This past week was owned by the Lineup Optimizers with RotoGrinders Lineup Builder, DailyFantasyNerd and Sportsline all finishing in the top two spots multiple times this week. If you are not checking out these optimized lineups as part of your process you should consider it as they are all performing well especially has we have more data to crunch from the season. However, despite the strong week from the optimizers, FantasyTeamAdvice was able to hold on to the top spot in the Overall Standings.
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 12)
Monday featured a solid seven-game slate of NBA action. The experts had their best night of the season with 18 out of 19 experts finishing with a DailyOverlay score of 5.0 or better.
Industry Consensus Picks
The Industry Consensus picks finished near the bottom in 16th place finish out of 19 experts graded but still had an excellent DailyOverlay score of 6.26.
A+ – Too many to name them all as 19 players on the Consensus list received an A+ grade including 8 of the top 10 point scores on the night
F – Julius Randle, Will Barton, Dwight Powell
Top Experts of the Day
#1) FantasyWired (Score: 8.83) tops the list on a big night with five “A+” grades out of six selections including picks of Goran Dragic, Luol Deng, DeMarcus Cousins, Nikola Jokic and Dorian Finney-Smith
#2) DailyFantasyNerd (Score: 8.25) grabbed second place on the night with six out of eight selections receiving an “A+” grade. Key selections included Darren Collison, James Harden, Luol Deng, Myles Turner and John Wall.
Sleepers of the Day
A+ – Jeff Teague (DailyRoto)
A+ – Mason Plumlee (DailyRoto)
A+ – Rodney Stuckey (RotoGrinders Lineup Builder)
A+ – Jonas Valanciunas (CBS Sportsline)
A+ – Emmanuel Mudiay (FantasyPros)
A+ – Isaiah Whitehead (FantasyPros)
A+ – Ty Lawson (FantasyPros)
A+ – Rondae Hollis-Jefferson (FantasyPros)
A+ – Michael Kidd-Gilchrist (FantasyPros)
A+ – Nene Hilario (FantasyPros)
Tuesday (December 13)
Tuesday night featured a six-game slate. The experts didn’t fare as well with only two experts recording a DailyOverlay score of 5.0 or better.
Industry Consensus Picks
The Industry Consensus picks had a strong showing finishing in 6th place out of 17 experts with a good DailyOverlay score of 4.78.
A+ – Kristaps Porzingis, Tyson Chandler, Draymond Green, Jimmy Butler, Dennis Schroder, Thabo Sefolosha, Andrew Wiggins, Elfrid Payton, Jarell Martin
F – Derrick Rose, Devin Booker
Top Experts of the Day
#1) CBS Sportsline (Score: 5.57) tops the list with five grades of “A” or better out of seven selections. Their picks were led by JR Smith, Draymond Green, Stephen Curry, LeBron James and Joakim Noah.
#2) DailyFantasyNerd (Score: 5.00) comes in second place to make it a clean sweep for lineup optimizers on Tuesday with five out of seven selections receiving a grade of “B” or higher. Key selections included Draymond Green, Kristaps Porzingis and Jrue Holiday.
Sleepers of the Day
A+ – Andrew Harrison (RotoGrinders Consensus)
A+ – Eric Bledsoe (FantasyAlarm)
A+ – Andre Iguodala (FanSided)
A+ – PJ Tucker (Scout Fantasy)
A+ – Ricky Rubio (FantasyPros)
Wednesday (December 14)
Wednesday night featured a solid slate of 10 games of NBA action. The experts had a decent night with five experts recording a DailyOverlay score over 5.0.
Industry Consensus Picks
The Industry Consensus finished in the bottom half with a 13th place finish out of 20 experts graded coming in with a decent 3.74 DailyOverlay score.
A+ – James Harden, John Wall, Hassan Whiteside, Nicolas Batum, Luol Deng
F – Channing Frye
Top Experts of the Day
#1) CBS Sportsline (Score: 3.93) tops the list of experts for the second straight night with four out of five selections receiving a grade of “B” or higher. They were led by selections of John Wall, Jonas Valanciunas and Reggie Jackson.
