NBA Prop of the Day
Jake Silverman
It’s officially fantasy NBA best ball season. Monday, my top 200 Underdog ranks dropped for free on FTN Fantasy and, just like last season, they will remain free throughout the leadup to opening night Oct. 24. Make sure you check back into that rankings list frequently, as I expect to make (at the very least) weekly updates. DraftKings also posted some sizeable best ball contests this year, so I’m adding DK ranks to our NBA best ball content here at FTN for the 2023-24 season. Those ranks will drop on Wednesday.
In this article, I will discuss any developing trends, ADP shifts and strategies that I’m using in my own drafts. I will cover both sites offering NBA best ball tournaments.
Draft season is the best season, so saddle up at Underdog Fantasy and if you’re a first-time depositor you can get a 100% deposit match bonus up to $100 with promo code FTN!
Sept. 19 Update
The biggest change we have to adjust to from last season to this one on Underdog is the payout format. As we saw with some of their NFL best ball contests this past summer, UD has shifted a significant portion of the overall prize pool in the “Double Dribble” to be paid out to the top 11,000 regular season teams, with $75k to the top scoring lineup. There’s still $10k up top to the winner of the three-round “playoff” tournament, but this dramatically changes how much emphasis we put on the best ball “playoff” schedule.
DraftKings on the other hand has maintained the “traditional” best ball schedule, with all $300k of the prize pool (including the $100k top prize) of their $10 entry fee “Shootaround” GPP being awarded to the teams that advance through their three round “playoff” format. DK also has GPPs at the $44 and $555 level, with $10k and $20k to first, respectively.
Underdog Playoff Round Targets
If this is your first go round with NBA best ball (or best ball in general), fear not, these are simple concepts to pick up and put into practice in the first draft you jump into. If you are drafting in a standalone league and not one of the large tournaments on either site you can disregard the playoff schedule, as those leagues are scored without multiple rounds.
The Underdog NBA GPP schedule is divided into four sections. The qualifying round (your initial league of 12 teams) spans the first 17 weeks of the NBA regular season. This year, the majority of the UD prize pool is paid out to the top 11,000 scoring teams over this 17-week “qualifying” period. The qualifiers are followed by three playoff rounds (quarterfinals, semifinals and final rounds), which are two weeks apiece. For the $10 entry “Double Dribble,” you must finish in the top two of your qualifying round leagues to advance to the quarterfinals. Advancing teams will be placed into a new 10-team league at random for the quarterfinal round, where the top team in each league will advance to the semifinal round. In the semifinals, advancing entries will be placed once again into 10-team leagues and the top team from each league will advance to the final round. The final round will consist of 94 teams (about half the size of last year’s “Small Ball” final), battling it out for the $10k top prize for the “playoff” rounds.
With the larger payouts in the 17-week “regular season,” the Underdog playoff schedule doesn’t matter as much to us as it has in the past. This season I’m treating these somewhat like tiebreakers, rather than having them heavily affect my ranks. If there are two players I’m close on, I’ll side with the one who has a better playoff schedule, rather than having the playoff schedule strongly dictate my rankings.
As you can imagine, players from teams that play more games during this six-week period get a significant boost, as scoring during these two-week playoff rounds is cumulative. The process of combing through the NBA schedule to determine who will play the most during not just the six-week playoff period, but each playoff round, is key to my drafting process each year. It’s been a big part of my success in advancing to the final on Underdog in each of the last two seasons, including qualifying four teams to the final round in 2022-23. Let’s dive into which teams we should target with the “playoff” rounds in mind.
Most Games in the Six-Week Playoff Period
- 23 — Cleveland Cavaliers, Brooklyn Nets
- 22 – Philadelphia 76ers, Miami Heat, Washington Wizards, Detroit Pistons, Sacramento Kings, LA Clippers, Portland Trail Blazers
Again, these are being used as a sort of tiebreaker in my Underdog drafts given the lower priority on playoff rounds on the platform this year. Guys like Donovan Mitchell stand out around their ADP over comparable guards from teams with lesser playoff schedules, like Devin Booker, Kyrie Irving and Jamal Murray.
Fewest Games in the Six-Week Playoff Period
- 20 – Milwaukee Bucks, Boston Celtics, Orlando Magic, Denver Nuggets, Phoenix Suns, New Orleans Pelicans, Utah Jazz, Dallas Mavericks
Obviously, a team being on this list doesn’t mean we completely avoid their players in drafts, otherwise we’d be x-ing out multiple first round picks that we should very much want on our teams. But if I have a choice in an Underdog draft between players like Joel Embiid vs. Luka Doncic (this is also a positional issue, but we’ll discuss that next week), Mikal Bridges vs. Jaylen Brown or Tyrese Maxey vs. CJ McCollum, I’m going to side with the player picking up two or more extra games during the six-week playoff portion of the tournament.
