I love the NBA All-Star weekend! It is the one sport that lends itself best to an exhibition of all of the top athletes in the sport on display in a game of high-flying entertainment. Wouldn’t it be great if we could get some DFS action centered around the NBA All-Star game? We’ll apparently we do on DraftKings with an “NBA All-Star” slate including the World vs US Rising Stars game and the East vs West All-Star game. Sign me up!
While we will not be providing a Consensus article or grading the NBA All-Star slate, we will jump back in with coverage on both Thursday and Friday following the All-Star festivities.
The NBA DFS experts will likely use the break to make some tweaks to their process and come out strong during the second half of the season to try to move their way up the leaderboard.
In this article, I will give a brief recap of each day we gathered and graded the experts, including how the Industry Consensus picks performed, 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 (February 13)
Monday consisted of a big 11-game slate of NBA action. The experts performed well with eight experts finishing with a DailyOverlay score of 5.0 or higher.
Industry Consensus Picks
The Industry Consensus picks finished in the middle of the pack with an 11th place finish out of 20 experts graded with a solid DailyOverlay score of 4.56.
A+ – Paul Millsap, Frank Kaminsky, Nikola Jokic, Will Barton, Tim Hardaway Jr., Jameer Nelson, Kawhi Leonard, Eric Bledsoe, Nikola Vucevic, Greg Monroe, John Wall, Blake Griffin
F – Russell Westbrook, TJ Warren, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Marvin Williams, Stephen Curry, Gordon Hayward
Top Experts of the Day
#1) Scout Fantasy (Score: 6.95) tops the list with 12 players receiving an “A+” grade out of 20 selections. Some their top plays included Nikola Jokic, Blake Griffin, Kawhi Leonard, Greg Monroe, Will Barton and Marcus Morris.
#2) FantasyWired (now PokerNewsSports) (Score: 6.67) grabbed second place on the night with all six of their selections receiving a grade of “C” or better including three “A+” grades from Will Barton, Nikola Jokic and Frank Kaminsky.
Sleepers of the Day
A+ – Kelly Olynyk (FantasyAlarm)
A+ – Marcus Morris (Scout Fantasy)
A+ – Al-Farouq Aminu (Scout Fantasy)
A+ – Vince Carter (FantasyPros)
A+ – Sean Kilpatrick (FantasyPros)
A+ – Maurice Harkless (FantasyPros)
Wednesday (February 15)
After taking a day off from grading on Tuesday with a short three-game slate, Wednesday night featured a massive slate with 14 games of NBA action. The experts did not perform as well as they did on Monday’s big slate with only two experts topping a 5.0 DailyOverlay score.
Industry Consensus Picks
The Industry Consensus did well finishing in 7th place out of 19 experts graded coming in with a 4.48 DailyOverlay score.
A+ – Giannis Antetokounmpo, Greg Monroe, Russell Westbrook, Nikola Jokic, Eric Bledsoe, Frank Kaminsky, Marcus Smart, Gary Harris, Karl-Anthony Towns, Kevin Durant, Andrew Wiggins, Klay Thompson, TJ McConnell, Kelly Olynyk
F – Ricky Rubio, Juancho Hernangomez, DeMarcus Cousins, Draymond Green, DeMar DeRozan, Clint Capela
Top Experts of the Day
#1) FantasyLabs (Score: 5.44) finished in the top spot with 10 picks receiving an “A+” grade out of their 25 selections including Russell Westbrook, Eric Bledsoe, Klay Thompson, Andrew Wiggins and TJ McConnell.
#2) DraftKings Playbook (Score: 5.27) comes in second with six “A+” picks out of 15 selections. Their picks were led by Russell Westbrook, Eric Bledsoe, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Marcus Smart and Frank Kaminsky.
