It’s no secret that the world of daily fantasy sports is blowing up. Many of the larger sites offer multiple sports -- even MMA now! -- and there are hundreds of sites dedicated to helping you win at these daily fantasy contests.
Here at numberFire, we have tons of offerings for DFS players, be it strategy articles, customizable lineups and projections, and "perfect lineups" that analyze the optimal, highest-scoring lineups from the previous day.
Sometimes I personally get so wrapped up in projections and numbers that I forget how fun daily fantasy can be. So let’s remember that just for an article. There will be plenty telling you which NBA DFS guys to play -- let’s just have fun for a second.
Thanks to the great StatMuse beta site, we can search for the best fantasy performances in their database -- which for our fantasy-sake looks like it is restricted to the last 40 years or so. That means we can build an all-time DFS lineup for whatever site (we’ll do FanDuel and DraftKings).
Quickly, a couple rules: A player can only be in the lineup once (Olajuwon has the second AND third-highest scores, but we’re only using the first), a player’s position is what Basketball-Reference.com defines their position for that given season, and I’m building the lineups like I would on any DFS day (if Michael Jordan, DraftKings, respectively).
So without further ado…
The All-Time FanDuel Lineup
| Player | Year | Pts | R | A | S | B | FP | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PG | Allen Iverson | 2005 | 60 | 4 | 6 | 5 | 1 | 82.8 |
| PG | Micheal Ray Richardson | 1985 | 38 | 11 | 11 | 9 | 0 | 82.7 |
| SG | Michael Jordan | 1990 | 69 | 18 | 6 | 4 | 1 | 107.6 |
| SG | Kobe Bryant | 2006 | 81 | 6 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 96.2 |
| SF | LeBron James | 2010 | 43 | 13 | 15 | 2 | 4 | 90.1 |
| SF | Larry Bird | 1992 | 49 | 14 | 12 | 4 | 1 | 88.8 |
| PF | Chris Webber | 2001 | 51 | 26 | 5 | 3 | 2 | 95.7 |
| PF | Karl Malone | 1990 | 61 | 18 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 89.6 |
| C | Hakeem Olajuwon | 1987 | 38 | 17 | 6 | 7 | 12 | 101.4 |
| Total | 490 | 127 | 65 | 40 | 22 | 834.9 |
The All-Time DraftKings Lineup
| Player | Year | Pts | R | A | S | B | 3 | FP | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PG | Micheal Ray Richardson | 1985 | 38 | 11 | 11 | 9 | 0 | 0 | 89.3 |
| SG | Michael Jordan | 1990 | 69 | 18 | 6 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 112.0 |
| SF | Larry Bird | 1992 | 49 | 14 | 12 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 97.5 |
| PF | Chris Webber | 2001 | 51 | 26 | 5 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 100.5 |
| C | Hakeem Olajuwon | 1987 | 38 | 17 | 6 | 7 | 12 | 0 | 108.8 |
| G | Kobe Bryant | 2006 | 81 | 6 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 7 | 101.5 |
| F | LeBron James | 2010 | 43 | 13 | 15 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 97.3 |
| Util | Shaquille O'Neal | 1993 | 24 | 28 | 3 | 1 | 15 | 0 | 98.5 |
| Total | 393 | 133 | 60 | 33 | 36 | 12 | 805.4 |
Some of these lines are just ridiculous. We all remember Kobe’s 81-point extravaganza back in 2006, but for some reason I forgot Twitter with your favorite daily line that didn’t make the cut!