Week 8 Fantasy Basketball Streaming Plan - NBA Cup Edition
Working Through The NBA Cup Madness
Week 8 is here, the NBA Cup knockout stage is here, and once again ESPN and Yahoo have completely messed it up for fantasy. This is the weirdest schedule of the season, and the platforms haven't adjusted, so you need to understand what is locked, what can still move, and how to handle streaming in a week with very few games and no back-to-backs.
How Week 8 Is Set Up
Week 8 is the NBA Cup semifinal week. Week 9 holds the NBA Cup final. There is only one game in the entire Cup that does not count for fantasy or NBA regular-season stats. That is the Cup final on Tuesday, December 16, in Week 9. Every single other NBA Cup game and every other game in Week 8 count for fantasy.
Yahoo and ESPN both left Week 8 as a regular seven-day matchup. You cannot merge it. You cannot change it. You are stuck playing this ultra-light, messy schedule for a single week. In contrast, the Locked On Fantasy Basketball Bowl combined Weeks 8 and 9 into one 14-day matchup with a 40-game cap to smooth out the chaos. That is the ideal way to do it, but standard platforms did not follow that path.
Week 8 Game Volume
The raw schedule for Week 8 looks like this:
Monday: 3 games
Tuesday: 2 games
Wednesday: 2 games
Thursday: 4 games
Friday: 7 games
Saturday: 2 games (Cup semifinals, teams not fully known yet)
Sunday: 8 games (could be 7 or 9, but 8 is the most likely)
Total for the week: only 28 games league-wide. That is absurdly low. There are zero fantasy off days, but almost every slate is tiny.
Because the Cup bracket is not fully decided, some of what you see on Yahoo and ESPN will be wrong or incomplete, especially for Saturday and one extra game that lands on either Sunday or the following Monday. The critical part is understanding which parts of the schedule are completely locked and which parts still depend on Cup results.
Locked Teams: One Game And Three Game Weeks
Here is what is absolutely fixed and will not change in Week 8:
Four teams have three games and will not move off that:
Indiana Pacers
Minnesota Timberwolves
New Orleans Pelicans
Sacramento Kings
Eight teams have exactly one game and will not get more:
Boston Celtics
Dallas Mavericks
Denver Nuggets
Detroit Pistons
Houston Rockets
Los Angeles Clippers
Memphis Grizzlies
Utah Jazz
Those numbers are not going to change. The three-game teams will stay on three. The one-game teams will remain on one. There is a lot of misinformation circulating that suggests those teams will get games added as the Cup fills up. That is wrong. Their Week 8 fantasy schedule is set.
The Eight NBA Cup Teams
The only moving parts are the eight teams involved in the NBA Cup quarterfinals:
Eastern Conference quarterfinals (Tuesday):
Miami Heat at Orlando Magic
New York Knicks at Toronto Raptors
Western Conference quarterfinals (Wednesday):
San Antonio Spurs at Los Angeles Lakers
Phoenix Suns at Oklahoma City Thunder
The winners of these four games will play again on Saturday in the Cup semifinals. For example, if the favorites win, you would have Orlando vs New York on the East side and Lakers vs Thunder on the West side on Saturday.
That means:
Magic, Knicks, Lakers, Thunder, Heat, Raptors, Suns, and Spurs will each play at least one game in Week 8.
Their second game could fall on Saturday, Sunday, or even Monday of Week 9, depending on wins and losses and how the NBA schedules the loser games.
Here is the structure:
Winners on Tuesday and Wednesday play on Saturday (their second game of the week).
Losers on Tuesday and Wednesday need a replacement game. One loser game is expected to be scheduled for Sunday. One loser game is expected to be scheduled for Monday of Week 9.
So for these eight teams:
Most likely outcome: each ends up with two games in Week 8.
Possible twist: Suns and Spurs can become three-game teams if they win on Wednesday and then play again on Saturday, adding a third game to their regular season.
Extreme case: some combination of results and placement could leave a Cup team stuck with only one game that week if its replacement game is pushed fully into Week 9, although the league is trying to avoid that.
That is why platforms currently show some of these Cup teams as one-game teams. The second game is not placed yet. It does not mean they play only once. It means you are waiting on the NBA to finalize the loser game(s).
Streaming In Week 8
Every single day in Week 8 is a quality streaming day because every slate is small, but there is one huge catch. There are no back-to-backs at all. Zero. None.
That means you cannot chain one roster spot into seven games. You do not have that back to back leverage this week. In a typical Yahoo setup with four adds, the most you can realistically squeeze out of one streaming slot is five games.
A big part of your edge will come from dropping fringe players on one game teams and weak two game Cup teams and turning that slot into a five game stream across the week.
Here is the basic path:
Use Monday and Wednesday smartly with Suns or Spurs players, since they are the only teams that play those exact days together.
Or use Monday and Thursday with Pelicans and Kings if you want a simpler two game chunk early.
Then use single day streams on Thursday and one or more of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to get up to five games total from that one slot.
Because there are no back to backs, you are stacking single days and small mini chunks instead of the classic back to back pattern.
One Slot, Max Five Games
If you start with a player on a one game team (Boston, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Clippers, Memphis, Utah) you can turn that into a five game week from that spot by:
Getting two early games from a Monday Wednesday combo (Suns or Spurs) or Monday Thursday combo (Pelicans or Kings).
Then using three more moves to add single game streamers on the remaining days.
No matter how you juggle it, when you only have four adds and no back to backs, five is the cap for that one slot. That is still a huge upgrade over a single game. In ESPN leagues with seven moves, you can mirror the same pattern across two streaming slots and get around ten games total out of them.
Weekly Leagues
In weekly lock formats, Week 8 is brutal. For the teams with one game, you almost never want to start fringe guys. You reserve those starts for true stars like Anthony Davis, Nikola Jokic, Cade Cunningham, Kevin Durant, James Harden, Kawhi Leonard, Lauri Markkanen and that general tier.
For managers in weekly changes leagues on Yahoo, that is even worse. You do not know exactly how many games some Cup teams will get until after Tuesday and Wednesday are played and the loser games are placed. You can take a calculated risk on teams that could become three game teams like Phoenix or San Antonio, but understand that you are betting on specific Cup results and the NBA’s placement of the loser games.
Key Takeaways
Every game in Week 8 counts for fantasy, except the Cup final in Week 9.
Four teams are locked on three games (Pacers, Wolves, Pelicans, Kings) and eight are locked on one game (Celtics, Mavs, Nuggets, Pistons, Rockets, Clippers, Grizzlies, Jazz).
Only the eight NBA Cup teams have any schedule uncertainty, and that second game is what you are waiting on.
There are no back to backs, which caps one streaming slot at five games in a standard four add week.
The entire edge this week comes from dropping weak one game pieces, understanding which teams are locked versus fluid, and squeezing every possible game out of your stream spots.
If you have follow-up questions on specific scenarios, settings, or how to apply this to your roster, send them through and we can walk through them step by step.
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Robbin Marx
NBA Fantasy Analyst
Experience: NBC Sports - Rotoworld, HashTag Basketball, Bleav Network