Hard to believe we are over a fourth of the way through the NBA regular season already. Through seven weeks the Leaderboard is starting to take shape and the crew from RotoGrinders are filling up the top five but still have their work cut out for them to catch FantasyTeamAdvice, who continues to produce solid picks every week.
In this article, I will give a brief recap of each day we gathered and graded the experts, including how the Industry Consensus picks did, highlighting which experts were at the top for the day and which players were only called out by one or two experts, but produced an “A+” grade. I will also review the overall standings and highlight the top experts so far this season. You can view the full NBA Overall Standings here.
As a reminder, we are currently gathering selections and publishing the NBA Industry Consensus articles each Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday during the NBA season, so be sure to check back about an hour or so before the first game tips off to get a look at the industry expert’s consensus picks for the day.
On to the grades!
Week in Review
Monday (December 5)
Monday featured a big 11-game slate of NBA action. The experts performed well with eight coming in with a DailyOverlay score of 5.0 or better.
Industry Consensus Picks
The Industry Consensus picks finished in the bottom half with a 12th place finish out of 20 experts graded with a solid DailyOverlay score of 4.65.
A+ – John Wall, Will Barton, Russell Westbrook, LeBron James, Marc Gasol, Troy Daniels, James Harden, Anthony Davis, Dwyane Wade, Deron Williams, Lou Williams, Sergio Rodriguez
F – Brandon Ingram, Dwight Howard, Sam Dekker, Kenneth Faried
Top Experts of the Day
#1) DFSOnDemand (Score: 7.0) tops the list with three “A+” grades out of five selections. Key selections included Lou Williams, Anthony Davis and Marc Gasol.
#2) RotoGrinders Lineup Builder (Score: 6.88) grabbed second place on the night with four “A+” picks and no selection lower than a “C” out of eight selections. Their picks were led by selections of Russell Westbrook, Will Barton, Deron Williams and John Wall.
Sleepers of the Day
A+ – Langston Galloway (DailyRoto)
A+ – Jusuf Nurkic (DailyRoto)
A+ – Damian Lillard (RotoGrinders NBA Grind Down)
A+ – Jamal Murray (CBS Sportsline)
A+ – Klay Thompson (FanSided)
A+ – Zaza Pachulia (FantasyPros)
A+ – Greg Monroe (FantasyPros)
Tuesday (December 6)
Tuesday night featured a six-game slate. The experts didn’t fare too well with only one expert recording a DailyOverlay score of 5.0.
Industry Consensus Picks
The Industry Consensus picks also didn’t fare as well with a 15th place out of 19 experts with a DailyOverlay score of just 2.90.
A+ – John Wall, Hassan Whiteside, Ersan Ilyasova, Marc Gasol
F – Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Troy Daniels, Sergio Rodriguez, LaMarcus Aldridge, Rodney Hood, Otto Porter, Rajon Rondo, Evan Fournier, Andrew Harrison, Gerald Henderson
Top Experts of the Day
#1) FantasyTeamAdvice (Score: 5.00) tops the list with two “A+” grades out of five selections. Key sections included John Wall and Hassan Whiteside, along with a solid value play pick of Richaun Holmes.
#2) CBS Sportsline (Score: 4.88) comes in second place on the day with five players receiving a grade of “B” or better out of eight selections. They were led by selections of John Wall, Ersan Ilyasova, Marc Gasol and Kawhi Leonard.
Sleepers of the Day
A+ – Elfrid Payton (FantasyPros)
Wednesday (December 7)
Wednesday night featured a solid slate of 10 games of NBA action. The experts had one of their worst nights of the season with no expert recording a DailyOverlay score over 4.0.
Industry Consensus Picks
The Industry Consensus finished near the middle of the pack with a 13th place finish out of 21 experts graded coming in with a poor 2.74 DailyOverlay score.
A+ – James Harden, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Paul George, LeBron James, DeMarcus Cousins
F – Hassan Whiteside, Danilo Gallinari, Josh McRoberts, John Henson, Harrison Barnes, Salah Mejri, Brandon Jennings, Tim Hardaway Jr.
Top Experts of the Day
#1) DraftKings Playbook (Score: 3.93) tops the list of experts on a tough night with six grades of “B” or better out of their 15 selections. Key selections included Giannis Antetokounmpo, LeBron James, Paul George and Wilson Chandler.
#2) RotoGrinders NBA Grind Down (Score: 3.72) finishes second on Wednesday with 12 out of 25 selections receiving a grade of “B” or better. Some of the best picks included DeMarcus Cousins, Paul George, Giannis Antetokounmpo, James Harden, Kyrie Irving and Draymond Green.
