Highlights from the past week include a very profitable week for our Lineup Construction series, further evidence that ownership percentages fall in line with the Industry Consensus list and while the usual suspects, RotoGrinders NBA Grind Down and DailyRoto, sit atop the overall standings, a new addition to the DailyOverlay NBA grading, Scout Fantasy, could be a player down the stretch posting a great first week.
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. And finally, I will publish results of our Lineup Construction series.
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 (March 7)
Monday night a consisted of a solid seven-game slate of NBA action. The experts had a strong night with seven experts plus the Industry Consensus registering a DailyOverlay score greater than 5.0.
Industry Consensus Picks
The Industry Consensus finished strong with a 4th place ranking out of 13 experts graded with a DailyOverlay score of 5.71.
A+ – DeMarcus Cousins, Stephen Curry, Karl-Anthony Towns, Pau Gasol, Kemba Walker, DeAndre Jordan
F – None
Top Experts of the Day
#1) DailyRoto (Score: 6.45) finished in first with 10 out of 11 selections receiving a grade of “B” or better. Their top plays consisted of consensus plays Stephen Curry, DeMarcus Cousins, Pau Gasol, Karl-Anthony Towns and DeAndre Jordan.
#2) Scout Fantasy (Score: 5.78) a new addition to the list of NBA experts finished in second place on their first day getting graded with six out of nine selection receiving a grade of “B” or better. Their top plays of the day also consisted of consensus plays such as Stephen Curry, DeMarcus Cousins, Pau Gasol and Karl-Anthony Towns.
Sleepers of the Day
A+ – Mario Chalmers (FantasyAlarm, FanSided)
A+ – Lance Stephenson (FantasyAlarm, FanSided)
A+ – Ian Mahinmi (FantasyAlarm)
A+ – Jerryd Bayless (FanSided)
A+ – Tim Duncan (FanSided)
A+ – Andrew Bogut (FanSided)
Tuesday (March 8)
Tuesday night featured a six-game slate of NBA action. The experts didn’t perform as well as Monday with zero experts topping a DailyOverlay score of 5.0.
Industry Consensus Picks
The Industry Consensus picks had a down night finishing in 8th place out of 12 experts graded with a DailyOverlay score of only 4.04.
A+ – Carmelo Anthony, John Wall, Damian Lillard, LaMarcus Aldridge, Brook Lopez
F – Aaron Gordon, Elfrid Payton, Robin Lopez
Top Experts of the Day
#1) DFSOnDemand (Score: 4.83) tops the list with four out of six selection receiving a grade of “B” or better. Key selections included Carmelo Anthony, Brook Lopez and Kenneth Faried.
#2) Moxyball – MoxyList (Score: 4.60) comes in second place on the day with 10 “A+” or “A” grades out of 20 total picks. They hit on some consensus plays such as LaMarcus Aldridge, Carmelo Anthony and Damian Lillard but also hit on an off the board pick with Julius Randle.
Sleepers of the Day
A+ – Julius Randle (Moxyball-MoxyList, DailyRoto)
A – Gary Harris (FanSided)
A – Kyle O’Quinn (FanSided)
Wednesday (March 9)
Wednesday night consisted of a solid nine-game slate NBA action. The experts had a very strong night with 10 out of 14 experts exceeding a DailyOverlay score of 5.0, including the Industry Consensus.
Industry Consensus Picks
The Industry Consensus had a very good day finishing in 4th place out of 14 experts graded with an excellent DailyOverlay score of 6.50.
A+ – James Harden, Robert Covington, Kevin Durant, JaMychal Green, Kemba Walker, Devin Booker, Anthony Davis, Dwight Howard, Chris Paul, Russell Westbrook, Nerlens Noel, Andre Drummond, Rudy Gay
F – None
Top Experts of the Day
#1) RotoGrinders Expert Tourney Picks (Score: 8.6) put up a huge score to take home first place on Wednesday with four out of five selection receiving an “A+” grade. “A+” grades came from Kemba Walker, James Harden, Robert Covington and an off the board play of Robin Lopez.
#2) RotoGrinders NBA Grind Down (Score: 6.69) made it a clean sweep for the RotoGrinders crew on Wednesday with seven “A+” grades out of 13 selections. Key selections included a variety of consensus plays including Kemba Walker, Dwight Howard, JaMychal Green, Chris Paul and Devin Booker.
