No one ever likes their fantasy players to match up against the Spurs. They have such a good defensive team under Gregg Popovich and always do not perform well against their defensive stars. However, most players go insane in their stats when playing against bad defensive teams, such as the young Lakers team. From a fantasy standpoint, it is always good to look out who to pick up based on the teams they are playing against.
The Spurs and Lakers are on the opposite sides of the spectrum and are well known for how good or bad they are defensively, but how about the other teams? How would a fantasy team owner know if it a good idea to pick up someone playing against the Orlando Magic? Well, using the DRtg (Defensive Rating), fantasy owners will have an easier time determining which players to pick up playing against which team. This statistic has become an absolutely key tool for any type of fantasy basketball research because it summarizes so much info that we never could have garnered beforehand.
The DRtg calculates the points allowed per 100 possessions, developed by Dean Oliver. Fantasy players when drafting on any format, whether on daily fantasy leagues for DraftKings of FanDuel, or in other forms of fantasy, such as weekly categories or fantasy points, have an easy tool to figure out who could potentially go off on each game. Looking at these small statistics could give each fantasy owner a calculated guess on which player may be hot rather than randomly picking up players blindly.
This does not guarantee players to automatically do well, but based on their DRtg, these players have an increased probability of being able to take advantage offensively, which increases their fantasy value as opposed to playing against teams like the Spurs or the newly built New Orleans Pelicans with the new acquisition of Demarcus Cousins. The point is to use this tool to help score easy NBA fantasy points on waiver wire pickups by simply looking at the opposing team DRtg and judging if they will perform well or not.
