With a short three-game slate on Monday this past week, we shifted to recording and grading the NBA Industry Experts on Tuesday through Friday. The experts had a solid week overall with a lot of different sites finishing in the top two spots throughout the week. The Overall Standings had one change with the RotoGrinders NBA Grind Down moving up one spot into third place overtaking FantasyLabs. We’ll see if they can continue to move up the standings as we near the midway point of the season.
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 (January 10)
Monday featured a nine-game slate of NBA action. The experts had a solid day with six experts producing a DailyOverlay score over 5.0.
Industry Consensus Picks
The Industry Consensus picks finished in the middle of the pack in 9th place out of 18 experts graded with a DailyOverlay score of 4.68.
A+ – Kawhi Leonard, James Harden, Taj Gibson, DeMar DeRozan, DeMarcus Cousins, Al-Farouq Aminu, Marcus Smart, John Wall, Rodney Hood
F – Doug McDermott
Top Experts of the Day
#1) DraftKings Playbook (Score: 5.90) tops the list with all 10 selection receiving a grade of “C” or better including four “A+” grades from James Harden, Kawhi Leonard, DeMarcus Cousins and Taj Gibson.
#2) CBS Sportsline (Score: 5.75) takes second place with five picks receiving a grade of “A+” or “A” out of their eight selections. Key selections included Kawhi Leonard, Taj Gibson and Jonas Valanciunas.
Sleepers of the Day
A+ – Jerian Grant (DailyRoto)
A+ – Marco Belinelli (DailyRoto)
A+ – Maurice Harkless (DailyRoto)
A+ – Hassan Whiteside (DailyRoto)
A+ – Spencer Hawes (RotoGrindes Lineup Builder)
A+ – Gordon Hayward (FantasyPros)
A+ – Frank Kaminsky (FantasyPros)
A+ – Robin Lopez (FantasyPros)
Wednesday (January 11)
Wednesday night featured six games of NBA action. The experts had a very good night with 14 out of 17 experts recording a DailyOverlay score over 5.0.
Industry Consensus Picks
The Industry Consensus had one of the best showing of the season finishing in 3rd place out of 17 experts graded with a strong 6.47 DailyOverlay score.
A+ – James Harden, DeAndre Jordan, Mike Conley, Joel Embiid, Karl-Anthony Towns, Andrew Wiggins, Ricky Rubio, Russell Westbrook, CJ McCollum, Bradley Beal, Al-Farouq Aminu, Evan Turner, Kelly Olynyk, Al Horford, Otto Porter, JJ Redick, Enes Kanter, Ryan Anderson, Maurice Harkless
F – Kristaps Porzingis, Damian Lillard
Top Experts of the Day
#1) DailyRoto (Score: 7.03) tops the list of experts on Wednesday with 19 out of 32 players receiving an “A+” grade. They were led by selections that included Mike Conley, Ricky Rubio, Bradley Beal, Evan Turner, Aaron Gordon and Nikola Vucevic.
#2) DailyFantasyNerd (Score: 6.50) finishes second place on with four out of eight selections receiving an “A+” grade. Key picks included Evan Turner, Maurice Harkless, Nerlens Noel and Al Horford.
Sleepers of the Day
A+ – Jae Crowder (DailyRoto)
A+ – Vince Carter (FantasyPros)
A+ – Nerlens Noel (DailyFantasyNerd)
Thursday (January 12)
We did a special Thursday slate this week since Monday only had three games. The Thursday slate featured a small five-game slate of NBA action. The experts didn’t perform well on the small slate with only one expert finishing with a DailyOverlay score over 5.0.
Industry Consensus Picks
The Industry Consensus picks finished in the bottom half coming in 10th place finish out of 17 experts graded with a DailyOverlay score of 3.53.
A+ – Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony, Tyson Chandler, Tyreke Evans, Deron Williams, Kyle O’Quinn
F – Buddy Hield, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, D’Angelo Russell, Michael Carter-Williams
Top Experts of the Day
#1) FantasyTeamAdvice (Score: 5.40) tops the list with three players receiving a grade of “B” or better out of five selections including picks of Deron Williams, Carmelo Anthony and Draymond Green.
