The NBA season is underway and we have begun to monitor and grade a list of NBA DFS experts. This year we have expanded our Industry Expert site list to 17 experts including many familiar sites from last year and a few new ones. After one week the RotoGrinders’ site is leading the way with their Lineup Builder and the NBA Grind Down.
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
Tuesday (October 25)
Tuesday night featured a small three-game slate to tip off the NBA season. The experts had a solid opening night with six experts receiving a DailyOverlay score of 5.0 or better.
Industry Consensus Picks
The Industry Consensus picks finished in the bottom half of the standing in 11th place out of 18 experts graded with a DailyOverlay score of 4.04.
A+ – LeBron James, Kawhi Leonard, George Hill, LaMarcus Aldridge, Damian Lillard, Draymond Green, Joe Johnson, Kevin Durant
F – Pau Gasol, Mason Plumlee, Joakim Noah, Trey Lyles, Tristian Thompson, Courtney Lee, Klay Thompson
Top Experts of the Day
#1) RotoGrinders NBA Grind Down (Score: 6.63) tops the list with four “A+” grades out of eight selections. Some of their top plays included LeBron James, Kawhi Leonard, LaMarcus Aldridge and Kevin Durant.
#2) RotoGrinders Lineup Builder (Score: 6.38) comes in second place with five “A+” grades out of eight selections. Key selections included George Hill, Joe Johnson, LeBron James, LaMarcus Aldridge and Kawhi Leonard.
Sleepers of the Day
A+ – Patty Mills (DailyRoto)
A+ – Allen Crabbe (FanSided)
A+ – Jonathon Simmons (DraftKings Playbook)
Wednesday (October 26)
Wednesday night was the first big slate of the season with 10 games of NBA action. Not as many experts were able to navigate the big 10 game schedule with only one expert receiving a DailyOverlay score of 5.0 or greater.
Industry Consensus Picks
The Industry Consensus finished in the bottom half again with a 12th place finish out of 18 experts graded coming in with a 3.70 DailyOverlay score.
A+ – Russell Westbrook, James Harden, Tim Frazier, Hassan Whiteside, Anthony Davis, Myles Turner, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Isaiah Thomas
F – Victor Oladipo, Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, Nikola Jokic, Brook Lopez
Top Experts of the Day
#1) FantasyTeamAdvice (Score: 6.30) tops the leaderboard for the day as the only expert with a DailyOverlay score above 5.0 finishing with five “A+” grades and no “F” grades out of their 10 selections. Top plays included Russell Westbrook, Tim Frazier, James Harden and Hassan Whiteside from the Consensus list and a sleeper pick of Avery Bradley.
#2) RotoGrinders NBA Grind Down and DraftKings Playbook (Score: 4.80) tied for second place for the day as they both had five “A+” grades out of 15 selections each. They both had James Harden, Tim Frazier and Anthony Davis help lead them.
Sleepers of the Day
A+ – Sergio Rodriguez (DailyRoto)
A+ – Jonas Valanciunas (DailyRoto)
A+ – Michael Kidd-Gilchrist (FantasyWired, FantasyPros)
A+ – Avery Bradley (FantasyTeamAdvice, FanSided)
A+ – Monta Ellis (FantasyPros)
Friday (October 28)
The first Friday night of the season consisted of an eight-game slate of NBA action. Friday was a good night for the experts as almost half (8) finished with a DailyOverlay score of 5.0 or greater.
Industry Consensus Picks
The Industry Consensus picks had their worst showing of the week finishing in 13th place out of 18 experts, posting a DailyOverlay score of 4.71.
A+ – Tim Frazier, Anthony Davis, Kevin Durant, James Harden, Russell Westbrook, JJ Barea, Ish Smith, Eric Gordon, Harrison Barnes, TJ Warren, Klay Thompson
F – Serge Ibaka, Enes Kanter, Evan Fournier, Ryan Anderson, Roy Hibbert
Top Experts of the Day
#1) RotoGrinders Lineup Builder (Score: 5.81) finished in the top two for the second time this week with five “A+” grades out of eight selections. Key plays included Ish Smith, Anthony Davis, James Harden and Tim Frazier from the Consensus list and one off-the-board play of Lance Stephenson.
#2) RotoGrinders NBA Grind Down (Score: 5.80) makes it a clean sweep finishing in the top two all three days this week with 15 out of 19 selections receiving a grade of “B” or better. Some of the Grind Down’s key selections included Russell Westbrook, Kevin Durant, Tim Frazier, Harrison Barnes and Eric Gordon.
Sleepers of the Day
A+ – Dion Waiters (DailyRoto)
A+ – Lance Stephenson (RotoGrinders Lineup Builder, Rotowire)
A+ – Marcus Morris (FantasyAlarm)
A+ – Jeremy Lin (FantasyWired)
A+ – Trevor Booker (FanSided)
A+ – Jon Leuer (FantasyPros)
A+ – Zaza Pachulia (FantasyPros)
A+ – DeMar DeRozen (DK Playbook)
Overall Leaderboard
With the first week of the season in the books, you can view the full NBA Overall Standings here.
#1) RotoGrinders Lineup Builder (Score: 5.67) tops the overall standings after the first week with strong lineups all week. We’ll see if they can hold onto the top spot as the season progresses.
#2) RotoGrinders NBA Grind Down (Score: 5.60) is in a close second place with three top 2 finishes this week and is starting out the season strong after finishing in 3rd place in the overall standings last season.
#3) FantasyTeamAdvice (Score: 5.47) used a big Wednesday to propel themselves into the top three in the overall standing through the first week.
The Daily Overlay Industry Consensus picks (Score: 4.15) has started out slow with finishes in the bottom half of the standings every day this week leading to a 12th place ranking in the overall standings through the first week of action. The Consensus picks did well for the NBA last season and I expect them to get better over the course of the season.
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 |
| 13 | 75.10% | 61.20% | 1 |
| 12 | 59.53% | 40.30% | 3 |
| 11 | 45.30% | 23.58% | 4 |
| 10 | 34.80% | 15.05% | 4 |
| 9 | 21.03% | 14.35% | 6 |
| 8 | 17.94% | 16.88% | 9 |
| 7 | 18.60% | 16.10% | 10 |
| 6 | 21.11% | 14.32% | 13 |
| 5 | 12.11% | 8.13% | 14 |
| 4 | 12.28% | 8.94% | 13 |
| 3 | 6.90% | 6.90% | 24 |
| 2 | 4.48% | 4.32% | 44 |
| 1 | 3.47% | 3.21% | 63 |
We will look to continue to track this over the course of the season and provide projected ownership percentages for players on each slate when we have more data.
