The NBA is in full swing now and the DFS experts we grade are beginning to establish who are the top sites early on this season. The RotoGrinders Lineup Builders and RotoGrinders NBA Grind Down stay near the top of the standings but a new entrant who dispenses picks right here at DailyOverlay is off to a good start as he looks to challenge the top NBA DFS experts. It should be a fun year!
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 (October 31)
Halloween night featured a small four-game slate of NBA action. The experts had a down night with only one expert exceeding a DailyOverlay score of 5.0.
Industry Consensus Picks
The Industry Consensus picks finished in the bottom half of the standing in 11th place out of 17 experts graded with a DailyOverlay score of 3.57.
A+ – Kyle Lowry, Paul Millsap, Chris Paul, Taj Gibson, Jusuf Nurkic
F – Nikola Jokic
Top Experts of the Day
#1) DailyFantasyNerd (Score: 6.00) tops the list with four “A+” grades out of eight selections. Some of their top plays included Consensus plays of Kyle Lowry, Paul Millsap and Chris Paul and the seldom selected Patrick Patterson.
#2) RotoGrinders NBA Grind Down (Score: 4.71) comes in distant second place with eight out of 14 selections receiving a grade of “B” or better. Their picks were led by Paul Millsap, Kyle Lowry, Taj Gibson and Chris Paul.
Sleepers of the Day
A+ – Matt Barnes (DailyRoto, DFSOnDemand)
A+ – Nikola Mirotic (DailyRoto, FantasyPros)
A+ – Patrick Patterson (DailyRoto, DailyFantasyNerd)
Tuesday (November 1)
Tuesday night featured a nine-game slate. The experts performed very well with 12 out of 17 experts finishing with a DailyOverlay score over 5.0.
Industry Consensus Picks
The Industry Consensus picks also had a good day finishing in 9th place out of 17 experts with a strong DailyOverlay score of 5.39.
A+ – Anthony Davis, Tim Frazier, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Elfrid Payton, Sergio Rodriguez, Kris Dunn, Paul George, Dion Waiters, Joel Embiid, Goran Dragic, Zach LaVine, Nikola Vucevic, Matthew Dellavedova, Tyler Johnson
F – Marc Gasol, James Ennis
Top Experts of the Day
#1) DFSOnDemand (Score: 7.20) tops the list with three “A+” grades out of just five selections including strong picks of Matthew Dellavedova, Paul George and Joel Embiid.
#2) DailyFantasyNerd (Score: 7.13) comes in second place with five “A+” grades out of eight selections. Key selections included
Sleepers of the Day
A+ – Kawhi Leonard (FanSided)
A+ – Rudy Gay (FanSided)
A+ – Gerald Henderson (FantasyPros)
Wednesday (November 2)
Wednesday night featured 10 games of NBA action. Not as many experts were able to navigate the big 10 game schedule with only two experts receiving a DailyOverlay score of 5.0 or greater.
Industry Consensus Picks
The Industry Consensus finished in the middle of the pack with a 10th place finish out of 18 experts graded coming in with a 3.64 DailyOverlay score.
A+ – James Harden, Dwight Howard, Russell Westbrook, Isaiah Thomas, DeMar DeRozen, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Chris Paul, Marcus Morris
F – Anthony Davis, Tim Frazier, Andre Drummond, Kristaps Porzingis, Robert Covington, Joakim Noah
Top Experts of the Day
#1) DraftKings Playbook (Score: 5.07) tops the leaderboard for the day with six “A+” grades out of their 15 selections. Top plays included John Wall, Isaiah Thomas, James Harden, DeMar DeRozen, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Dwight Howard.
#2) RotoGrinders 6-pack (Score: 5.00) grabs second place for the day with four out of six selections receiving a grade of “B” or better. The 6-pack was led by selections of Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Marcus Morris and Marc Gasol.