Sleepers of the Day
A+ – Hassan Whiteside (FantasyAlarm)
A+ – Derrick Rose (FanSided)
A+ – Monta Ellis (FanSided)
A+ – Jusuf Nurkic (Scout Fantasy)
A+ – Mason Plumlee (FantasyPros)
A+ – DeMarre Carroll (DailyFantasyNerd)
Overall Leaderboard
We are now through Week 17 of the NBA season. You can view the full NBA Overall Standings here.
#1) FantasyTeamAdvice (Score: 5.17) holds onto the top spot heading into the All-Star break, we’ll see if they can remain on top over the rest of the season.
#2) FantasyLabs (Score: 4.98) jumps up two spots on the leaderboard with a first place finish on Wednesday.
#3) RotoGrinders Lineup Builder (Score: 4.96) drops one spot in the standings with a bad couple of days finishing near the bottom of the rankings on both Monday and Wednesday.
#4) RotoGrinders NBA Grind Down (Score: 4.94) rejoins the Top 5 overall moving up three spots during the short two-game week with two Top 4 finishes.
#5) DailyFantayNerd (Score: 4.93) remains in 5th place despite a lot of movement around them with a Top 5 finish on Wednesday.
The Daily Overlay Industry Consensus picks (Score: 4.64) holds steady this week in 13th place out of 22 experts ranked in the overall standings through 17 weeks of action.
Let’s see which experts can make the grade next 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.
Below are the tables showing the actual data collected so far this season. Results are using a DraftKings Double-Up for Cash and single entry tournament for GPP. The Count column shows the number of times a player was selected by the experts for a given day. The salary columns show the average ownership percentages for all players that were recommended by the given number of experts for the salary range provided.
Check out the “Smarter Projected Ownership Percentages” article for a full explanation of how we are using this data.
Cash
| Count | $9k+ | $7k – $9k | $5k – $7k | $3k – $5k |
| 15 | 63.10% | 60.20% | ||
| 14 | 36.35% | 63.95% | 14.00% | |
| 13 | 50.01% | 47.48% | 53.32% | 75.30% |
| 12 | 41.92% | 47.82% | 48.73% | |
| 11 | 34.58% | 41.66% | 42.57% | 44.66% |
| 10 | 27.26% | 33.45% | 33.44% | 58.23% |
| 9 | 21.53% | 27.88% | 25.11% | 31.83% |
| 8 | 18.63% | 19.72% | 22.71% | 33.30% |
| 7 | 14.60% | 19.39% | 19.11% | 25.16% |
| 6 | 14.21% | 13.89% | 15.51% | 22.49% |
| 5 | 11.95% | 11.81% | 11.02% | 19.41% |
| 4 | 9.26% | 8.78% | 8.90% | 14.26% |
| 3 | 5.30% | 7.04% | 6.53% | 9.02% |
| 2 | 2.46% | 4.79% | 4.02% | 5.05% |
| 1 | 3.13% | 3.43% | 2.73% | 2.69% |
GPP
| Count | $9k+ | $7k – $9k | $5k – $7k | $3k – $5k |
| 15 | 47.60% | 36.30% | ||
| 14 | 27.95% | 44.20% | 20.40% | |
| 13 | 35.49% | 35.35% | 38.52% | 50.20% |
| 12 | 32.44% | 33.90% | 30.80% | |
| 11 | 26.76% | 30.19% | 29.22% | 32.06% |
| 10 | 21.24% | 24.51% | 25.77% | 35.44% |
| 9 | 19.49% | 22.89% | 20.79% | 22.53% |
| 8 | 17.79% | 18.67% | 19.41% | 24.15% |
| 7 | 14.05% | 17.05% | 17.01% | 17.85% |
| 6 | 14.46% | 13.28% | 14.33% | 16.03% |
| 5 | 11.91% | 11.98% | 11.37% | 14.16% |
| 4 | 10.46% | 9.48% | 9.27% | 11.38% |
| 3 | 7.74% | 8.64% | 7.79% | 7.97% |
| 2 | 4.28% | 6.02% | 5.67% | 4.96% |
| 1 | 5.20% | 4.78% | 4.45% | 2.80% |
We 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.
