A lot of the same NBA DFS experts at the top of the daily and season standings this week, led by CBS Sportsline and FantasyTeamAdvice. The rest of the sites will need to start to make their move as we are now over a month into 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
Monday (November 21)
Monday featured a solid nine-game slate of NBA action. The experts had an average night with five coming in with a DailyOverlay score of 5.0 or better.
Industry Consensus Picks
The Industry Consensus picks struggled with a 15th place finish out of 21 experts graded with a DailyOverlay score of only 3.85.
A+ – Hassan Whiteside, John Wall, Blake Griffin, James Harden, Bradley Beal, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Karl-Anthony Towns, Chris Paul, Gorgui Dieng
F – Andrew Wiggins, Markieff Morris, James Johnson, Josh Richardson, James Ennis, Monta Ellis, Brandon Knight
Top Experts of the Day
#1) DraftKings Playbook (Score: 5.70) tops the list with four “A+” grades out of 10 selections. Key selections included John Wall, James Harden, Blake Griffin, Hassan Whiteside and Dion Waiters.
#2) DailyFantasySportsRankings (Score: 5.27) grabbed second place on the night with nine out of 15 selections receiving a grade of either an “A+” or “A”. They were led by picks of John Wall, Eric Bledsoe, Bradley Beal, Blake Griffin, Hassan Whiteside, Alex Len and Al Horford.
Sleepers of the Day
A+ – Wesley Matthews (CBS Sportsline)
A+ – Serge Ibaka (DFSOnDemand)
A+ – Patty Mills (Rotoballer)
A+ – Tony Allen (FantasyPros)
Tuesday (November 22)
Tuesday night featured a small four-game slate. The experts didn’t fare too well on the short slate with only two experts recording a DailyOverlay score over 5.0.
Industry Consensus Picks
The Industry Consensus picks also didn’t fare as well with a 12th place out of 18 experts with a DailyOverlay score of 3.69.
A+ – Russell Westbrook, Kristaps Porzingis, Rajon Rondo, Jimmy Butler, Jordan Clarkson, Robin Lopez, Tim Frazier
F – Anthony Davis, Kent Bazemore, Julius Randle, Emmanuel Mudiay
Top Experts of the Day
#1) CBS Sportsline (Score: 5.38) tops the list with five out of eight selections receiving a grade of “B” or better. Key sections included Russell Westbrook, Kristaps Porzingis, Timofey Mozgov and Derrick Rose.
#2) Scout Fantasy (Score: 5.38) comes in second place on the day with seven “A+” grades out of 20 selections. Their picks were led by Russell Westbrook, Tim Frazier, Rajon Rondo, Jordan Clarkson, Jimmy Butler and Jusuf Nurkic.
Sleepers of the Day
A+ – Brandon Jennings (DailyRoto)
A+ – Timofey Mozgov (CBS Sportsline, FantasyPros)
A+ – Jusuf Nurkic (FantasyTeamAdvice, Scout Fantasy)
Wednesday (November 23)
Wednesday night featured a big slate of 13 games of NBA action. The experts did well navigating the larger slate with eight experts finishing with a DailyOverlay score of 5.0 or better.
Industry Consensus Picks
The Industry Consensus finished near the middle of the pack with a 12th place finish out of 21 experts graded coming in with a solid 4.48 DailyOverlay score.
A+ – James Harden, Russell Westbrook, Kevin Love, LeBron James, Marc Gasol, Stephen Curry, Anthony Davis, DeMarre Carroll, Evan Fournier, Alex Len, Nikola Vucevic, Jamal Murray
F – Hassan Whiteside, Andrew Wiggins, Ricky Rubio, Seth Curry
Top Experts of the Day
#1) FantasyTeamAdvice (Score: 6.80) tops the list of experts on Wednesday with six “A+” grades out of 10 selections including top plays of James Harden, Evan Fournier, LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Frank Kaminsky and Jonas Valanciunas.
#2) CBS Sportsline (Score: 6.50) finishes in the top two for the second straight day with all eight selection receiving a grade of “C” or better including four “A+” grades from Stephen Curry, LeBron James, DeMarre Carrol and Nikola Vucevic.
