The NBA All-Star break is a nice time to reflect on the first half of the season as a DFS player to evaluate what is working and what things you might need to change up in your daily process. As you will see below we are exploring changing up our process to create lineups from the daily Consensus article picks. It is also fun to see some sensational performance by the elite players in the NBA in the All-Star festivities. Was that an awesome Dunk Contest or what?!?!
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, highlighting the top experts so far this season. You can view the full NBA Overall Standings here. And finally, I will publish results of our new Lineup Construction initiative.
As a reminder, we are currently gathering selections and publishing the NBA Industry Consensus articles and NBA Consensus Lineup Construction 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 consensus picks and sample lineups for the day.
On to the grades!
Week in Review
Monday (Feb 8)
Monday night consisted of a 10-game slate of NBA action. The experts had a good night with four experts plus the Industry Consensus picks receiving a DailyOverlay score greater than 5.0.
Industry Consensus Picks
The Industry Consensus picks performed well finishing in 5th place out of 11 experts graded and coming in with a 5.0 DailyOverlay score for the night.
A+ – Nicolas Batum, Kyrie Irving, Russell Westbrook, Evan Fournier, Jamal Crawford, Kemba Walker, LeBron James
F – Stanley Johnson, Brook Lopez, Devin Booker
Top Experts of the Day
#1) RotoGrinders Expert Tourney picks (Score: 5.56) finished with the top score on the day with eight out of their nine selection receiving a grade of “B” or better. They were led by consensus plays Kyrie Irving, Jamal Crawford, and Nicolas Batum.
#2) DFSOnDemand (Score: 5.50) came in second place with two “A+” grades and all six of their selection receiving a grade of “C” or better. Key selections included Kemba Walker, Zach Randolph, and JR Smith.
Sleepers of the Day
A+ – Pau Gasol (DailyRoto, Moxyball-MoxyList)
A+ – Nikola Vucevic (DailyRoto, FanSided)
A+ – Paul Millsap (Moxyball-MoxyList, FantasyAlarm)
A+ – Al Horford (Moxyball-MoxyList)
A+ – Jrue Holiday (Moxyball-MoxyList)
A+ – Elfrid Payton (FanSided)
A+ – PJ Tucker (FanSided)
A+ – Julius Randle (FanSided)
A+ – Zach Randolph (DFSOnDemand, FanSided)
Tuesday (Feb 9)
Tuesday night consisted of a small 5-game slate of NBA action. The experts put up big scores with three experts exceeding a 6.0 DailyOverlay score.
Industry Consensus Picks
The Industry Consensus picks finished strong for the day coming in 4th out of 11 experts graded with a good DailyOverlay score of 5.86 for the day.
A+ – Carmelo Anthony, Kawhi Leonard, Greg Monroe, Stephen Curry, John Wall, Harrison Barnes, LaMarcus Aldridge, Rodney Hood, Avery Bradley, Bradley Beal, Deron Williams
F – Aaron Afflalo, Klay Thompson, Isaiah Thomas, Tyler Zeller
Top Experts of the Day
#1) Moxyball-MoxyList (Score: 6.78) put up the highest score on the night with eight out of nine selections receiving a grade of “B” or better. They had consensus plays such as Carmelo Anthony, Avery Bradley, Greg Monroe, Kawhi Leonard and John Wall leading the way.
#2) RotoGrinders NBA Grind Down (Score: 6.70) finished second on Tuesday with six “A+” grades out of 10 selections. The Grind Down helped propel numerous consensus plays to be on the list including players such as Bradley Beal, Derrick Favors, Greg Monroe and Harrison Barnes.
Sleepers of the Day
A+ – James Harden (DailyRoto, RotoGrinders Expert Tourney Picks)
A+ – Marreese Speights (DailyRoto)
A+ – Danny Green (RotoGrinders 6-pack, FanSided)
A+ – Raymond Felton (FanSided)
Wednesday (Feb 10)
Wednesday night featured a big 12-game pre-All-Star game slate. The experts had a down night overall with only one expert reaching a DailyOverlay score above 5.0.
Industry Consensus Picks
The Industry Consensus picks performed well on Wednesday despite the poor overall showing by the experts finishing in 3rd place out of 11 experts graded with a solid DailyOverlay score of 4.14.
A+ – DeMarcus Cousins, James Harden, Damian Lillard, Jeff Teague, Kyrie Irving, DeAndre Jordan, Rajon Rondo
F – Myles Turner, JR Smith
Top Experts of the Day
#1) DailyRoto (Score: 5.40) finished well above the completion on Wednesday with 10 “A+” grades out of their 25 selections. Some of the players that led the way for DailyRoto included Stephen Curry, Jeff Teague, James Harden, Karl-Anthony Towns, DeAndre Jordan and Dwight Howard.
#2) Moxyball-MoxyList (Score: 4.50) finished in a distant second place on the day with seven “A+” grades out of their 25 selections. The MoxyList was led by selections of Rajon Rondo, DeMarcus Cousins, DeAndre Jordan, Jeff Teague, James Harden and Dwight Howard.
Sleepers of the Day
A+ – Andre Drummond (DailyFantasySportsRankings)
A+ – Stephen Curry (DailyRoto)
A+ – LeBron James (DailyRoto, FantasyTeamAdvice)
A+ – Karl-Anthony Towns (DailyRoto, FanSided)
A+ – Dwight Howard (DailyRoto, Moxyball-MoxyList)
A+ – Nikola Vucevic (FantasyAlarm, FanSided)
A+ – Elfrid Payton (FanSided)
A+ – Evan Fournier (FanSided)
Friday (Feb 12)
No games, All-Star break.
