Minutes to Win It - Monitoring NBA Rotations 3-16-15

With Daily Fantasy Basketball contests, it truly takes minutes to win it. Minutes are the most important and predictable stat in the NBA and the more accurately you can project minutes, the more accurately you can project fantasy points. Recently, there was some impressive research done by a Reddit user that explored the correlation between a plethora of stats and fantasy point production (Link: http://www.reddit.com/r/dfsports/comments/2w88dp/which_stats_are_actually_predictive_of_future/). Minutes were far and away the most correlative to fantasy points. This should be obvious as the best players play more and the more you play, the more chance you have to accumulate stats.

Based on this, we'll look at players with a major change in minutes recently, starting with the Top 10 in the NBA in minutes over the last two weeks:

Now let's look at a few of those players even closer:

Anthony Davis - F NOP

Season Average: 35.5

Fantasy Points Per Minute: 1.39

Last 2 Weeks: 40.5 MPG

Difference: +5

Percent Increase: 14%

Davis has played at least 40 minutes in 5 of the last 6 games, seeing a 14% increase in minutes overall over the last two weeks. With a player averaging 1.36 FPPM, 5 more mintues a night can make a major impact on production, as you can see in the graph below. Davis has 8 or more blocks in two games, both were in games he played well over 40 minutes. If Davis continues to see this type of run throughout the Pelicans playoff push, it's likely that he runs away with the MVP award at some point.

Kyle Lowry - G TOR

Season Average: 34.5

Fantasy Points Per Minute: 1.07

Last 2 Weeks: 38.7 MPG

Difference: +4.2

Percent Increase: 14%

Lowry has played only 5 games over this two week span due to the fact that he was in the middle of a rest period at the start of March. Since that rest though, Lowry has been spectacular and has also been in the top 5 of minutes played. He's increased his minutes to 38.7 a night over his last 5 while maintaining his impeccable average of more than 1 FPPM. Lowry can be a really impressive fantasy asset when he's playing this much, but nagging injuries seem to derail him every season. Averaging 40 FPPG over those 5 games shows that we should ride the hot hand while he's healthy, rested and playing heavy minutes.

Khris Middleton - SF MIL

Season Average: 29.1

Fantasy Points Per Minute: 0.94

Last 2 Weeks: 38.2 MPG

Difference: +9.1

Percent Increase: 31%

Khris Middleton has been one of the breakout players of this season as he's become the Bucks leading scoring almost by default since the departure of Brandon Knight. He's picked up his playing time volume even more over the last two weeks, seeing a dramatic 31% increase in playing time and it's resulted in a few of his better games of the season. He had never been the leading scorer in a game coming into this season and he's now done that twice in the last two weeks with two 30 point performances. It's due to playing more minutes than anything, it simply gives him more shot attempts each game. His FPPM totals aren't going to wow you, but they've actually increased with extra minutes, which is hard to do when you've already been playing 29 on the year. It shows that Middleton has the talent to be a featured player on a team, something no one expected from him prior to this season.