This article is part of our DFS Basketball 101 series.
DailyMVP is back for its second season of NBA daily fantasy basketball action, after debuting new MLB and NFL contests over the last seven months. Adding to the FASTBREAK contests from last season, FullCourt provides a new NBA alternative with bigger, five-player starting lineups. The rapidly growing fantasy site now has seven active contest options, with three for the NFL and two apiece for the NBA and NHL.
If you've already played DailyMVP's baseball, football or hockey contests, adding basketball to your repertoire will be a cinch. And, even if you haven't tried the other contests, there's not a ton of room for confusion, provided I don't steer you in the wrong direction.
Just like all previous DailyMVP offerings, FASTBREAK and FullCourt use the Fantasy Equalizer™, which is a scoring system that allows you to pick any three or five players you want, without any salary-cap restrictions.
Of course, it isn't simply a matter of picking the very best players, but rather about finding the guys who will outscore their projections by the most points. Every player has a projected point total for the contest, and the goal is for your players to beat their projections by more than your opponents' players beat theirs.
The first advantage of this scoring system is fairly obvious, as it allows you to build a team of all superstars or a team comprised entirely of bench guys. It's nice to have more options, and anyone with extensive experience in salary-cap games knows that there are often frustrating days with an uneven balance of strong plays at the top or bottom of the price ladder.
You'll have no such issues at DailyMVP, so trot out that Paul-Curry-James-Davis-Cousins lineup if you want; just know that you could lose to something along the lines of McLemore-Bogdanovic-McDaniels-Patterson-Mozgov.
The second advantage is somewhat related to the first, as the fantasy equalizer allows you to put together a perfectly competitive team in mere seconds, which is difficult for the vast majority of us to do in salary-cap contests. It's always nice to know that you have a chance to win, even if you rush through the selection process.
That being said, I don't recommend putting a team together in such cavalier fashion, especially if you're competing for a cash prize! There's still plenty of strategy involved in the contests, and that means you'll want to keep up on your NBA knowledge in order to win in the long run.
You'll be looking for value in many of the same ways that you would in any other NBA daily contest, with injuries, lineup and rotation changes, matchups and hot streaks all important things to keep an eye on. You may even find, if you also play salary-cap games, that your favorite selections on DailyMVP are also strong choices on other daily fantasy sites.
After all, the prices in salary-cap games are based on projections that primarily come from algorithms, while DailyMVP is simply cutting out the middleman out by using its Fantasy Equalizer.
Before we get to strategy for specific contests, there are a few more basics to know about DailyMVP, all of which apply to both FASTBREAK and FullCourt:
Scoring
1 Point = 1 point
1 Rebound = 1.2 points
1 Assist = 1.5 points
1 Steal = 2 points
1 Block = 2 points
1 Turnover = -1 point
Pretty simple, right?
Entries and Payouts
For contest sizes, the options are head-to-head, three entries, five entries or 10 entries. Only one entry is allowed in each contest per player.
The contests with two, three or five entrants pay everything out to first place, while the 10-person contests pay out first (5/9), second (5/18) and third (1/6). For those of you who don't like fractions, that's 55.6 percent, 27.8 percent and 16.7 percent.
The entry fee increments available for the head-to-head and three-player contests are Free, $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50, $100.
For the five- and 10-player contests, the options are Free, $1, $2, $5, $10, $20.
Rake is 10% on all contests.
Once you've made those contest decisions, the site will ask you whether you want to play a random opponent or play against a friend. If you've got someone in mind, invitations can be sent very easily via text, email , DailyMVP username (assuming they have one), Facebook or Twitter.
Last but certainly not least, everything I've discussed can happen without a computer. DailyMVP has an incredibly easy-to-use app available for free from the App Store (SM), and the site is mobile-responsive for Android™.
FASTBREAK
The FASTBREAK contests have three-player rosters, with one guard, one forward and one center. Users can only pick one player from each NBA team, which means you can't just stack against the 76ers or Lakers, for example.
The contest I entered for Thursday, Nov. 15 was head-to-head with a $5 entry fee. There were eight NBA teams in action, with the following matchups: CHI-TOR, SAC-MEM, PHI-DAL and BKN-GS.
The first thing I did, as with any daily NBA contest, was check on the injuries and the most 2-3 box scores for each team. There weren't many opportunities to find value through a teammate's injury, as a bunch of key players had returned from ailments Thursday night, while the other important guys had been out for long enough that their replacements were no longer projected for low totals.
Making things more complicated, the 76ers were getting Nerlens Noel and Michael Carter-Williams back from injuries, but both players were used in reserve roles. Both were projected for more points than they would likely to get, and their re-insertion to the rotation took away the appeal of point guard Tony Wroten and the entire muddled frontcourt. I avoided the 76ers.
My general feeling was that the lower-tier guys just weren't going to provide good value, though I did like Nets forward Mirza Teletovic, who was projected for a mere 16 DailyMVP points. The Bosnian forward was only averaging 24.6 minutes per game, but he logged 33 in the Nets' most recent contest, which was played against a Phoenix team that likes to both run and use small lineups. The Warriors also matched that description, albeit with a much more menacing defense. I expected for Teletovic to beat his projection of 16 points by at least 3-4.