Overall Leaderboard
We have now completed 16 weeks of the NBA season and are at the All-Star break. You can view the full NBA Overall Standings here.
#1) FakePigskin (Score: 4.95) didn’t have any picks posted this week so they remain at their same DailyOverlay score which was good enough to hold off the competition this week. Hopefully, they will return to posting picks after the All-Star break.
#2) DailyRoto (Score: 4.88) moves up into second place in the overall standings thanks to posting the top score on Wednesday when many other sites struggled. We’ll see if they can challenge to move into the top spot in the second half of the season.
#3) RotoGrinders NBA Grind Down (Score: 4.87) fell into third place. Their picks performed well on Tuesday finishing in second place for the day, however on Monday and Wednesday the Grind Down finished in the bottom half of the daily standings.
The Daily Overlay Industry Consensus picks (Score: 4.53) had a solid week finishing in the top five all three days this week, highlighted by a third-place finish on Wednesday. For the season, the Consensus picks remain in 6th place in the overall standings out of a total of 14 experts graded this season.
Let’s see which experts can make the grade this week in the NBA!
Consensus Lineup Construction Review
We started a new feature at DailyOverlay about a month ago, where writers on our staff utilize the daily Industry Consensus article picks to build a sample DFS lineup for FanDuel and DraftKings. The goal of this experiment is to determine the best way to utilize the Industry Consensus list to build winning lineups.
Here is a list of the “rules” we are starting with when constructing the lineups:
- All players in our lineups come from the names listed in our consensus article, if possible. However, if one of those players is ruled out and we have time to put in that player’s backup or a player around the same salary, we will pivot to that player.
- We must use as many of the “Highly Touted” and “Recommended” players as possible, then fill in the remaining salary with players from the ”Suggested” player list. All of us submitting lineups will have some subjectivity to who we play based on the matchup when we need to fill out the remaining portion of our rosters.
We will have at least 1 DraftKings and 1 FanDuel lineup every night we write the Consensus article and enter them into a Cash (50/50 or Double Up) league and large-field GPP tournament. The results of those lineups will be provided in this section each week.
Weekly Results
FanDuel
| Day | Score | Cash Place | Profit(Loss) | GPP Place | Profit(Loss) | Picks By |
| Monday | 273.4 | 86/100 | ($1.00) | 79,716/117,647 | ($1.00) | Stephen |
| Tuesday | 267.6 | 68/100 | ($2.00) | 109,220/117,414 | ($2.00) | Brad |
| Wednesday | 294.7 | 21/100 | $0.80 | 32,121/117,647 | ($1.00) | Stephen |
| Total | 278.6 (Avg) | ($2.20) | ($4.00) |
Monday’s lineup was done in by Derrick Rose who was declared inactive shortly before the game and not swapped out in time. Thus is the life of a DFS player sometimes when trying to balance our DFS time with family time. Stephen was able to finish the week on a high note by cashing in with a strong lineup on Wednesday.
DraftKings
| Day | Score | Cash Place | Profit(Loss) | GPP Place | Profit(Loss) | Picks By |
| Monday | 261.5 | 71/100 | ($2.00) | 3,024/5750 | ($2.00) | Brad |
| Tuesday | 265.0 | 25/100 | $1.60 | 1,642/5,750 | ($2.00) | Matt |
| Wednesday | 259.0 | 50/100 | $1.60 | 1,674/4,600 | ($2.00) | Brad |
| Total | 261.8 (avg) | $1.20 | ($6.00) |
Ran into the same Derrick Rose issue on Monday, late scratch news came out while eating dinner with the family and didn’t notice it in time to make a change. Despite the bump in the road on Monday, the Cash game lineups finished the week strong with back-to-back wins.
Overall Results
I wanted to provide a different kind of update on the overall results this week as we are on a pause due to the All-Star break. So far we have tried our Lineup Construction experiment for 18 individual days spanning over the last five weeks.
Through those five weeks, we have followed the “rules” above which rely on picking as many of the consensus players from the Highly Touted and Recommended sections into our lineups first and then filling in with Suggested plays to make the lineup salary and positions fit each site. The results haven’t been too good.
On FanDuel, the lineups have only cashed in 50/50s five out of 18 days (27.8%) for a net ROI of negative 50.3%. The average score has been 269.7 with an average cash line score of 273.8. Close but not consistently above the cash line. The GPP lineups have cashed in three out of 18 days (16.7%) for a net ROI of negative 48.3%. The average GPP cash line has been 288.5, significantly higher than the average lineup score.
Meanwhile on DraftKings, the lineups generated have cashed in 50/50s six out of 18 days (33.3%) for an ROI of negative 37.5%. The average lineup score has been 242.2 with an average cash line score of 253.8 needed. While GPP lineups have cashed two out of 18 days (11.1%) for a negative 73.2% ROI with an average score of 268.4 needed to cash in GPPs.
Our goal with this experiment is to try to determine the best way to utilize the Industry Expert Consensus list to build winning lineups. With that goal in mind and the unsuccessful results from the past five weeks, we will be looking to change the “rules” heading into the second half of the season. We will be finalizing the new “rules” we will follow for the coming weeks prior to Friday’s games and track our results to see if they can produce better, winning lineups more consistently. Stay tuned!
