How I Built the Best SuperCoach NBL Team of 2024

Australia’s best fantasy basketball coach, SuperCoach NBL champion David van der Giessen, reveals how he did it – and some tips for this year.

What an amazing thrill it was to win the inaugural SuperCoach NBL competition.

It has been four months since the 2024 season finished and, if I am being totally honest, I still struggle to believe I managed to pull it off. It was an incredible journey and it is an achievement I will always cherish.

However, glory is very short lived. The 2025 NBL season is almost upon us.

With the new season fast approaching, I decided to reflect on how I managed to build the best SuperCoach NBL team of last season. It has been well documented that I had very little NBL knowledge prior to the start of the season. I barely knew the names of any players or coaches. When registrations opened, I realised this is where the journey of building my team had to begin.

I invested countless hours reading NBL articles, watching interviews, listening to various podcasts and viewing pre-season games – all in a bid to get myself up to speed with everything NBL. Once I had some NBL knowledge behind me, I turned my focus to the NBL schedule and learning the SuperCoach NBL scoring system in a bid to help build my starting roster.

Some things I got right during the season:

1. UNDERSTANDING MY ENTIRE SUPERCOACH NBL SQUAD COULD SCORE POINTS EVERY WEEK

One of the biggest mindset changes for seasoned SuperCoach AFL, NRL and BBL participants is the fact that all 10 of your SuperCoach NBL players score points for you each week (five on-court players scoring at 100 per cent plus five bench players scoring at 50 per cent).

There is none of this, “I can hold onto player X and bench him for his two-week injury”. If you do that, it means you will score a big old doughnut for that two-week period.

At the start of last season, more than 20 per cent of teams started with gun cheapie Taran Armstrong. The problem was that Armstrong suffered a foot sprain in the lead up to round 1 of the NBL season. He ended up not playing until round 6. In rounds 2, 3, 4 and 5, his ownership remained at over 10 per cent and, unfortunately, all those owners continued to cop a doughnut throughout that period.

Taipans guard Taran Armstrong is an option again in SuperCoach NBL. Picture: Emily Barker/Getty Images

2. HAVING A BIG FOCUS ON THE NBL SCHEDULE

I realised it was vital to know which teams had byes and which teams had the best DGW (double-game week) schedule.

Last season, the New Zealand Breakers had a bye in round 3, while the Cairns Taipans had byes in rounds 3 and 4. I made a conscious decision that my starting squad would not include players from either of these teams.

I also decided to aggressively target the early DGW schedule. In round 3, while a good percentage of coaches were holding players through those byes, eight of the 10 players in my squad were on a DGW.

These proved to be significant decisions and were key factors behind my early success.

Today I picked up the major prize for winning the @NBLSupercoach competition.

In a weird twist of fate, today is also the 5th anniversary of my son Jack passing away.

As you all know, my SC team was named after him.

Quite overwhelming.

💜💜💜#Supercoach#DoIt4Jack#NBL24pic.twitter.com/5KfkltKt9L

— I-Am-ME-I-Am-DVG (@myNAMEisDVG) April 19, 2024

3. REALISING CASH IS KING

Due to the nature of the NBL schedule, SuperCoach NBL provides us with two guaranteed trades every round. These guaranteed trades mean we can abandon the mindset of ‘player X’ being a season-long keeper (although at certain points of last season, I did feel like Bryce Cotton should have stayed in my side the whole year!)

From as early as the end of round 1, I was saying to myself “more money = more flexibility”. I started the season with NBL veteran Mitch Creek. Creek had a DGW in round 1 and managed a score of 50. This score meant that he would go into his round 2 DGW with a Break Even of 94. Despite his upcoming DGW, I made the decision to trade Creek out of my side. Creek would lose $38,000 in value that round, and by round 5, he had lost $71,000.

Two of the players I traded in that week were Kyrin Galloway and Sam McDaniel. They would collectively go on to generate over $100,000 in value over the course of the next two rounds before being traded out.

Sam McDaniel of the Bullets proved to be a great cash cow. Picture: Chris Hyde/Getty Images

By the end of round 4, I had managed to accumulate the second-highest team value in the competition of $2,538,100 – $200,000 more than some other teams inside the top 10. This allowed me to make some nimble trade decisions that others might not have been able to make in future rounds.

4. GOING AGAINST THE GRAIN – FINDING MY PODS (POINTS OF DIFFERENCE)

I think the key to any SuperCoach success is making the right POD decisions. In any given season of any SuperCoach code, we all make POD decisions which either catapult us up the rankings or make us slide back to the pack.

Much of my success in the 2024 SuperCoach NBL season can be attributed to making POD plays that came off. Luck will always play its part in SuperCoach success, and I guess I was lucky to make some of the correct decisions below:

Round 3 – traded in Jordan Crawford. He was traded in by 1 per cent of coaches and managed to be equal-highest scoring player of the week at 3.4 per cent ownership.

Round 5 – chose Parker Jackson-Cartwright as my captain. One my favourite players of the 2024 NBL season, PJC was captained by 15.1 per cent of the comp this week and landed the highest SC score of the round with 73 points. Other popular captain selections that week included Bryce Cotton (31 SC points) and Mitch Creek (40 SC points).

Round 8 – chose Anthony Lamb as my captain and traded in Tahjere McCall. Lamb amassed the highest score of the week with under 10 per cent of teams having the captain armband on him. McCall was traded in by 5.4 per cent of the competition that week. Not only did he manage the fifth-highest score of the round, but he would also go on to be the highest scoring player of round 9 while being owned by just 12.5 per cent of teams.

Round 13 – trading in Trey Kell and Isaac Humphries. The Adelaide 36ers were beginning an excellent stretch of the DGW schedule and I knew I needed a couple of their good pieces. Kell and Humphries would finish round 13 as the highest and third-highest scorers of the round.

Trading in JackJumpers star Jordan Crawford was an inspired move. Picture: Graham Denholm/Getty Images

5. REACHING OUT FOR HELP

You may have read all the above and thought, “Did this guy do anything wrong?”. I can assure you, I did.

I lost confidence in my decision making towards the latter part of the season and I decided to reach out to someone within the SuperCoach community for some advice and wisdom.

A bloke by the name of Tim Williams was the runner-up of the 2020 SuperCoach NRL season competition. Over the past few years, I have grown a very deep respect for his SuperCoach advice.

While Tim was not actually playing SuperCoach NBL, his words of advice were invaluable for me, and I used them to help guide the rest of my SC NBL season.

Expert advice is important, but don’t let anyone influence you into something you feel you’re not keen on. You are the one that has made it this far – back your own instincts and just enjoy it.

Bring on the 2025 SuperCoach NBL season. I look forward to playing an active part of the SC community with you all this year.

Who will be crowned the next SuperCoach NBL champion? Only time will tell!

Originally published as How I Built the Best SuperCoach NBL Team of 2024