Five years ago, hardly anyone showed up to NBA Summer League beyond the most dedicated NBA fans, media, and personnel. However, over recent years — really since the 2014 matchup between Andrew Wiggins and Jabari Parker packed Cox Pavilion — fans have begun flocking to UNLV’s campus for the annual tournament, with attendance numbers going well over 100,000.
It’s part of the exploding popularity of the league and their creation of a true year-long schedule with the draft, free agency and Summer League stretching the calendar to near August. The basketball at Summer League is pretty rough, but fans are willing to overlook the raw nature of the games for a glimpse at the league’s future as the top stars from the draft descend on the desert.
Gambling on Summer League games has gone more mainstream from where it was years ago, where you couldn’t find lines on games save for the books at Westgate and Caesar’s. Now, lines are everywhere and future odds hit the market on Wednesday. Beyond futures and game lines, this year DraftKings is even bringing Summer League Daily Fantasy action for the real degenerates out there in need of some non-baseball DFS fix.
The games will be their Classic games and Showdown Captain mode, where a player can be designated (for a higher price) to get 1.5x normal points. Either way, playing DFS Summer League is aggressive to say the least.
Betting on Summer League games in any form is dangerous because the best players will sometimes just sit for entire halves of basketball — although that’s happening a bit less now. That makes DFS even trickier, but if there were advice to give it’s to roll with guys who are going to get lots of minutes and will be the primary option on offense. Also, guards further down the board are more likely to fill it up than big men, who are often held hostage by over-eager guards that dribble the ball into the ground and gun for stats in an effort to impress.
Proceed with caution on DFS Summer League, but do know it’s available to you if you’re so inclined.
