On Tuesday, I had a historic night in my own world. In what has been my first year playing DFS, I have learned many a lesson. I had never played DFS NBA before this year. As an avid user of FantasyLabs, I decided to give it a shot. It’s been a pretty wild few months.
I will delve into how I built my teams on Tuesday night using Labs, but I’m first going to talk about a DFS concept that I guess I’m coining, unless someone else claims it. It’s called the “DFS Snap Call.” Let me be the first to say that I’m not, never was, and never will be a professional poker player. I just can’t explain one of my strategies other than calling it a “snap call.” The idea actually is very similar to that of the Monty Python article written by FantasyLabs’ Bryan Mears, where he talks about making late lineup swaps with new information, using DraftKings late swap option.
Basketball is a sport where all of the research you have compiled all day can go to crap in just one fell swoop of NBA coaches late decisions. A lot of times, we’re sitting at our computers at 6:50PM with a 7PM lineup lock looming, and a lineup change is announced. These 10 minutes that we have to make changes become the most important part of the night if playing on a site like FanDuel, where there are no late-swap options. We literally get 30 seconds to decide what we are going to do with the information. If we take longer than 30 seconds, we will not have ample time to make all of the changes necessary to build a well thought-out lineup (this takes the assumption that all of your lineups are built with thought).
The best part about this situation is that you get a bit of contrarian value. Most people won’t and can’t make major changes to their lineups with 10 minutes until lock. The key to making a well-informed snap call is knowing the slate and having access to what happens to player values during those real-time changes. Luckily, we have FantasyLabs making real-time minutes projections to all changes as they happen.
So, here’s how Tuesday night went for me using FantasyLabs.
1. Find core value players:
On a given night, there can be a ton of value guys. Labs provides an easy way to look at value, and it’s in the “Pts/Sal” column. It’s so easy to use and can be seen here:
This gives us a good gauge for who will give us a good bang for their buck on a given night. My core value players this night were DeAngelo Russell, Jordan Clarkson, and Nikola Jokic. There was a lot of value out there this night; I can’t give away the secret sauce as to why I built around these players.
2. Find core upside players:
I look for high-upside guys to fill around my value players each night for tournaments. The ceiling column is perfect for this:
Here we are able to sort by the high-upside players of the night. My core upside players were Damian Lillard, John Wall, Carmelo Anthony, LaMarcus Aldridge, and Kawhi Leonard. Obviously I wasn’t able play all of these players, but I fit them in where necessary across three teams.
3. The Snap Call on Tuesday:
At around 7:15PM on Tuesday, the Lakers announced Kobe was out. If you were on Labs, you would have seen the values of the surrounding Lakers players spike. I already committed to starting Russell and Clarkson on two teams. The Kobe announcement forced me into making two snap calls. First and foremost….JULIUS RANDLE GOES INTO EVERY LINEUP! Not only did I love Julius Randle now, but I NEEDED to get in more money.
The second call I made was adding another team into the Monster because of this. In my head, I was getting my money in a good spot. The additional team that I entered ended up being the team that won (my second-place team would have won had I not entered this team). Julius Randle’s ownership percentage was 16.9% that night. I have texts that could vouch for the excitement I had once learning he was that low owned.
The Snap Call was in full effect. Little did I know that would only be the early stages of my excitement that night. I’m only able to make these snap calls because I am constantly browsing FantasyLabs throughout the day, assessing values, and building lineup ideas in my head. FantasyLabs organizes the data so that I can easily look for different data points. The value and ceiling are just two of dozens of things I look at on a day to day basis. Here was the result of my labor:
FantasyLabs has a lot of different ways to use the data. I’m new to NBA, so I pick different data points that I can understand. I’ve learned so much this year and yet have much more to learn. Read the articles and fool around with the software. Try different things and build different models. MLB DFS is the best thing going, and I have fun just messing around in FantasyLabs, building different models, playing around with the trends tool … and baseball is still a month away.
Regarding the DFS Snap call … it’s one of my favorite moves for many reasons other than the obvious. I can’t make moves like this without reliable values and information. This is where Labs comes into play. I’m going to put a disclaimer on this: the move can completely backfire, like anything. Ten minutes is not enough time to digest data in any type of DFS game. Use with caution.
