NBA DFS Boom Bust: How I Build DraftKings & FanDuel Lineups

I'm Alex Baker. A lot of you knew me as Awesemo back when this all lived on Awesemo.com (now Stokastic.com), and the single most useful tool I touch on an NBA night is still the NBA DFS boom bust view. The reason is simple: in basketball, player-to-player correlation barely matters, so you can judge almost every play on its own merits. That makes it the rare sport where reading one player's range of outcomes well, night after night, is most of the edge. This is exactly how I use boom/bust to build DraftKings 🎁 and FanDuel 🎁 lineups.

A projection hands you one number. A real slate does not care about one number. The same 38-point projection can come from a steady veteran who scores 34 to 42 almost every time out, or from a high-usage gunner who drops 14 on you one night and 55 the next. For cash games I want the first guy. For large-field tournaments I usually want the second. Boom/bust is what tells them apart before I lock a single lineup.

In Summary (NBA DFS Boom Bust TL;DR)

• A projection is the middle of a range, not a promise. The NBA DFS boom bust tool turns that single number into a distribution: a ceiling (75th-percentile outcome), a floor (25th-percentile outcome), a Boom%, and a Bust%.
• The math is salary-relative. Boom is defined as roughly 5x (salary/1000) + 10 fantasy points; Bust is failing to clear 5x (salary/1000). So a $9,000 player needs ~45 to clear value and ~55 to "boom," while a $4,000 punt only needs ~20 and ~30.
• Cash and GPP want opposite shapes. Cash rewards a high floor and a low Bust%. Tournaments reward a high ceiling and a high Boom%, even at the cost of more risk.
• Read Boom% against projected ownership. A player with a strong Boom% and low expected ownership is leverage. A chalky player with a mediocre Boom% is where I look to fade.
• Boom/Bust is the input; the Sims are the GPP engine. Pull the live numbers from the Stokastic NBA DataHub, then for tournaments let the Contest Sims turn those distributions into ranked lineups. For cash, build the single highest-floor lineup straight off the boom/bust sheet.

What the NBA DFS Boom Bust Tool Actually Measures

At its core, the boom/bust tool calculates each player's chance of success or failure on the slate. Success ("boom") is reaching about 5 x (salary/1000) + 10 fantasy points; failure ("bust") is falling short of 5 x (salary/1000). Those thresholds are deliberately tied to salary, because a 30-point night is a smash from a min-priced player and a disaster from a $10,000 stud.

Around those two probabilities, the tool gives me the rest of the player's shape:

• Median projection — the middle of the range, the number you would see on most projection sites.
• Standard deviation — how spread out the outcomes are. This is the part single-point projections hide entirely.
• Ceiling projection — the 75th-percentile outcome. Roughly, "a good night."
• Floor projection — the 25th-percentile outcome. Roughly, "a bad-but-not-zero night."
• Projected ownership — how much of the field is expected to roster the player.

Stokastic builds those standard deviations from a range of factors (role, usage, blowout and pace risk, minutes volatility, matchup) rather than one static number, which is why two players with an identical median can have wildly different floors and ceilings. That difference is the whole game.

How I Use Boom/Bust to Improve My Lineups

The tool is powerful because it lets me evaluate the same player several different ways depending on what I am building.

Cash games: protect the floor, hunt the lowest Bust%

In cash (double-ups and 50/50s) I mostly care about the median projection, but my real job is to maximize the floor. When two players sit at similar salaries and similar medians, I pull up their Bust% and take the steadier one almost every time. If a $7,200 wing projects for 36 with a 22% Bust%, and a same-salary, same-36-projection wing carries a 38% Bust%, the first guy is the cash play. Same expected points, far less chance of torpedoing my lineup. Cash is about being right more than half the time, not about ceilings, so I want the flattest distribution I can find at each price point.

A note I have to repeat because people get it backwards: I do not run the Contest Sims for cash. The Sims and the simulated-tournament pool are a GPP tool. For cash I build the single highest-floor lineup directly off the boom/bust sheet and stop there.

Tournaments: chase the ceiling and the Boom%

GPPs flip everything. Because the reward for finishing first dwarfs everything else, I am trying to maximize my lineup's ceiling, not its floor. Here I lean into the Boom% and the ceiling projection, and I happily take a higher Bust% to get there. The same $7,200 wing with the 38% Bust% I avoided in cash might be exactly who I want in a large-field GPP if his Boom% and ceiling are elite, because on the nights he hits, he is the kind of score that wins the whole thing.

The advanced move: Boom% versus ownership

This is where the tool stops being a checklist and starts being an edge. In GPPs I line up the Boom% of several similarly priced players against their projected ownership, and I look for the mismatch. When the field is going to pile onto one or two names and the tool surfaces a comparable player with a similar (or better) Boom% sitting at half the ownership, that is leverage. You are getting the same upside as the chalk while owning far fewer of the same lineups around you.

To borrow a real recent example of the thinking: if a rotation guard like Quentin Grimes is projected at a fraction of the field's ownership but his Boom% says he can return tournament-winning value, getting to ~10% of him gets you "over the field" on a play with real upside. That is the entire idea behind reading boom/bust next to ownership rather than in isolation.

A Worked NBA DFS Boom Bust Example

Say I am filling my last flex spot on a DraftKings NBA slate and I have two options at $6,800:

• Player 1: median 34, ceiling 40, floor 28, Boom% 30%, Bust% 25%, projected ownership 24%.
• Player 2: median 34, ceiling 52, floor 18, Boom% 44%, Bust% 41%, projected ownership 9%.