Sleepers of the Day
A+ – Damian Lillard (DailyRoto)
A+ – Trevor Booker (DailyRoto)
A+ – JaMychal Green (DailyRoto)
A+ – Andre Drummond (DailyRoto)
A+ – Jose Calderon (Scout Fantasy)
A+ – Ersan Ilyasova (Rotowire)
A+ – Kris Dunn (FantasyPros)
A+ – Robert Covington (FantasyPros)
A+ – Kemba Walker (FantasyLabs)
Friday (November 25)
Friday night consisted of a massive 14-game slate of NBA action. Friday’s big slate proved to be a little tougher for the experts with nobody exceeding a DailyOverlay score of 5.0.
Industry Consensus Picks
The Industry Consensus picks had their best day of the week with an 8th place finish out of 20 experts with a DailyOverlay score of 3.76.
A+ – Anthony Davis, Wilson Chandler, Russell Westbrook, DeMarcus Cousins, James Harden, Damian Lillard, Kevin Durant, Nikola Vucevic, Giannis Antetokounmpo, John Wall
F – Tim Frazier, DeMarre Carroll, Robin Lopez, Jonas Valanciunas, Evan Fournier, Robert Covington, Jahlil Okafor, Thaddeus Young, Marc Gasol, Zach LaVine, Jerryd Bayless
Top Experts of the Day
#1) FantasyTeamAdvice (Score: 4.90) takes home the top spot for the second straight day with four “A+” selections out of 10 picks. Key selections included Russell Westbrook, Kevin Durant, Wilson Chandler, Anthony Davis and a strong value play of Trevor Booker.
#2) RotoGrinders NBA Grind Down (Score: 4.84) provided solid picks across the board with eight “A+” grades and four “A” grades out of 25 selections. Their picks were led by selections of Giannis Antetokounmpo, Russell Westbrook, Wilson Chandler, Damian Lillard and Kevin Durant.
Sleepers of the Day
A+ – Carmelo Anthony (DailyRoto)
A+ – Kevin Love (FanSided)
Overall Leaderboard
We are now through Week 5 of the NBA season. You can view the full NBA Overall Standings here.
#1) CBS Sportsline (Score: 5.35) had their DailyOverlay score drop this week but still sit atop the overall leaderboard with two Top 2 finished this week.
#2) FantasyTeamAdvice (Score: 5.08) moves up one spot into second place with a strong week that included first place finishes on both Wednesday and Friday.
#3) RotoGrinders Lineup Builder (Score: 4.97) drops one spot in the standings with their DailyOverlay score dipping below 5.0 for the first time this year after finishing outside the top 7 every day this week.
#4) FantasyLabs (Score: 4.90) holds onto fourth place for the season with three solid top 7 finished during the week.
#5) RotoGrinders NBA Grind Down (Score: 4.85) remains in fifth place for the second straight week thanks to their second place finish on Friday.
The Daily Overlay Industry Consensus picks (Score: 4.39) remains in 13th place out of 21 experts ranked in the overall standings through five weeks of action. It wasn’t the best week for the Consensus picks but they were able to maintain their position in the overall standings.
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 | 63.10% | 47.60% | 1 |
| 14 | 33.93% | 27.67% | 3 |
| 13 | 48.83% | 35.68% | 11 |
| 12 | 52.01% | 37.86% | 8 |
| 11 | 38.16% | 26.41% | 21 |
| 10 | 36.11% | 26.43% | 22 |
| 9 | 25.30% | 20.74% | 41 |
| 8 | 18.79% | 18.33% | 49 |
| 7 | 19.10% | 16.13% | 67 |
| 6 | 16.03% | 14.11% | 78 |
| 5 | 12.57% | 11.21% | 110 |
| 4 | 10.39% | 9.84% | 125 |
| 3 | 7.57% | 7.86% | 192 |
| 2 | 4.13% | 4.82% | 261 |
| 1 | 3.00% | 3.46% | 497 |
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.