Sleepers of the Day
A+ – Darren Collison (DailyRoto)
A+ – Jose Calderon (DailyRoto)
A+ – Robin Lopez (RotoGrinders Expert Tourney, FanSided)
A+ – Jrue Holiday (Moxyball – MoxyList, FanSided)
A+ – Evan Turner (FantasyAlarm)
A+ – Dirk Nowitzki (FantasyAlarm)
A+ – JJ Redick (FanSided)
A+ – Derrick Williams (DFSOnDemand)
Friday (March 11)
Friday night consisted of a big 10-game slate of NBA games. Friday proved to be tougher on the experts with only one site finishing with a DailyOverlay score above 5.0.
Industry Consensus Picks
The Industry Consensus picks had a solid day finishing in 5th place out of 13 experts, posting a DailyOverlay score of 4.11.
A+ – Kosta Koufos, Stephen Curry, Lance Stephenson, Jrue Holiday, Jason Smith, Robin Lopez
F – Zach LaVine, Robert Covington, Jae Crowder
Top Experts of the Day
#1) Scout Fantasy (Score: 5.44) finished their first week of grading strong coming in first place on Friday with six out of 10 selection receiving a grade of “A” or better. Top play from Scout on Friday included Stephen Curry, Lance Stephenson and Kosta Koufos.
#2) DailyOverlay – Double Stuffed (Score: 4.93) grabs second place with 12 out of 14 sections receiving a grade of “B” or better. Key selections included consensus plays such as Kosta Koufos and Jason Smith in addition to the off the board pick of Toney Douglas.
Sleepers of the Day
A+ – Chris Paul (RotoGrinders NBA Grind Down)
A+ – Jared Sullinger (Moxyball – MoxyList)
A+ – Matt Barnes (FanSided)
A+ – Toney Douglas (DailyOverlay – Double Stuffed)
Overall Leaderboard
We have now completed 20 weeks of the NBA season. You can view the full NBA Overall Standings here.
* Scout Fantasy (Score: 5.35) completes their first week of grading to vault into the top spot in the overall standings. We’ll put them in the top spot with an asterisk for now to see if they can prove themselves to be consistently near the top of the standings in the coming weeks.
#1) RotoGrinders NBA Grind Down (Score: 4.96) remains in the top spot for now with a second place finish on Wednesday. They might have competition from both DailyRoto and Scout Fantasy down the stretch.
#2) DailyRoto (Score: 4.94) holds onto second place overall thanks to a first place finish on Monday this week. We’ll see if they can work their way back into the top spot with only a few weeks left.
#3) FakePigskin (Score: 4.70) remains in third place overall but with a couple of low finishes this week there are numerous sites hot on their trail including DailyOverlay – Double Stuffed, DailyOverlay – Industry Consensus and Moxyball – MoxyList.
The Daily Overlay Industry Consensus picks (Score: 4.63) had another strong week finishing in the top five three times this week. Overall, the Consensus picks remain in 6th place in the overall standings if you include newcomer, Scout Fantasy, even though the Industry Consensus did edge past Moxyball – MoxyList this week. We’ll see if the Industry Consensus picks can finish strong to continue to creep up the Overall Leaderboard before season’s end.
Let’s see which experts can make the grade this week in the NBA!
Consensus Lineup Construction Review
The new lineup building process we started after the All-Star break had the best week so far registering a nice profit on both FanDuel and DraftKings.
Here is a list of the “rules” we are now following when constructing lineups:
- We will make two separate lineups for each site (FanDuel and DraftKings), one for Cash games and one for GPP tournaments.
- For Cash games, we will build our entire lineup from the Consensus list using any player listed regardless of what tier they are in.
- For GPP games, we are allowed to choose up to two players that are not on the Consensus list.
- We can modify any lineup as we see fit for any late-breaking news updates that open up good options even if they are not on the Consensus list.
The results of those lineups will be provided in this section each week.
Weekly Results
FanDuel
| Day | Cash Score | Cash Place | Profit(Loss) | GPP Score | GPP Place | Profit(Loss) | Picks By |
| Monday | 366.6 | 31/100 | $0.80 | 322.0 | 27,870/117,647 | ($1.00) | Stephen |
| Tuesday | 302.6 | 15/100 | $0.80 | 276.5 | 51,841/117,647 | ($1.00) | Stephen |
| Wednesday | 293.8 | 69/100 | ($1.00) | 342.8 | 1,142/117,647 | $6.00 | Stephen |
| Friday | 305.9 | 29/100 | $0.80 | 340.2 | 2,491/117,647 | $3.77 | Stephen |
| Total | 317.2(avg) | $1.40 | 320.3 (avg) | $7.77 |
A great week for Stephen and his FanDuel lineups. The Cash game lineups easily cashed on three out of four days (35% ROI) this week. Meanwhile, the GPP lineups also cashed half of the time turning in a nice $7.77 profit (194.25% ROI) for the week.
