Okay, so I’ve been messing around with FanDuel NBA stuff for a while, and I always wanted a quicker way to build lineups. I’m not a programmer, but I figured I could probably cobble something together. So, here’s how I went about making my own little FanDuel NBA lineup generator.
First, I needed data. You know, player stats, salaries, projections, all that good stuff. I found I could pretty easily grab some CSV files with projections from different daily fantasy sports sites. I’m not going to name names here, but a quick search usually gets you what you need.
Once I had those CSVs, I opened them up in, like, a spreadsheet program. This is where it got a little messy. Every site formats their data differently, so I had to spend some time cleaning things up. I basically made sure all the columns were consistent – Player Name, Position, Salary, Projected Points, that kind of thing.
My Simple Process
Here’s the basic process I used to build this thing:
- Get the Data: Download those CSV files with player projections.
- Clean it Up: Make sure all the data is consistent and usable. I used the spread sheet program.
- Figure Out the Rules: You know, FanDuel’s lineup rules. Like, you need 2 point guards, 2 shooting guards, and so on, and you have to stay under the salary cap.
- Start Simple: I wanted to do something super basic, like, literally just pick the highest-projected players at each position, regardless of salary. I didn’t expect that to win any contests, it was just a starting point.
I played around with different formulas to sort the players by projected points and then started trying to fit them into a lineup. This was, let’s just say, not elegant. I was manually moving players around, trying to make the salaries work. Lots of trial and error.
Eventually, I figured out a slightly more clever way to do it. I would always pick the highest cost player first and then go in descending order.
It’s still pretty basic, but it does generate a lineup! It’s definitely not going to make me a millionaire, but it’s a fun little project, and it saves me a bit of time when I’m building lineups for fun. I might try to make it smarter someday, maybe factor in things like player matchups or opponent defense, but for now, it’s good enough for my casual use. And I always look at what it spits out and make some manual adjustments based on my own gut feeling. It is not a set-and-forget kind of thing.