However, I ultimately used my forward spot on the Mavs' Chandler Parsons, who is off to a slow start with his new team. The slow start had his DailyMVP projection down to 26 points, which is well below what he averaged with the Rockets last season. Not to write off Parsons' struggles entirely, but the guy didn't forget how to play basketball, and he was facing the fast-paced, defense-averse 76ers.
My favorite guard was Golden State's Klay Thompson, who was projected for a modest 26 DailyMVP points against the Nets, despite getting off to an excellent start this season. He entered Thursday averaging 24.7 points, 3.0 rebounds and 3.3 assists. No, I didn't expect him to post 25 ppg this year, but it's fair to expect some form of improvement for a third consecutive year. His fast start and likely offseason improvement don't seem to be factored into the price.
My favorite center was the Mavs' Tyson Chandler, as a matchup with the 76ers should provide plenty of opportunities for rebounds and blocks. But, I didn't like Chandler as much as Parsons, and only one player is allowed from each NBA team. I thus settled for the Bulls' Joakim Noah, choosing to avoid the Cousins-Gasol matchup in Memphis.
My Thompson-Parsons-Noah lineup ended up facing Thompson-Taj Gibson-DeMarcus Cousins, rendering Thompson's production meaningless. Parsons and Gibson were both projected for 26 points, with Noah at 36 and Cousins at 35. My opponent thus received one point via the Fantasy Equalizer, as my lineup was projected to score one more point than his.
Results:
My opponent's team outscored mine 99.6 to 93.1, and he/she also received one point from the Fantasy Equalizer, making for a final score of 100.6-93.1.
Thompson did well for both of us, scoring 34.8 points to beat his projection by 8.8.
Parsons fell just short of his 26-point projection, scoring 25.7 DailyMVP points in one of the worst blowouts you'll ever see in the NBA. I knew that was part of the risk with taking anyone from the Mavericks, but I didn't quite expect Parsons to sit out the entire fourth quarter. In a way, he was lucky to play even 28 minutes, as the Mavs took a ridiculous 73-29 lead into halftime, but still opted to play their starters through most of the third quarter.
My opponent had a similar performance from his forward spot, with Gibson putting up 22.9 DailyMVP points, compared to a projection of 26.
The contest was thus decided at center, where I got just 32.6 fantasy points from Noah, who was projected for 36. My opponent received 41.9 points from Cousins, who surprisingly blew by his projection of 35 in a tough matchup with the Grizz.
FullCourt
FullCourt contests have five-player rosters, with two guards, two forwards and a center. You can use no more than two players from each NBA team.
I choose a head-to-head contest with a $2 entry fee, and then start to consider which players from my FASTBREAK roster I wanted to keep. Parsons was a no doubter, but I decided to ditch both Thompson and Noah, the second of whom I wasn't feeling too good about anyway.
Center was an easy choice, as I loved Chandler's chances to beat his projection of 29 DailyMVP points against the fantasy-friendly 76ers. In FullCourt, I was able to use both him and Parsons, forming a mini-stack of sorts versus Philadelphia.
Guard made for a much more difficult choice, but my eye eventually went to the Kings' Darren Collison, who was projected for 29 DailyMVP points. Even against Mike Conley and the Grizzlies, that's not much for a respectable starting point guard, and Collison entered the game averaging about 32 DailyMVP points per contest. I didn't expect him to crush the projection, but he was a very safe option with reasonable upside.
My second guard spot went to the Warriors' Steph Curry, who admittedly didn't seem as likely as teammate Klay Thompson to beat his point projection. The upside with a guy like Curry is that his big games will often go way beyond the projection, which can single-handedly win you a contest. He'd probably be a better choice for a contest with more than two entrants, but I still liked the sharpshooter in comparison to the other guard options.
I went with the aforementioned Teletovic for my second forward spot, giving me a lineup of Collison-Curry-Teletovic-Parsons-Chandler, facing a lineup of Courtney Lee-Thompson-Mason Plumlee-Parsons-Noel.
My team was projected to score 29 more points than my opponent's, so he/she started with a 29-point edge, while I had the superior players (or so I hoped).
Results:
Make it 0-for-2, and this one was ugly. Not only did my opponent get 29 Fantasy Equalizer points, but his/her team also outscored mine comfortably, even without the Equalizer. The final score was 158.7 to 112.5, making for a final margin of 46.2 points. His team thus outscored mine by 17.2 points, despite being projected to score 29 fewer.
Collison was the only one of my five starters to beat his projection, and even he barely got over the hump. I probably should have stuck with Thompson over Curry, and while that would have made a big difference, I still wouldn't have won.
The other big gap was at the first forward spot, where he/she had Brooklyn's Mason Plumlee, while I had Teletovic. Plumlee registered 26.1 DailyMVP points over just 20 minutes, crushing his projection of 15. Teletovic, meanwhile, had just 8.8 DailyMVP points over 24 minutes, falling far short of his projected 16. Despite what happened, I'd make the same choice again, as Teletovic was projected for just one more point than Plumlee, who played only nine and 16 minutes in the previous two games.
While I was 0-for-2 in Thursday's contests, I'm excited to refine my approach and play more FASTBREAK and FullCourt contests throughout the basketball season at DailyMVP.
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