NBA Playoff Best Ball Strategy

It’s officially NBA playoff best ball season. With season-long best ball contests in their respective finals (using this space to brag that I’ve got four entries of the 186 making up the “Small Ball” final), it’s time to get back to drafting. In this weekly article leading up to the playoffs in mid-April, I will discuss any developing trends, ADP shifts and strategies that I’m using in my own drafts. Draft season is the best season, so saddle up at Underdog Fantasy and if you’re a first-time depositor you can get a deposit match bonus up to $100 with promo code FTN!

March 22 Update

Playoff Targets

This season’s playoff drafts are much tougher at this point compared to the same time last year. The incredible parity in the Western Conference, where there is just a three and a half game gap between the 4 seed and the 13 seed, is making it risky to be drafting with high volume. Not only can seeding dramatically change the landscape but there’s still between nine and eleven games remaining for every team for things to go sideways. For example, over the first few weeks of my own drafts I was finding value in drafting Kawhi Leonard and Paul George in the third or fourth rounds. They looked mighty when healthy over the last month, and then Tuesday night George went down with a serious knee injury and was carted out of the arena. If he’s out for the postseason you can (likely), kiss your Clippers hopes to advance goodbye.

I do enjoy the difference between our season-long best ball and the playoff format. The strategy, in my opinion, is harder to nail down. You want to stack up teams that can make it far into the postseason, but you also must roster enough firepower to make it out of the first round. Here’s my approach so far this spring.

For every team I’ve drafted I’ve tried to grab at least two players from a team in each conference that I consider to be “contenders” to make it out of their respective sides of the bracket, assuming health. Those teams for me are as follows:

Eastern Conference

Milwaukee
Boston
Philadelphia

Western Conference

Denver
Phoenix
Golden State
Memphis

I would encourage you, unless you are in lockstep with me on the “favorites” from each conference, to make your own list of teams you think could make the NBA Finals and use that as a personal guide for your stacks.

For those one-off plays, I want to target the “stars” of teams that I think would potentially push a first round series to six or seven games and even maybe sneak into the second round. Some examples who come to mind in that category for me are the top players from teams like Cleveland, Miami, New York, Sacramento, Oklahoma City and Dallas. For what it’s worth, you’ll notice the Lakers missing from either list. I’m undecided on them and for now am treating them (LeBron James, Anthony Davis and D’Angelo Russell) as extremely high-upside swings if they fall to me in drafts where my stacks are already solid. If LeBron isn’t fully healthy by the play-in rounds, it wouldn’t be surprising to see this team miss the playoffs once again. But if he recovers well from his tendon injury, are we really that surprised if this team makes a multi-round run?

Here are some screenshot examples of this strategy in action for some of the teams I have already drafted.

By this time next week, we’ll likely have some more separation in the standings so until then make sure you keep an eye on how things are shaping up, especially in the West. 

My Top 10 Most Drafted Players in Playoff Contests 

As of March 22

With each strategy article I will give an update on who my top exposures are. I expect these to shift significantly by the next update as I continue to draft, especially with the Paul George injury last night. As always, feel free to reach out to me in the FTN Discord or on Twitter @KawhisenbergDFS for questions on best ball.

Nikola Jokic
Kawhi Leonard
Stephen Curry
Andrew Wiggins
Draymond Green
Jamal Murray
Paul George (OUT)
James Harden
Tobias Harris
Jaylen Brown