup out with high-value players. Look for teams with multiple injuries. This will force a low-priced backup into significant playing time. And if you choose to play on a night where there don’t seem to be very many value plays, you want to fill your roster with mid-level players that have high upside. Those are the two basic types of rosters you want to build: A) a fantasy team with 1 beast that you know will get you points, surrounded by value players, and B) an entire team made of middle-talent athletes with high upside.

Advanced Vegas Line Strategy

Another tool that full-time daily fantasy basketball players like Peter Jennings use all the time is the Las Vegas line. Billions of dollars are spent in the sports betting industry. So the people that set the globally watched Vegas lines for NBA games spend hours of meticulous research before they set a number. This will not help you with individual players, but it is invaluable to give you insight on how a team will be performing in a particular game. Focus on two things here. Which team is favored by how many points, and what the total points predicted for the game are. The total points will tell you if there will be a lot of scoring or not. Also, avoid choosing players on the winning side of a blowout. (Fantasy pro tip: Anything over an 8 point line is a potential blowout, and more than a 10 point spread is a serious warning sign. You probably want to avoid expensive players on heavily favored teams.)

Advanced Vegas Lines Totals Over/Under Strategy

In daily fantasy basketball, target players in games with high predicted total points. Las Vegas lines are free and available everywhere. And high-scoring, high tempo games mean more points, rebounds and assists. You can check over/under totals for the entire NBA slate every day in just a couple of minutes.

Advanced Daily Fantasy Basketball Strategy – Understand the Weakness of $ per Point Projections

One easy way to compare players is to check their $/pts values. If a player is offered at a salary of $20,000, and is projected to score 20 points today, you simply divide to get $1,000 per point as his projected value. The problem here is that $/pt projections tend to make expensive players look less valuable, and inexpensive players more valuable. Do not ignore $/pt research, but temper it by thinking about the possibility for each player to explode and have a huge day. This is obviously going to happen more frequently with the big-name, expensive players who are more talented and on the field longer. You’ll also want to factor in the quality of defense a player is up against, if there are injured players on his team which will up his minutes on the court, and other factors.

Advanced Aggregate DFS Site Projections

Each and every daily fantasy sports site lists projections for the athletes that you choose from in any league or tournament. Jon Bales is consistently one of the top 10 daily fantasy sports earners, and he says you can immediately improve your win loss percentage by developing an aggregate of all the top DFS sites’ player projections. This is very easy to do. You head over to each one of the top rated daily fantasy sports providers listed here on our site. Add the projections for a particular player at every site, and then divide that total by the number of sites used. This gives you a more unbiased fantasy player point projection, which will probably be closer to the real results that player achieves on a more consistent basis.