#2) RotoGrinders Consensus (Score: 4.21) grabbed second place on the night with 11 selections receiving a grade of “B” or better out of 19 picks. Some of their top plays included Kevin Durant, Deron Williams, Tyreke Evans and Tyson Chandler.
Sleepers of the Day
A+ – Devin Booker (FantasyAlarm)
A+ – Solomon Hill (FantasyPros)
Friday (January 13)
Friday night consisted of a solid nine-game slate of NBA action. The experts finished the week on a high note with 11 out of 19 experts coming in with a DailyOverlay score over 5.0.
Industry Consensus Picks
The Industry Consensus picks fell just short of a 5.0 DailyOverlay score finishing at 4.92 which ranked 12th out of 19 experts.
A+ – DeMarre Carroll, Isaiah Thomas, Enes Kanter, Mason Plumlee, Nikola Vucevic, Dion Waiters, Ricky Rubio, Russell Westbrook, Mike Conley, Rudy Gay, Karl-Anthony Towns, Elfrid Payton
F – Sean Kilpatrick, Dennis Schroder, Steven Adams
Top Experts of the Day
#1) FantasyTeamAdvice (Score: 9.00) takes home the top spot for the second day in a row with four “A+” grades and one “A” grade from their five selections. Their picks included Dion Waiters, Russell Westbrook, DeMarre Carroll, Paul Millsap and Lucas Nogueira.
#2) RotoGrinders 6-pack (Score: 7.17) beats out some tough competition for second place with all six of their selections receiving a grade of “B” or better. Key picks included DeMarre Carroll, Rodney Hood and Isaiah Thomas.
Sleepers of the Day
There were a lot of solid value plays that were only selected by one expert, here are a few of them…
A+ – Cory Joseph (DailyRoto)
A+ – Cody Zeller (DailyRoto)
A+ – Spencer Dinwiddie (RotoGrinders NBA Grind Down)
A+ – Michael Kidd-Gilchrist (FantasyAlarm)
A+ – Lucas Nogueira (FantasyTeamAdvice)
A+ – Tim Hardaway Jr. (FanSided)
A+ – Kelly Olynyk (FanSided)
A+ – Brandon Rush (Scout Fantasy)
Overall Leaderboard
We are now through Week 12 of the NBA season. You can view the full NBA Overall Standings here.
#1) FantasyTeamAdvice (Score: 5.33) continues to build on their lead with two top finishes this week.
#2) RotoGrinders Lineup Builder (Score: 5.02) had another solid week including two top five finishes this week.
#3) RotoGrinders NBA Grind Down (Score: 4.91) moves up one spot in the overall standings this week with three top eight finishes on the week.
#4) FantasyLabs (Score: 4.85) drops one spot in the standings with a couple finished near the bottom of the standings on Tuesday and Friday.
#5) RotoGrinders Consensus (Score: 4.80) rounds out the top five for the second week in a row but there is some close competition in sixth (DK Playbook) and seventh (DailyFantasyNerd) that are closing in.
The Daily Overlay Industry Consensus picks (Score: 4.58) continue their climb up the leaderboard moving up three spots this week into 12th place out of 21 experts ranked in the overall standings through 12 weeks of action. The Industry Consensus had a solid week including a third place finish on Wednesday.
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 | 51.13% | 36.34% | 21 |
| 12 | 43.67% | 32.92% | 20 |
| 11 | 39.31% | 27.94% | 37 |
| 10 | 34.42% | 25.16% | 62 |
| 9 | 24.58% | 20.77% | 85 |
| 8 | 21.39% | 19.16% | 118 |
| 7 | 19.30% | 16.49% | 150 |
| 6 | 15.46% | 13.96% | 206 |
| 5 | 12.91% | 12.19% | 276 |
| 4 | 10.51% | 10.16% | 333 |
| 3 | 7.65% | 8.21% | 469 |
| 2 | 4.51% | 5.27% | 669 |
| 1 | 2.91% | 3.47% | 1209 |
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.