DraftKings
| Day | Cash Score | Cash Place | Profit(Loss) | GPP Score | GPP Place | Profit(Loss) | Picks By |
| Monday | 324.50 | 78/100 | ($2.00) | 388.50 | 31/35,294 | $29.00 | Brad |
| Tuesday | 268.50 | 31/100 | $1.60 | 286.50 | 1,683/29,411 | $3.00 | Matt |
| Wednesday | 291.25 | 42/100 | $1.60 | 327.75 | 373/29,411 | $5.00 | Brad |
| Friday | 230.50 | 90/100 | ($2.00) | 240.50 | 4,193/5,882 | ($1.00) | Matt |
| Total | 278.69(avg) | ($0.80) | 310.81(avg) | $36.00 |
We also had a great week on DraftKing, especially in GPPs. GPP lineups cashed three times this week including a 31st place finish out of 35,294 entries in the NBA And-One contest on Monday. Overall the DraftKings GPP lineups won $36 for a huge 900% ROI this week. Cash game lineups were only able to cash half of the time for a small loss this week.
Overall Results
Below you will see a grid of our results since we changed our process to the new rules where we have more flexibility on who we select from the Industry Consensus list each day.
Looks like we might have found the winning formula. With a big week this week those minus signs next to the ROI have almost completely gone away thanks to some big GPP wins. Cash games have pretty much broken even but we have positive momentum there the last two weeks. Meanwhile, the GPP ROI (60.93%) is looking great with a positive number for both FanDuel and DraftKings.
With an overall ROI of 40.79%, we will look to continue good run this week.
| FanDuel | Cash Entry Fees | Cash Tot Winnings | Cash ROI | GPP Entry Fees | GPP Tot Winnings | GPP ROI | Tot Entry Fees | Tot Winnings | Tot ROI |
| Brad | $2.00 | $3.60 | 80.00% | $1.00 | $2.00 | 100.00% | $3.00 | $5.60 | 86.67% |
| Stephen | $12.00 | $10.80 | -10.00% | $14.00 | $15.77 | 12.64% | $26.00 | $26.57 | 2.19% |
| FD Overall | $14.00 | $14.40 | 2.86% | $15.00 | $17.77 | 18.47% | $29.00 | $32.17 | 10.93% |
| DraftKings | |||||||||
| Brad | $12.00 | $10.80 | -10.00% | $6.00 | $36.00 | 500.00% | $18.00 | $46.80 | 160.00% |
| Matt | $14.00 | $14.40 | 2.86% | $11.00 | $8.00 | -27.27% | $25.00 | $22.40 | -10.40% |
| DK Overall | $26.00 | $25.20 | -3.08% | $17.00 | $44.00 | 158.82% | $43.00 | $69.20 | 60.93% |
| Overall | $40.00 | $39.60 | -1.00% | $32.00 | $61.77 | 93.03% | $72.00 | $101.37 | 40.79% |
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 had a hypothesis at DailyOverlay that we could utilize the Industry Consensus list to help predict ownership percentages with the assumption being that players who were selected by more experts would likely be higher owned picks in Cash and GPP tournaments.
Below is the current table showing the data we have tracked over the last three weeks. Results are using DraftKings Double-Up or 50/50s for Cash and large field multi-entry tournaments for GPP. The Count column shows the number of times a player was selected by the experts for a given day. The Total column shows the number of occurrences that a player was selected that many times. 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.
| Count | Cash% | GPP% | Total |
| 11 | 71.63% | 46.27% | 3 |
| 10 | 60.50% | 33.45% | 4 |
| 9 | 42.49% | 24.20% | 8 |
| 8 | 40.42% | 22.59% | 17 |
| 7 | 28.45% | 19.48% | 37 |
| 6 | 23.38% | 17.87% | 40 |
| 5 | 17.42% | 15.23% | 58 |
| 4 | 14.67% | 12.78% | 74 |
| 3 | 9.66% | 10.31% | 99 |
| 2 | 8.80% | 9.08% | 145 |
| 1 | 4.11% | 5.71% | 299 |
So far our original hypothesis looks to be correct, showing that we can probably use the Industry Consensus list to help predict ownership percentages. I will look to continue to track this over the remainder of the season and provide some deeper analysis when we have more data.
Trackbacks & Pingbacks
[…] We’ve had a good run since the All-Star Break, and if you are curious as to how we have done with our rule changes or need a refresher on our rules, you can check out Brad’s Expert Grading Article. […]
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