Sleepers of the Day
A+ – Dwight Howard (DailyRoto)
A+ – Damian Lillard (FantasyAlarm)
A+ – Andre Drummond (DailyRoto, RotoGrinders Consensus)
A+ – Wilson Chandler (DailyRoto, DraftKings Playbook)
Friday (December 9)
Friday night consisted of a solid nine-game slate of NBA action. The experts were able to bounce back on Friday with seven experts exceeding a DailyOverlay score of 5.0.
Industry Consensus Picks
The Industry Consensus picks had their best finish of the week with an 8th place ranking out of 20 experts with a strong DailyOverlay score of 4.90.
A+ – DeMarcus Cousins, Paul Millsap, Russell Westbrook, Lou Williams, Carmelo Anthony, Eric Bledsoe, Norman Powell, LeBron James, James Harden, Thabo Sefolosha, Andre Drummond, Harrison Barnes, Wesley Matthews, Jabari Parker, Dennis Schroder
F – Giannis Antetokounmpo, Hassan Whiteside, Monta Ellis
Top Experts of the Day
#1) FantasyTeamAdvice (Score: 7.60) takes home the top spot with three “A+” grades and no grade below a “B” from their five selections. Key picks included Norman Powell, Harrison Barnes, DeMarcus Cousins and Terry Rozier.
#2) DraftKings Playbook (Score: 7.00) finishes the week strong with their second top two finish with six “A+” grades out of 10 selections. They were led by picks of Russell Westbrook, James Harden, Jabari Parker, Wesley Matthews and Andre Drummond.
Sleepers of the Day
A+ – Tim Hardaway Jr. (DailyRoto)
A+ – Andre Roberson (DailyRoto)
A+ – Jon Leuer (FanSided)
A+ – Michael Kidd-Gilchrist (FantasyPros)
A+ – Joakim Noah (FantsyPros)
A+ — Alex Len (FantasyPros)
Overall Leaderboard
We are now through Week 7 of the NBA season. You can view the full NBA Overall Standings here.
#1) FantasyTeamAdvice (Score: 5.08) remains in the top spot with two more first place finishes during the week.
#2) RotoGrinders Lineup Builder (Score: 4.85) has a solid hold on second place by finishing in the top 10 every day this week.
#3) FantasyLabs (Score: 4.64) jumps up from seventh place up into third place in the overall standings this week. While they didn’t finish in the top two, they did come in third place two times this week.
#4) RotoGrinders NBA Grind Down (Score: 4.62) holds onto fourth place for the second straight week with a top two finish on Wednesday.
#5) RotoGrinders Consensus (Score: 4.59) sneaks into the top five in the overall standings with two top-six showings this week.
The Daily Overlay Industry Consensus picks (Score: 4.20) dropped one spot down to 15th place out of 21 experts ranked in the overall standings through seven weeks of action.
Let’s see which experts can make the grade this week!
Ownership Percentage Tracking
A part of daily fantasy sports strategy is understanding ownership percentages and being able to predict ownership percentages prior to entering contests especially for GPP tournaments where you might want to be contrarian by selecting lower owned players or fading highly owned players depending on the payout structure and size of the contest.
We utilize the Industry Consensus list to help predict ownership percentages by tracking the actual ownership percentages for each player that shows up on the Consensus list and averaging the ownership percentage for the number of times a player was selected by our list of experts.
Below is the current table showing the data through the first week of the season. Results are using a DraftKings Double-Up for Cash and large field tournaments for GPP. The Count column shows the number of times a player was selected by the experts for a given day. The Cash % column shows the average ownership percentage of those players in a Cash game. The GPP % column shows the average ownership percentage of those players in a GPP tournament. The Total column shows the number of occurrences that a player was selected that many times.
| Count | Cash% | GPP% | Total |
| 15 | 61.65% | 41.95% | 2 |
| 14 | 43.83% | 32.45% | 4 |
| 13 | 49.01% | 34.86% | 16 |
| 12 | 46.20% | 34.69% | 11 |
| 11 | 38.30% | 27.10% | 29 |
| 10 | 33.35% | 24.81% | 40 |
| 9 | 24.10% | 20.34% | 56 |
| 8 | 19.77% | 18.45% | 66 |
| 7 | 18.86% | 15.70% | 86 |
| 6 | 15.81% | 13.76% | 106 |
| 5 | 12.48% | 11.51% | 167 |
| 4 | 10.29% | 9.88% | 192 |
| 3 | 7.43% | 8.05% | 278 |
| 2 | 4.36% | 5.00% | 376 |
| 1 | 2.92% | 3.47% | 702 |
We will look to continue to track this over the course of the season as we provide projected ownership percentages for players on each slate in our NBA Consensus and Weighted Consensus articles.
