We made it to 2021, y’all. As a reward, we’ve been blessed with a lovely 10-game NBA DFS slate that has all the ingredients to be the best one of the year. And not just because it’s the first one of the year. Let’s get right to work on finding the best NBA DFS picks for DraftKings and FanDuel on this New Year’s Day edition of the NBA Slate Starter.
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NBA DFS Slate Starter: DraftKings + FanDuel Strategy & Picks | New Year’s Day
Blowouts Blowouts and More Blowouts
I wasn’t going to talk about it. I wasn’t sure I knew how to. But it matters big time if it’s an actual thing, so I have to ask: what in the world is going on with all of these blowouts in the NBA this season?
For years and years, there’s only been a handful of times I’ve factored blowout risk into my NBA DFS decision-making because frankly, I didn’t think there was much reason to. Sure, there have been exceptions, like with the outrageously-talented Warriors teams of the mid-2010’s. They routinely ran weaker competition out of the gym through three quarters, which could make their stars decent fade options on DraftKings and FanDuel if the ownership was there. But for the most part, point spreads rarely close into the high teens, so why would I assume massive leads entering fourth quarters are a given and refrain from rostering great plays against a bad team? Plus, if a heavy favorite does completely shred their opposition, there’s most likely a starter or two scoring a bunch of fantasy points en route to the win.
But I’m not going to lie: this new NBA season has been filled with more blowouts than I can ever remember before. To fact check that hypothesis, I tried to dig up how many times during the 2019-20 season a team won by 20+ points. But to my knowledge, there are no sortable tables readily available to do such a thing (if you know of such a resource, please message me on Twitter @EricLindquist).
However, because we’re just over a week into the season, I decided it wouldn’t take too much time to go through the game logs by hand and count the number of games decided by 20+ points so far (that’s what everyone does with their New Year’s Day, no?). It’s not a perfect gauge for blowouts by any means; 20 points is just an arbitrary number I’m going with since it’s difficult for that to be the margin of victory and not have top players from both teams sit for a large portion of the fourth quarter.
Another quick thing: I’m not trying to substantiate any theories of my own. I’m strictly presenting numbers rather than collecting empirical data by watching games and acting like I figured out what’s going on. Because honestly, I have no idea.
Here’s what I dug up:
17 of 67 (25.37%) games this season have been decided by 20+ points. That’s a much larger number than I was anticipating, as one out of every four games seems statistically significant. And while I don’t have the 2019-20 numbers at my disposal as of yet, I’m guessing that’s a larger percentage than we’ve seen in previous seasons. So while we’re only 67 games in and don’t have nearly enough data to come to a concrete conclusion, I’m open to believing there’s something causing this abnormally-high rate of blowouts.
But what could it be? Obviously these past few months have been filled with circumstances that pro athletes (and every single one of us) have never had to deal with before. Traveling is so much different than before. Empty stadiums are a huge change, for better or worse. A shorter offseason than any before it I’m sure plays some sort of role. If you played in the bubble there could be extra fatigue. Damian Lillard had some intriguing thoughts on all of these possibilities and more here, although I don’t know how to go about proving for certain which players are more affected by these factors than others.
So here’s the bottom line: I don’t know what to do with any of this information, but there’s no doubt that being able to predict blowouts with a higher-degree of certainty would be an edge. I simply don’t think anyone can be good enough at it aside from utilizing the “downgrade players in games with large points spreads” strategy that so many already use. Let’s put a pin in this for now as I’m going to keep digging and thinking about it. In the meantime, be aware that while there may be more landmine games out there than normal, that doesn’t mean we can know for certain where they’re buried… Yet.
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Final Thoughts for Your NBA DFS Lineups
Friday’s ten-game slate is laden with spend-up options at every position. And it shouldn’t be too hard to unlock whichever ones you prefer since Raul Neto sits at just $3,400 on DraftKings. With Russell Westbrook expected to sit on the second-half of the back-to-back, I fully expect Neto to be one of the highest-owned plays on the slate.
The chalk team of the day will most certainly be the Bulls despite the difficult matchup against the Bucks. Four Chicago Bulls, headlined by Lauri Markkanen, were scratched midday Thursday due to health protocols. Neither site made pricing adjustments to account for this news, which means any active player on Chicago is in play for Friday, especially Zach LaVine who will see all the usage he can handle. Be ready to update the Boom/Bust tool at Awesemo early and often tomorrow, as leverage off of some of these chalkier Bulls could be the difference between donating and dominating.
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