Identical $6,800 salary, identical 34-point median. To clear value a $6,800 player needs about 34 (5 x 6.8), and to "boom" he needs about 44 (34 + 10). Now the decision practically makes itself by format:

• For cash: Player 1. Higher floor (28 vs 18), much lower Bust% (25% vs 41%), and he clears value far more reliably. I do not care that his ceiling is capped at 40; I only need to beat half the field.
• For a large-field GPP: Player 2. His ceiling (52) is the kind of night that wins a tournament, his Boom% is 14 points higher, and critically he is projected at one-third the ownership. Same salary and median, far more upside, far less of the field on him. That is leverage you can actually feel in the results.

Same two players, opposite correct answers, and the boom/bust numbers are what made the call. A projection-only sheet would have shown me "34 and 34" and told me nothing.

Want this done for you on every player, every night? Stokastic is the DFS tool suite I built out of Awesemo.com: the NBA Boom/Bust view gives you the ceiling, floor, Boom% and Bust% for the full slate, and the Contest Sims turn those ranges into ranked GPP lineups. Code STOK10 takes 10% off your first payment. Subscribe at Stokastic Sims.

From Boom/Bust to a Built Lineup

Reading boom/bust well gets you the right player pool. Turning that pool into lineups is a separate step, and how I do it depends entirely on the format.

For tournaments, I do not hand-build a "best lineup" off the numbers and call it a day. I take the players whose boom/bust shapes I like, build a full pool in the NBA Sim tools, and let the Contest Sims simulate the slate tens of thousands of times. The Sims emulate the contest field, so they reward the leverage and ceiling the boom/bust view surfaced lets me bulk-build with exposure controls so I am not stuck on one combination. I then nudge exposure up on the high-Boom%, low-owned names and down on the chalk.

For cash, there is no simulation step. I take the highest-floor, lowest-Bust% players that fit under the cap and build the one safest lineup. Different goal, different tool.

A piece of this only happens at the buzzer: NBA is a late-news sport. A starter ruled out 20 minutes before lock can swing a teammate's usage, minutes and ceiling enormously. I keep the boom/bust view and the NBA DataHub open right up to lock, watch our Ownership projections move with the news, and late-swap accordingly. Late swap is one of the highest-value actions you can take on an NBA slate, and the Live Before Lock show walks through exactly those decisions in real time.

Common Mistakes I Still See

• Using the same lineup in cash and GPPs. The whole point of boom/bust is that the two formats want opposite distributions. If your cash and tournament lineups look identical, you are leaving edge on the table in both.
• Chasing ceiling without checking ownership. A monster Boom% on a 40%-owned player is not leverage. Everyone has the same upside as you. Read Boom% and ownership together.
• Trusting a projection as a promise. It is the middle of a range. Two players at the same number can be completely different bets once you see their floors, ceilings and bust risk.
• Treating the Sims as a cash tool. They are built to win tournaments. For cash, build off the floor.

In Practice, on a Typical Slate

My NBA night, end to end, looks like this. Pull the slate's boom/bust numbers from the NBA DataHub. Sort by Bust% for my cash core, sort by Boom% and cross-reference ownership for my tournament leverage. Build the cash lineup by hand off the floor. Build the GPP pool, run the Contest Sims, and shape exposure with the Sims. Then sit on the news until lock and late-swap when the inactives drop. None of it requires guessing, because the tool is doing the distribution math I used to do in my head back in the Awesemo.com days, just faster and across the whole slate.

Go deeper: NBA DFS Contrarian Strategy: Fade the Wrong Chalk and NBA DFS Leverage: Game Theory For Large-Field GPPs.

NBA DFS Boom Bust FAQ

What is the NBA DFS boom bust tool? It is a tool that calculates each NBA player's chance of "booming" (returning a top score for the salary, about 5x salary/1000 + 10 fantasy points) or "busting" (failing to clear roughly 5x salary/1000). Alongside those probabilities it shows the median, standard deviation, ceiling (75th percentile), floor (25th percentile) and projected ownership.

What is the difference between Boom% and Bust%? Boom% is the chance a player smashes for a tournament-worthy score given his salary. Bust% is the chance he fails to clear value. Read them together: a high Boom% with a high Bust% is a volatile GPP play, while a low Bust% with a modest ceiling is a steady cash play.

How do I use boom bust for cash games versus tournaments? For cash, prioritize a high floor and the lowest Bust% at each price point, because you only need to beat about half the field. For tournaments, prioritize a high ceiling and Boom%, then cross-reference projected ownership to find leverage. Cash and GPP want opposite shapes from the same tool.

Does a high projection mean a player will boom? No. A projection is the middle of a range, not a guarantee. Two players with the same median can have very different floors, ceilings and bust risk. That spread is exactly what the boom/bust tool exists to show you.

Where do I get NBA boom bust numbers? Live boom/bust, ownership and projections are in the Stokastic NBA DataHub, and you can build lineups from them with the NBA Sim tools. Build lineups with them on Stokastic Sims.

Build Your NBA Lineups With Boom/Bust + Sims

New to Stokastic? It is the DFS tool suite I started as Awesemo.com (now Stokastic.com): the NBA Boom/Bust view gives you each player's ceiling, floor, Boom% and Bust% for the whole slate, Ownership projections show you where the field is going, and the Contest Sims turn all of it into ranked, exposure-controlled DraftKings and FanDuel lineups. It does automatically, in seconds, the exact distribution-reading this article just walked through by hand.

If you subscribe, code STOK10 takes 10% off your first Stokastic Sims payment. Subscribe.

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