NBA Preseason DFS: Thursday, 10/17 – Herro Ball

NBA Preseason DFS: Strategy and Roster Construction

When building our rosters for preseason NBA DFS, there’s really one thing that we have to focus on more than anything else – minutes. Trying to figure out which teams are going to play their starters long enough for them to make value is the name of the game. Sometimes coaches will be straightforward and honest about their intentions, but often times we are left guessing.

Building lineups is an inexact science as there’s no real reliable way to come up with projections for any of these players. It’s a bit of a guessing game, but my strategy is usually to try to play some kind of combination of starters and bench players. Targeting young players (rookies and sophomores) is usually a good idea as teams are likely to give them more run but it doesn’t always work out that way.

You definitely don’t have to spend all your salary cap though, especially if there are multiple cheap, elite plays on a slate. These first few slates are tough because we are getting teams for their first preseason game, but after we get some box scores to wade through we should get a better indication of who is going to play what minutes, too.

We are getting to the point where each team has played 3 or even 4 games in the preseason and so we could see a few teams choose to get their starters more minutes tonight in the “dress rehearsal” for the regular season. At the same time, teams with veteran players may continue to monitor their minutes and be cautious with their stars.

We have five games on the slate tonight so there are going to be quite a few appealing DFS options. I’m not going to include pricing for each of the players today because I don’t want to make these articles site-specific. I will include a Draftkings and FanDuel sample lineup at the end to try to give you an idea of what my builds will look like. Let’s dive right into this slate with our first matchup between the Heat and the Magic!