Call me lazy, but I do not enjoy high-maintenance things. Except, of course, if I didn’t actually have to maintain them. For example, I’d love to have a stealth fighter in the garage, but I do not want to check that the radar-absorbant material is acceptable while making sure every nut and bolt is properly tightened on a daily basis so that I have peace of mind that it will actually fly. Those are the only reasons I do not have a F-35 in the garage.
Fine, the wife probably wouldn’t sign off on it. The fuel would be too expensive and my garage is only big enough for two cars. Outside of those factors, I’d definitely have one.
Fantasy drafts are my stealth fighters. They provide adrenaline rushes, release the endorphins, and give me something in life to do instead of trying to figure out if that video on X is real or not. But they require tons of work during the season, as lineups must be set on a daily or weekly basis and concocting trades or acquiring players on the waiver wire are processes that are absolutely required in order to compete.
But when you have dozens or hundreds of teams, it becomes cumbersome and impossible to manage them all.
Enter best ball drafts.
Draft a team, then the bots figure out the optimal lineup for each scoring period. If you make money, the notification bell will light up at the end of the season on either the DK App or DraftKings website. EZ PZ.
Now that we’ve all decided the best ball drafts are awesome, let’s get into the nitty gritty for the NBA Best Ball drafts on DraftKings. Enter the lobby HERE.
There are a plethora of contests, from three-person Sit and Go tournaments, to the big tournaments with a grand prize of $100K. In this article, I will be focusing on the tournaments, so drafts will consist of 12 players and be in standard snake draft format. The number one pick will select first, 24th, and 25th in the first three rounds.
An important caveat for best ball drafts is that you must manually make a pick or edit the draft rankings. If a team is autodrafted with no tweaks to the rankings, then that team will be INELIGIBLE for prizes.
TYPES OF DRAFTS
There are two options for drafts: fast or slow. A fast draft has a 30-second clock while a slow draft has an eight-hour clock. There are no pauses overnight, but three days before the start of the NBA regular season, the clock will change to one hour then 10 minutes per pick, with an eight-hour timer between 10 pm ET and 10 am ET.
LINEUP REQUIREMENTS
Each team will have 16 players rostered. The bots will select the best seven players for each scoring period. Starters will consist of 2 G, 2 F, 1 C, and 2 UTIL.
Roster construction is important, not just for injuries but for scoring optimization. Bill Yin will be providing more specific content in terms of rankings and such, so I won’t delve too deep in this piece. But just to give you a brief lay of the land, I have only six players projected to score at least 4,000 fantasy points. One is a center, three are forwards, and two are guards. In the 3,000-point tier, there are five centers, 11 forwards, and 13 guards. In the 2,000-point tier, there are 20 centers, 34 forwards, and 34 guards.
Remember, you only have to start one center and can only start a max of three, whereas you can start four guards or four forwards.
SCORING
Point = 1
Made three-pointer = 0.5
Rebound = 1.25
Assist = 1.5
Steal = 2
Block = 2
Turnover = minus 0.5
Double-double = 1.5
Triple-double = 3
The point, made three-pointer, rebound, assist, steal, block, and turnover categories are straight forward. Those values can be plugged into any projections that you decide to utilize. The double-double and triple-double categories are a little trickier. In order to access that data, go to NBA.com, click on the PLAYERS tab at the top, then hit PLAYER STATS, click the SEE ALL PLAYER STATS link, change OFFICIAL LEADERS to GENERAL, then make sure season type is REGULAR SEASON and change per game to TOTALS. The columns on the right side labeled DD2 and TD3 are for double-doubles and triple-doubles.
SCHEDULE
All teams participate in Round 1, which consists of 17 weeks from October 22 to February 23.
The top two teams from each league will advance to Round 2, which will run for two weeks from February 24 to March 9.
Only the winner of each league from Round 2 will advance to Round 3, which will go from March 10 to March 23.
Only the winner of each league from Round 3 will advance to the final Round 4, which is from March 24 to April 6. The highest scoring team from this two-week period will win the grand prize of $100,00, with payouts going down to 26th-36th for $750.
Team schedules are important for the final three rounds, especially for Round 4.
For the final three rounds, there are four teams that play a total of 23 games. 12 teams play 22 games. 11 teams play 21 games. Two teams play 20 games. There is one team that plays 19 games.
In Round 4, seven teams play eight games, 20 teams play seven games, and three teams play six games.
Hope this little primer helped. Bill and I will be providing NBA Best Ball content consistently until the NBA regular season starts in late October, so keep checking out the DK Network site.
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I am a promoter at DraftKings and am also an avid fan and user (my username is sontzu) and may sometimes play on my personal account in the games that I offer advice on. Although I have expressed my personal view on the games and strategies above, they do not necessarily reflect the view(s) of DraftKings and do not constitute a representation that any particular strategy will guarantee success. All customers should use their own skill and judgment in building lineups. I may also deploy different players and strategies than what I recommend above. I am not an employee of DraftKings and do not have access to any non-public information.
