The NBA is weird. It seems like it's one of the few major sports where the offseason has a tendency to take center stage over the regular season. Before the 2019/20 regular season even tips off, people are already talking about the potential of next year's free agency class that could include LeBron James, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Kawhi Leonard, Anthony Davis, Paul George, Bradley Beal and more.

Of course, the NBA offers plenty of enthusiasm every single night of the season when you play DFS. LineStar is back for the 2019/20 campaign to help make these nights as profitable as possible. This NBA guide will give you a preview of the upcoming NBA season, offer some tips on how to have the most success playing NBA daily fantasy sports, and let you know how the #1 companion for DraftKings, FanDuel, and Yahoo Sports makes all of this possible.

NBA Season Preview

Once again, the biggest storyline heading into the 2019/20 NBA season is change. There's so much turnover in an NBA offseason that the first couple weeks when you're looking through possible DFS plays you'll say, "when did they get that guy?"

Teaming Up

"Super Teams" may be a thing of the past but "Dynamic Duos" are going to rule the NBA this season. Some teams that have found their own version of Ace and Gary this past offseason include the Clippers (Kawhi Leonard & Paul George), Lakers (LeBron James & Anthony Davis), Rockets (James Harden & Russell Westbrook), Nets (Kyrie Irving & Kevin Durant), and Grizzlies (Grayson Allen & Miles Plumlee).

Change Will Do You Good

A few stars decided that a change of scenery (and a padding of their wallet) was what they needed to be successful for the upcoming season. Some of those who are going to look a bit strange in their new uniforms include Jimmy Butler (Heat), Kemba Walker (Celtics), Julius Randle (Knicks), Al Horford (Sixers), D'Angelo Russell (Warriors), Derrick Rose (Pistons), and Ricky Rubio (Suns).

The New Batch

Trades and free agent signings aren't the only way to boost your teams in the offseason. The 2019 NBA draft brought some bona fide (potential) DFS superstars into the league, headlined by Zion Williamson. The former Blue Devil will team with the newly acquired Lonzo Ball to help make Bourbon Street great again. Ja Morant was the #2 pick and could put up huge numbers right off the bat now that Mike Conley is off to the Jazz. #3 pick R.J. Barrett could play 46 minutes a night...or 6 in coach David Fizdale's rotation. Atlanta got De'Andre Hunter with the #4 pick. He could be a sneaky good DFS player after winning the ACC defensive POY honors a year ago. He might even be able to teach new teammate Trae Young about this strange new concept of defense.

NBA DFS Strategy Guide

Even if you've never played NBA daily fantasy sports before, you can still have success. And the good news is the learning curve is much lower than the other sports. This is due to:

• NBA rosters feature just 12 players. Compare that with 53 for the NFL, 25 for MLB, and 20 for the NHL.

• NBA stats do not differ based on weather or stadium factors like the NFL and MLB (aside from home court advantage).

• Less variance because players establish very consistent minutes and statistics very early in the season.

• LineStar greatly decreases your research time and provides easily sortable stats and trends.

Why Playing NBA DFS Does Have a Learning Curve

Just because there is less variance in NBA DFS and there are a couple other factors working on your side, don't expect to waltz right in and start winning millions of dollars. Here are some of the reasons why playing daily fantasy NBA is still challenging:

• One Player Could Destroy You - If you have a guy who goes all Charles Oakley on a team and is ejected for choking a player during the opening tip, that one low score is probably going to take you out of any money considerations. This is where less variance hurts a DFS player, especially with FanDuel returning to it's traditional format where all 9 players' scores count and the lowest is not dropped.

• Less Time to Digest Information - The major DFS sites have also gotten rid of the late swap, so lineups lock at the start of the 1st game of the slate you're playing. This means all injury info must be accounted for before tipoff including the debilitating 'out - rest.' This is another reason LineStar is beneficial with Real Time injury updates and valuable information being swapped live in the user-friendly chat room.

Basic Strategy for Building Winning NBA Lineups

To quote Canadian hockey commentator Don Cherry, "Coaching ain't no rocket surgery" and then he (probably) added, "neither is putting together your NBA DFS lineups." Here are the basics to help get you started:

1) Find Players Who...Play - When you're on the court, you're accumulating points in daily fantasy NBA. Points, steals, blocks, assists, and rebounds all result in scoring for your team. Obviously the more minutes a player sees, the greater the opportunity for building up these stat lines.

2) Know DFS - Centric Stats When Putting Together a Lineup - any old newspaper box score will show you how many points and rebounds a player had. What you really want to investigate when putting together your NBA DFS roster are expanded stats that are important for daily fantasy success. Two of the bigger ones are Pace and DvP.

Pace is how many possessions a team averages per 48 minutes. The more possessions, the more opportunities for fantasy scoring.

DvP is short for defense vs. position. For whatever reason (personnel, strategy, etc.) some teams just give up a lot of fantasy points to certain positions. You want to attack these teams with that position player.

3) Ownership - The LineStar app has a very easy-to-use ownership feature that instantly tells you the predicted ownership of a player for that night's DFS games based on a detailed algorithm. These numbers can be used so that you can 'fade' a player with high ownership, or take a chance on a value play that is rostered by a low percentage of your competitors.

4) Use Spreads and Betting Lines - Oddsmakers don't just throw betting numbers out there like it's a keno card, so use this information to your advantage. For example, when an NBA game has a 'total' of 240 points, it means the final score is likely going to end somewhere around that number and thus there will be a lot more fantasy points in that game. Likewise, if the Knicks are listed as 16 point favorites over Golden State (the Warriors all got the flu that day), beware of New York getting a big lead and resting their top players.

5) Get Familiar with LineStar - 8 hours of research can be condensed to literally a couple minutes when you become completely comfortable using the LineStar app and website. Information available includes team news, projections for the night along with advanced sorters, a dashboard (DvP, top trends of hot and cold players, injury replacements, etc.), previous perfect lineups, DFS salary changes, ownership, a usage tool and more. When using these tools, every single player on your DFS roster will be there for a reason.

LineStar will also deliver a daily fantasy newsletter written by me (Carl Taylor - Follow me on Twitter) to your inbox and features a chat room to kick around lineup discussions before, during, and after the game. It's a long season, which means hundreds of chances to come out on top on an extremely consistent basis.

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