Want to be the next daily fantasy mega-millionaire? These underrated NBA players may help you

Devin edgell
Nov 6 · 3 min read

Over the past decade, daily fantasy sports have grown in popularity as a way to bet on sports. DraftKings and FanDuel, the two largest daily fantasy sports companies, each claim to have over 6 million players and operate in 43 states. While each of these websites boasts large communities of players, the winnings of the major contests tend to be concentrated in a small number of professional gamblers who utilize the power of data science to make better predictions. For my Node C Python class at HackCville, I choose to look at NBA player data on DraftKings for the 2018–2019 season and try to identify some diamonds in the rough for the next daily fantasy season.


Based on total points from last season, James Harden, Russell Westbrook, Paul George, Karl-Anthony Towns, and Giannis Antetokounmpo appear to be the best bets to score a lot of points this season.

However, games on DraftKings require users to draft players based on a salary cap and (unsurprisingly) the best players tend to have the highest salaries.

In order to win in DraftKings, you need to find players that are undervalued and score a lot of points relative to their salary value. To find this class of players, I analyzed the number of DraftKings points players scored each night divided by their salary figures from each contest to determine what their average points per salary dollar were last year.

Based on these findings, Mitchell Robinson, Cody Zeller, Dwyane Wade, Jonas Valanciunas, and Mason Plumlee had the best value of players that played at least 20 games and at least 20 minutes per game last season.

Finally, I wanted to look at which opponents provided the best value when selected players. To do that, I used the same average points per salary $ but rolled up the data by opponent. Based on this analysis, Atlanta, Washington, and OKC let up the most fantasy points per salary $.

Bottomline, if Mitchell Robinson is playing the Hawks, he better be on your squad. Happy gambling folks!

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