NFL
NBA
NHL
MLB
Daily Fantasy Fuel tracks the latest confirmed injuries and player status updates from a variety of sources. A late breaking injury to a star player will often mean someone is getting bumped up to a starter and going to see their minutes skyrocket. A big injury can also trigger a movement in point-spreads, often by as much as 3-4 points. Being up to speed on the latest injury confirmations are essential to NBA DFS and gaining an edge in sports betting.
Injury news will trickle out throughout the day on twitter, with 3 official status updates posted on the NBA's official injury status page. The official updates are posted at 1:30pm ET, 5:30pm ET, and 8:30pm ET. DFF tracks both twitter and the official confirmations from the NBA when making a decision to confirm a player as being 'OUT' for a matchup. Shortly after we list a player as 'OUT', we will adjust projections for players that we anticipate will pick up minutes that night.
The NBA announced a rule change for the 2020 season to require all teams to publically confirm their starting lineups at least 30 minutes before tipoff. This was an increase of 20 minutes from past seasons, when often injuries would be announced without enough time to adjust DFS lineups or betting picks. These new rules now give more time to analyze and react to the impact of a late-breaking injury or lineup change. Typically these announcements will appear on a team's official twitter page, usually posted in an image or graphic.
DraftKings currently allows for late swapping, which means you can swap a player out of your lineup, even if other earlier games in your slate have started. For example, if you had a 1pm game in your slate that was in-progress / completed, you can still swap out players in a 4pm game before the tipoff, even though earlier action had started. At one point DraftKings stopped offering late swap, but brought it back for the 2018-2019 season after players didn't like the change. Being able to do late swap means you can follow and take advantage of late breaking injury news, without being stuck with players who might end up ruled out.
FanDuel has never offered late swap for the NBA, which means you have to be extra confident about the players you are putting into your lineup. As an alternative to late swap, for the 2018 season FanDuel adjusted NBA scoring to only count your top 8 positions and drop your lowest scoring player. This would in theory allow for one player scratching and not penalizing you; however in practice it didn't resonate with players and FanDuel went back to all 9 players being counted for the 2019 season.