DraftKings Playoff Round Targets
Like Underdog, the DraftKings NBA GPP schedule is divided into four sections. The qualifying round (your initial league of 12 teams) spans the first 16 weeks of the NBA regular season. The qualifiers are followed by three playoff rounds (quarterfinals, semifinals and final rounds), which are two weeks apiece. You must finish in the top 2 of your qualifying round leagues to advance to the quarterfinals. Advancing teams will be placed into a new 12-team league at random for the quarterfinal round, where the top two teams in each league will advance to the semifinal round. In the semifinals, advancing entries will be placed into 12-team leagues and the top team from each league will advance to the final round. The final round will consist of 81 teams, battling it out for the top prize in the $10 entry GPP.
For the $44 entry tournament (the “Spin Move”), the playoff advancement is the same with the exception of the semifinal round, where advancing teams are placed into six-team leagues with the top two from each league advancing to the semifinals, and the final round, where there will be 10 entries compared to the 81 in the “Shootaround”. The $555 tournament is only 200 total entries and the final round will consist of just four teams.
As another reminder, players from teams that play more games during this six-week period get a boost, as scoring during these playoff rounds is cumulative. This is much more important on DraftKings this year than Underdog. There also may be some confusion among the DK userbase. The site currently have two different sets of playoff dates listed between the “contest details” and the “rules & scoring” sections of the tournament description. The schedule under “contest details,” showing the quarterfinal round beginning Feb. 12, 2024, and the final round ending March 31, is the correct one. The other schedule is from last season. Let’s check out what we’re working with on DK.
Most Games in the Six-Week Playoff Period
- 24 — Cleveland Cavaliers
- 23 – Philadelphia 76ers, Brooklyn Nets, Washington Wizards, Los Angeles Clippers, Golden State Warriors
The Cavs are the big winners of the DraftKings best ball schedule this year. They’ve got at least seven games in all three of the playoff rounds. The group of five teams with 23 games over those three rounds should also be priorities for you on DraftKings at their respective average draft positions (ADPs). With that said, keep in mind that to get to the playoff rounds, you actually have to be a top two team in your initial 12-team league. We shouldn’t be sacrificing drafting the upside of a player like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to reach on Donovan Mitchell just because he’s going to play three more games during the six-week playoff stretch. My DraftKings ranks (debuting Wednesday, Sept. 20) are factoring in the schedule advantage for players on these teams, I recommend taking a look at those to see how heavily I’m weighting said schedules, as all of them are not equal in my eyes given positional eligibilities and requirements. I think you’ll find some significant discrepancies between my ranks and the ADP on some players.
Fewest Games in the Six-Week Playoff Period
- 21 – Milwaukee Bucks, Boston Celtics, New York Knicks, Atlanta Hawks, Miami Heat, Toronto Raptors, Indiana Pacers, Orlando Magic, Memphis Grizzlies, Phoenix Suns, Los Angeles Lakers, Oklahoma City Thunder, New Orleans Pelicans, Dallas Mavericks, Utah Jazz
Just like on Underdog, a team being on this list doesn’t mean we avoid their players in drafts, otherwise we’d be x-ing out lots of players that we should very much want on our teams at certain ADPs. But as I’ve already mentioned, we should be paying much more attention to these schedules on DraftKings, where all the prize money is in the playoff rounds. Keep your eye out for those DraftKings ranks and make sure to stop by the best ball livestreams Fridays to jump in the discussion with me.
My Top 10 Most Drafted Players (Sept. 19)
With each strategy article I will give an update on who my top exposures are on each site. Today I am only providing my top owned players on Underdog, as I’m only about 10 drafts in on DraftKings and I expect that number to be closer to 40 next week. I’ll include a list of my top DK exposures each week going forward.
Underdog
Mark Williams
Mike Conley
Jarace Walker
Devin Vassell
Zion Williamson
Scoot Henderson
Cam Whitmore
Kawhi Leonard
Jrue Holiday
Zach Collins
DraftKings
Coming Sept. 26
Next Week
Underdog and DraftKings have some important differences in the positionality of some big-name players, as well as various starting lineup requirements. I’ll dive into how my build strategies relating to positionality are differing for each site at this point of the preseason and how you can use those insights to take advantage of less-informed or less-experienced users in your drafts.
As always, don’t hesitate to reach out to me on Twitter (X) @KawhisenbergDFS or in the FTN Discord channel with questions about best ball and make sure to stop by the livestream this Friday at 1 p.m. ET.