#2) RotoGrinders Lineup Builder (Score: 3.72) finishes second on Wednesday for another strong night for the lineup optimizers with five out of eight selections receiving a grade of “A” or “A+”. Top selections included John Wall, James Harden, Kawhi Leonard and DeAndre Liggins.
Sleepers of the Day
A+ – Marcin Gortat (DailyRoto)
A+ – Pau Gasol (RotoGrinders Lineup Builder)
A+ – Robert Covington (FantasyAlarm)
A+ – Kay Felder (DailyOverlay – The Process)
A+ – Toney Douglas (Scout Fantasy)
A+ – Elfrid Payton (Scout Fantasy)
A+ – James Jones (FantasyPros)
A+ – Timofey Mozgov (FantasyPros)
Friday (December 16)
Friday night consisted of a solid 10-game slate of NBA action. The experts had another solid night with five experts topping a DailyOverlay score of 5.0.
Industry Consensus Picks
The Industry Consensus picks were also good again finishing in 6th place ranking out of 20 experts with a strong DailyOverlay score of 4.90.
A+ – James Harden, Giannis Antetokounmpo, John Wall, Ramon Sessions, Al Horford, Nicolas Batum, Serge Ibaka, Julius Randle, DeMar DeRozan, Buddy Hield, Garrett Temple, Cody Zeller, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope
F – Anthony Davis, Ryan Anderson
Top Experts of the Day
#1) DailyFantasyNerd (Score: 7.60) takes home the top spot on Friday and their third top two finish this week with six out of eight selections bringing in an “A+” grade. Top picks were Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Nicolas Batum, Julius Randle, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Cody Zeller and Al Horford.
#2) RotoGrinders Lineup Builder (Score: 7.13) finishes the week strong with their second straight 2nd place finish with five “A+” grades out of eight selections. They were led by picks of James Harden, James Johnson, Al Horford, Matt Barnes and John Wall.
Sleepers of the Day
A+ – Nick Young (DailyFantasySportsRankings)
A+ – Nikola Vucevic (DailyRoto)
A+ – James Johnson (RotoGrinders Lineup Builder)
A+ – Matt Barnes (RotoGrinders Lineup Builder)
A+ – Trevor Ariza (RotoGrinders Consensus)
A+ – Marcin Gortat (RotoGrinders Consensus)
A+ – Deron Williams (FanSided)
A+ – DeAndre Jordan (FanSided)
A+ – Mirza Teletovic (FantasyPros)
A+ – Greg Monroe (FantasyPros)
Overall Leaderboard
We are now through Week 8 of the NBA season. You can view the full NBA Overall Standings here.
#1) FantasyTeamAdvice (Score: 5.13) holds onto the top spot with three top eight finishes this week.
#2) RotoGrinders Lineup Builder (Score: 4.98) closed the gap on the leader this week thanks to second place finishes on both Wednesday and Friday.
#3) FantasyLabs (Score: 4.72) remains in third place with three top 5 finishes for the week.
#4) RotoGrinders NBA Grind Down (Score: 4.67) holds onto fourth place for the third straight week led by a third place showing on Tuesday.
#5) RotoGrinders Consensus (Score: 4.62) rounds out the top five for the second straight week but with a below average week have a few other sites hot on their trail.
The Daily Overlay Industry Consensus picks (Score: 4.30) dropped one spot down to 16th place out of 21 experts ranked in the overall standings through eight weeks of action but did see the DailyOverlay score rise 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 | 49.01% | 34.86% | 16 |
| 12 | 46.48% | 34.12% | 13 |
| 11 | 39.24% | 27.75% | 30 |
| 10 | 34.09% | 24.91% | 45 |
| 9 | 22.83% | 19.83% | 64 |
| 8 | 20.73% | 18.74% | 78 |
| 7 | 19.48% | 16.31% | 102 |
| 6 | 15.53% | 13.69% | 129 |
| 5 | 12.47% | 11.68% | 186 |
| 4 | 10.30% | 9.93% | 218 |
| 3 | 7.72% | 8.30% | 321 |
| 2 | 4.37% | 4.98% | 430 |
| 1 | 2.93% | 3.44% | 812 |
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.