Sleepers of the Day
A+ – James Ennis (DailyRoto)
A+ – Amir Johnson (RotoGrinders NBA Grind Down, FantasyPros)
A+ – Otto Porter (Scout Fantasy, Rotoballer)
A+ – John Wall (DFSOnDemand, DK Playbook)
A+ – Evan Turner (FantasyPros)
A+ – Buddy Hield (FantasyPros)
A+ – Larry Nance Jr (FantasyPros)
A+ – Meyers Leonard (FantasyPros)
A+ – Alex Len (FantasyPros)
Friday (November 4)
Friday night consisted of a nine-game slate of NBA action. Friday was a good night for the experts as over half finished with a DailyOverlay score of 5.0 or greater.
Industry Consensus Picks
The Industry Consensus picks finished near the middle of the pack again finishing in 9th place out of 16 experts, posting a strong DailyOverlay score of 5.83.
A+ – Anthony Davis, JJ Barea, Sean Kilpatrick, Hassan Whiteside, John Wall, Patty Mills, Derrick Rose, Devin Booker, Tyson Chandler, Damian Lillard, Trevor Booker, Mason Plumlee, Kawhi Leonard, Cody Zeller, Bradley Beal, Markieff Morris
F – Otto Porter, Wesley Matthews
Top Experts of the Day
#1) RotoGrinders Lineup Builder (Score: 8.14) take home top honors on Friday with six out of seven picks receiving an “A+” or “A” grade. Key selections included John Wall, Sean Kilpatrick, Trevor Booker, Cody Zeller and Anthony Davis.
#2) FantasyTeamAdvice (Score: 7.10) had six “A+” selections out of 10 players recommended including players such as Damian Lillard, Derrick Rose, Kawhi Leonard, Anthony Davis, Larry Nance Jr and Hassan Whiteside.
Sleepers of the Day
A+ – Mike Conley (DailyRoto)
A+ – Larry Nance Jr (DailyRoto, FantasyTeamAdvice)
A+ – Joakim Noah (DailyRoto, FantasyPros)
A+ – Al-Farouq Aminu (Scout Fantasy, Rotowire)
A+ – Lou Williams (Rotowire)
A+ – Brandon Ingram (FantasyPros)
A+ – Rondae Hollis-Jefferson (FantasyPros)
A+ – Terrence Jones (FantasyPros)
Overall Leaderboard
With two weeks of the season in the books, you can view the full NBA Overall Standings here.
#1) DailyOverlay – The Process (Score: 5.53) tops the overall standings but has just begun to be graded this past week. A strong start for our very own Stephen Porter Jr. but we will see if he can keep up the pace to stay atop the leaderboard with picks.
#2) RotoGrinders Lineup Builder (Score: 5.31) had another solid week including a first place finish on Friday to stay near the top of the overall standings.
#3) RotoGrinders NBA Grind Down (Score: 5.18) also holds onto one of the top spots thanks to a second place finish on Monday.
#4) FantasyTeamAdvice (Score: 5.05) put up a big score on Friday to remain in fourth place in the overall standings through the first two weeks.
#5) DraftKings Playbook (Score: 5.00) rounds out the top five with a solid 5.0 DailyOverlay score led by a first place finish on Wednesday this week.
The Daily Overlay Industry Consensus picks (Score: 4.43) has started out slow currently in 13th place out of 19 experts ranked in the overall standings through two weeks 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 | A+ | A | B | C | D | F | Total | DO Score |
| 13 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 8.33 |
| 12 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 10.00 |
| 11 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 5.00 |
| 10 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 7.14 |
| 9 | 8 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 15 | 6.33 |
| 8 | 5 | 2 | 5 | 7 | 0 | 1 | 20 | 4.45 |
| 7 | 8 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 1 | 6 | 27 | 4.48 |
| 6 | 6 | 2 | 7 | 2 | 6 | 3 | 26 | 3.88 |
| 5 | 7 | 4 | 8 | 6 | 8 | 4 | 37 | 3.62 |
| 4 | 14 | 3 | 4 | 8 | 12 | 2 | 43 | 4.53 |
| 3 | 12 | 3 | 17 | 6 | 6 | 12 | 56 | 3.64 |
| 2 | 12 | 12 | 21 | 16 | 18 | 18 | 97 | 3.02 |
| 1 | 27 | 6 | 30 | 26 | 38 | 33 | 160 | 3.00 |
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.
