DFS NBA Picks - An Unscientific Guide to Tanking Teams

While we quietly and patiently wait for the Warriors to win the championship in four games (maybe five if someone can really put up a fight) there’s another more interesting and relevant race is unfolding before us. It’s been much reported on and tracked diligently, but the issue of late-season tanking definitely affects the DFS world as we work to project how certain teams will roll the rest of the way through the season.

Six teams (Suns, Hawks, Magic, Kings, Grizzlies, Mavericks) are within a game and half of the best odds for the first pick in the draft with the Bulls making their own little late push into the basement and the Knicks possibly making a late run at it as well. I’m not telling anyone anything new here as even cursory NBA fans understand the practice. But this season it seems exceptionally prevalent and is causing great uncertainty in the DFS landscape.

Take Tuesday’s slate as an example of why tanking is such a particular issue. 33% of the games were directly impacted by this team strategy, making for significantly reduced relevant DFS player pools and worry about impending blowouts.

Chicago entered as a 10.5 underdog to Charlotte with the understanding that A: they’ve already decided to just straight up bench two season-long starters in Robin Lopez and Justin Holiday, while also revolving minutes around almost completely unknown guys like Cristiano Felicio, Cameron Payne, etc.

And then there are the Kings who’ve dabbled in this disaster for almost the entire season. They’ve benched guys out of nowhere, hand out random DNP-CD’s like candy and are hard-pressed to ever play someone more than 30 minutes.

But not all of these teams are working things uniformly on a night-to-night basis. Here I’ll offer a completely unscientific and largely made-up grading system on how much we can “trust” a tanking team late in the season.

For starters, here’s a breakdown of how these teams have operated over the short term:

First I started with a rather arbitrary starting point of January 1, 2018. Most of these teams understood their fate in and around that time (some knew much earlier - Kings, some much later - Knicks after Kristaps Porzingis injury). I looked at how many different starters the team has used, on average how much the starters played, how much the opponents' starters played and the percentage of games that were decided by blowout (11 points or more).

Now let's look at a made-up grading system for determining how much "trust" we can assign to teams down the stretch.

Grading System

A = We can trust them implicitly to play starters and not get crushed
B - D = Somewhere in-between A-F
F = F@#$ these guys

Orlando Magic - C
They’re getting healthy at just the wrong time and know it. Getting Aaron Gordon and Nikola Vucevic back at this point in the season puts them in a tough spot. But not to worry, they’re going to stick to the plan. Look no further than Wednesday’s loss to the Raptors where they entered the fourth quarter losing by only one. No starter played more than 31 minutes and though they did close with their starters for the last five minutes, it didn’t mean they ran anything close to acceptable time.

Sacramento Kings - F
It’s been a season-long trend with these guys. What a disaster. 13 different starters in the last two months, random DNP-CDs for veterans (Zach Randolph the other night), constantly shifting rotations, rarely does anyone play more than 30 minutes (outside of Bogdan Bogdonavich). I have PTSD from trying to figure the Kings out.

Memphis Grizzlies - B
The short-term returns from the Grizzlies have been surprisingly consistent and encouraging. The last couple of games without Tyreke Evans have meant steady rotational minutes for Andrew Harrison, Jamychal Green and Marc Gasol with Jarrell Martin creeping toward “safe” even when coming off the bench. This might change a little if/when Evans comes back. But the team is so bad in its current form that they can play the starters and not run much of a risk of winning.

Phoenix Suns - B+
Honestly, this was almost an A. Though they rank high on the “Number of different starters” list and are first in the “Getting Blown Out Percentage” they’ve seen a recent shift in rotational mindset. Basically, as an organization, the Suns have come out and said they’ll play the core starters heavy minutes and have stuck to their word. Devin Booker, Elfrid Payton, TJ Warren (or Josh Jackson) have all been pushing toward high 30’s minutes consistently. And most of their blowout games came from January. In the short term, playing the most NBA-ready guys on the roster have kept them in games.

Dallas Mavericks - C+
Mark Cuban was fined for being honest about the team’s approach down the stretch. It cost him $600K and may have even put their plans too much on the radar (leaving them possibly no choice but to actually try). They had run starters less-than-average minutes for a few games, but on Wednesday played a close game against the Thunder (an OT loss) with four of the five starters seeing 33+ minutes in regulation.

Atlanta Hawks - D
They’ve kept relatively the same starting units, though the buyout of Ilyasova and just general sitting of players will likely cause this to increase over the home stretch. Their biggest issue is the starters see the fewest minutes of any team on the list. It’s tough to project anyone for more than 30 minutes even in the best of situations.

Chicago Bulls - B
I’ll hand it to them, at least they're honest. They took two steady rotational starters (Robin Lopez and Justin Holiday) and said, “You guys are done.” That being said, the Bulls’ rotations are relatively trustworthy and the team is bad enough that playing the starters still puts them in fine position to lose. All five starters (Lavine, Dunn, Nwaba, Markkanen and Felicio plus Valentine off the bench) are easy to project with their DFS salaries still keeping them as something of values. That being said, with price hikes in the short term thanks to steady DFS ownership we might see that the minutes don’t get them into consideration.

New York Knicks - C-
For starters, they have three point guards on the roster making that nightly guessing game a problem all its own. Emmanuel Mudiay has been starting, but they've ridden the hot hand of Trey Burke to close games before. Plus Frank Nkitilina is still around too. Then there's the Enes Kanter will-he-or-won't-he season-long issue which isn't likely to ever resolve. Plus the new, fun wrinkle of Courtney Lee starting but playing <15 minutes a game. This grade could easily be lower.

Ok, so there you have it. The completely unscientific, but utterly definitive guide to approaching tanking teams late in the DFS season.