We have two weeks’ worth of NBA DFS grading data updated following a week off for the holidays. I will not go into detail for the week before Christmas but the top experts during the week were RotoGrinders NBA Grind Down, FantasyTeamAdvice, FantasyLabs and Rotowire. The data from the week after Christmas is below and despite a two-week sample, the Overall Standing did not change much except for the DraftKings Playbook moving up into fifth place.
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 26)
Monday featured a big 11-game slate of NBA action. The experts handled it well with all but one expert receiving a DailyOverlay score over 5.0.
Industry Consensus Picks
The Industry Consensus picks finished near the bottom in 13th place finish out of 16 experts graded but still had a good DailyOverlay score of 5.38.
A+ – DeMarcus Cousins, CJ McCollum, James Harden, Jamal Crawford, Nicolas Batum, Karl-Anthony Towns, Anthony Davis, John Wall, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Cody Zeller, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, Austin Rivers, DeMar DeRozan, Trevor Ariza, Brook Lopez, Andre Drummond
F – Paul Millsap, Kent Bazemore, Dennis Schroder
Top Experts of the Day
#1) FantasyTeamAdvice (Score: 7.60) tops the list with three “A+” grades out of five selections including picks of Austin Rivers, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and Andre Drummond.
#2) Rotoballer (Score: 6.75) grabbed second place on the night with four out of eight selections receiving an “A+” grade. Key selections included James Harden, Jamal Crawford, Nicolas Batum and DeMarcus Cousins.
Sleepers of the Day
A+ – Jeremy Lamb (DailyRoto)
A+ – Dwyane Wade (DailyRoto)
A+ – Bradley Beal (DailyRoto)
A+ – Otto Porter (DailyRoto)
A+ – Markieff Morris (DailyRoto)
A+ – Al-Farouq Aminu (DailyRoto)
A+ – Kenneth Faried (DailyRoto)
A+ – Sergio Rodriguez (FanSided)
A+ – Will Barton (DFSOnDemand)
Wednesday (December 28)
Wednesday night featured a solid slate of 10 games of NBA action. The experts had a decent night with seven experts recording a DailyOverlay score over 5.0.
Industry Consensus Picks
The Industry Consensus finished well with an 8th place finish out of 18 experts graded coming in with a strong 4.82 DailyOverlay score.
A+ – DeMarcus Cousins, John Wall, Kevin Durant, Nikola Jokic, Dwight Howard, Jimmy Butler, Ricky Rubio, Kyle Lowry, Tobias Harris, Paul George, Derrick Rose
F – Jamal Crawford
Top Experts of the Day
#1) DraftKings Playbook (Score: 6.13) tops the list of experts with four out of seven players receiving an “A+” grade out of 15 selections. They were led by selections of Kyle Lowry, Jimmy Butler, Kevin Durant, Paul George, Tobias Harris, DeMarcus Cousins and Dwight Howard.
#2) Rotowire (Score: 6.11) finishes in a close second place on Wednesday with four out of nine selections receiving a grade “A+”. Top selections included John Wall, Kevin Durant, DeMarcus Cousins and Nikola Jokic.
Sleepers of the Day
A+ – TJ Warren (DailyFantasySportsRankings)
A+ – Buddy Hield (FantasyPros)
A+ – Joakim Noah (FantasyPros)
Friday (December 30)
Friday night consisted of a solid 10-game slate of NBA action. The experts a decent night with five experts topping a DailyOverlay score of 5.0.
Industry Consensus Picks
The Industry Consensus picks didn’t fare as well on Friday finishing in 13th place ranking out of 18 experts with a DailyOverlay score of 4.33.
A+ – Anthony Davis, TJ McConnell, John Wall, Carmelo Anthony, Kristaps Porzingis, James Harden, Josh Richardson, Andrew Wiggins, Kevin Durant, Jon Leuer
F – Sean Kilpatrick, LaMarcus Aldridge, Joakim Noah, Greg Monroe
Top Experts of the Day
#1) RotoGrinders Lineup Builder (Score: 5.43) takes home the top spot on Friday with six of their seven selection receiving a grade of “B” or better. Key selections included Anthony Davis, TJ McConnell, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Paul Millsap.
#2) FantasyTeamAdvice (Score: 5.40) finishes the week strong with their second top two finish of the week with four out of five picks receiving a grade of “B” or better. They were led by picks of TJ McConnell and Anthony Davis.
Sleepers of the Day
A+ – Shabazz Muhammad (DailyRoto)
A+ – Ersan Ilyasova (Scout Fantasy)
A+ – Emmanuel Mudiay (FantasyPros)
A+ – Dario Saric (FantasyPros)
Overall Leaderboard
We are now through Week 10 of the NBA season. You can view the full NBA Overall Standings here.
#1) FantasyTeamAdvice (Score: 5.19) continues to hold onto the top spot with two Top 2 finishes this week.
#2) RotoGrinders Lineup Builder (Score: 5.03) had another solid week including a first place finish on Friday to remain in second place in the overall standings.
#3) FantasyLabs (Score: 4.86) holds onto a slim lead over fourth place with two Top 4 finished this week.
#4) RotoGrinders NBA Grind Down (Score: 4.84) is closing the gap on third place in the overall standings with strong finishes during Christmas week.
#5) DraftKings Playbook (Score: 4.77) moves into the Top 5 for the first time this season with three Top 5 finished during this past week.
The Daily Overlay Industry Consensus picks (Score: 4.47) remains in 16th place out of 21 experts ranked in the overall standings through 10 weeks of action but did see their DailyOverlay score rise again on a strong week for the experts.
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 | 40.82% | 31.58% | 5 |
| 13 | 50.23% | 35.55% | 18 |
| 12 | 43.01% | 32.82% | 16 |
| 11 | 39.39% | 27.97% | 36 |
| 10 | 34.44% | 25.27% | 54 |
| 9 | 23.68% | 20.27% | 69 |
| 8 | 21.02% | 18.86% | 100 |
| 7 | 18.77% | 16.04% | 123 |
| 6 | 15.23% | 13.56% | 161 |
| 5 | 12.68% | 11.82% | 224 |
| 4 | 10.32% | 9.89% | 280 |
| 3 | 7.80% | 8.28% | 396 |
| 2 | 4.47% | 5.15% | 553 |
| 1 | 2.89% | 3.45% | 1021 |
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.
