(Finding An) NBA Edge - Week 4
I’ve been trying to find excuses to not write this article. I’ve even thought, “Maybe I can just wait till next Friday, when basketball is starting up again.”
I mean – yes. I know I have to write it eventually. That’s just the way things go. But perhaps by waiting I can push off the pain.
What pain?
Reliving this last week of NBA play.
I was feeling quite proud of myself. I was feeling great about my progress, and about my learning curve. Over the previous two weeks, I had gone 8-3 in cash games, while also pulling in some nice profit in tourneys.
This last week, things fell apart. Part of it was variance. Part of it was dumb decisions. The hard part, however, is separating the two – figuring out which was which. After all, the point of this article is to break down my NBA play in order to help you see what I was thinking, and in order to help you and me spot areas where we can improve as we follow this path.
That means this article is valuable – still. It means it makes sense for me to write it, as I can probably learn even more from bad weeks than I can from good weeks. But that does not make it any less painful.
I went 1-4 this last week in cash games. I went 0-5 in tourneys.
That’s not good. In fact, it’s bad.
But I can learn something from breaking down these rosters. We can both learn something from my deconstruction of these slates.
What’s more, we can learn things here that can help us in all sports. Very little of what we learn in any one DFS sport is applicable to that sport only; typically, most of what we learn in one sport can be applied to all sports.
So let’s learn. We might as well do it now. I might as well get it out of the way…
A few notes:
I’ll have an article next Friday, even though we won’t have any DFS play from the previous week to look over, as this next week is the All Star Break. I’ll use that article to explore some NBA DFS elements worth focusing on – including what my own NBA research looks like right now (which is something a lot of you have asked about).
As for this article (as per your suggestions in the comments last week), I’ll keep doing exactly what I’ve been doing. Last week, I asked you if there was anything you would change in these articles (if you think the articles are too long or tedious, or anything like that), and nearly all of you basically said, “The longer, the better; the more in-depth, the better.” So we won’t change that. After all – as many of you pointed out – there are plenty of articles that serve a different purpose from this one; but for the purpose this article is intended to serve, there is no reason for us to not dig into things fully.
I also want to address the fact that this article mostly covers DraftKings, rather than FanDuel (which is another thing a handful of you have asked about). The main reason I do that is because I prefer late swap for NBA, given the tendency for late-breaking news to completely change a slate. With that said, I have spotted a lot of slates lately on which FanDuel would have given me a greater edge (either because of injury questions lowering a player’s ownership in tourneys, or because of pricing on FanDuel being better suited to the way I wanted to play a particular slate). I only want to focus on one site per day, however, and the challenge in alternating between sites “based on the slate” is that a lot of double-ups fill before I really begin my research, which means I have to reserve entries before I ever really dig into the slate. Because of that (and because I do not really have the NBA knowledge, just yet, that would enable me to eyeball a slate from afar and know right away which site would work better for me that day), I’ll probably stick with DraftKings moving forward. With that said: you may see a bit of FanDuel mixed in down the road; and anyway, the true value of this article is the exploration of the thinking behind the picks, which applies regardless of the site on which you are playing.
Finally: People have asked a number of times what cash game contests I enter. I enter the Giant Double-Ups on DraftKings. Everyone has an approach that they feel works best for them; that’s typically the approach that I feel works best for me.
Okay. I can’t push this off any longer. Let’s get to this last week’s lineups.
How did I do?
Do I really need to go over this again? Sheesh, you’re harsh.
This last week, I went 1-4 in cash games and cashed in tourneys in zero of five slates.
I made more mistakes than I made the last couple weeks…but I also think I made fewer mistakes than that record implies. The key, then, will be identifying the mistakes I made, while also managing to recognize the places where negative variance bit me. By separating one from the other, I will (hopefully) be able to improve on the mistakes while not letting go of the things I’m doing well.
Is that possible? We’ll find out.
Let’s take a look.
2/5/16
Score: 232.25
Result: Finished way outside the money in cash; this was the first time in the last 12 slates I was outside the top 55% or so of the field.
Team:
19.50 T.J. McConnell – $3400
12.25 Langston Galloway – $5000
16.25 Michael Kidd-Gilchrist – $5200
17.00 Jordan Hill – $5900
39.50 Nikola Jokic – $5900
59.75 John Wall – $9700
22.25 Kevin Love – $7800
45.75 Derrick Favors – $7000
Looking back on this slate, I am recognizing something valuable.
A couple weeks ago, I talked about the importance of trusting your research. There’s a balance to that: once you reach a point where you can really trust your research, you need to also be able to balance that with an ability to challenge your suppositions. Sometimes, we get married to a certain idea, or to a certain player, or to a perception of a particular player being “really good” or “not very good” without realizing this perception is not actually rooted in fact. As such, I have been trying to do my research each day…reach my own conclusions…then read the thoughts of others in order to challenge my conclusions.
Sometimes, however, I get too set in my thinking – refusing to change my mind…I guess because I would rather be wrong while sticking to my own thoughts than be wrong because I switched to someone else’s thoughts. It is important to recognize, however, when “your own thoughts” are actually faulty.
This slate is a good example. For some reason, I had decided that Thaddeus Young was a trap – that his increased involvement in the offense would be short-lived, and that he was not a good play on this slate, in spite of having a great matchup with Sacramento. During my research, I breezed over him – thinking these thoughts in a sort of intangible way, and moving on.
Then, I read the Grind Down, and Notorious talked up Thad as one of the top power forward plays on the day. Notorious knows a lot more about the NBA than I know. But I literally said to myself, “Everyone is going to get trapped by Thad, and I’m going to spend $300 less to take Jordan Hill and outscore everyone.”
If this were a tourney-only team, this would actually have been quality thinking. Hill has enormous upside – especially when playing center. On this slate, he gave us an opportunity to roster a starting center in the power forward slot, against Atlanta – the worst rebounding team in the NBA. Hill certainly had a chance to put up a big game. But what I overlooked, for a cash game team, was that Hill does not have the high floor AND high ceiling that I always preach to people they should be looking for on their DFS rosters! On this day, I could have moved down from Galloway to Aaron Afflalo (Carmelo Anthony was sitting out this game, and each guy was expected to be more involved in the offense as a result), which would have freed me to move up from Hill to Thad. Thad outscored Hill by 29, and Afflalo outscored Galloway by a few. That would have easily gotten me into the money in cash games.
What is more important than the result, however, is the process. Thaddeus Young was nearly 40% owned on this slate, for a reason: he had a great matchup against Sacramento that gave him a high floor and a high ceiling. Jordan Hill, on the other hand, was 2% owned on this slate, for a reason: he had a great matchup, but the fundamental nature of his game means that his high ceiling comes with a low floor.
I made some good plays on this day that worked out. Ish Smith was active for the 76ers on this slate, but I used McConnell because he had been seeing consistent minutes and had been playing very well, and the matchup and pace against the Wizards gave him a great shot at succeeding. There was not a lot of value on this slate, and my savvy McConnell play got me nearly 20 points for only $3400 and opened things up for me to roster John Wall in a great matchup against a Philadelphia team that had been playing well offensively and was expected to keep the game close. I also used Favors at what represents a lower price tag than he really should have, and while 27% of the field was on him, it was still a nice enough play to give me a little edge on a large chunk of the field.
I also made some good plays that did not work out. MKG was a bit iffy, in a tough matchup against Miami, with Kemba Walker and Nicolas Batum also healthy on his team, but I still feel $5200 was too cheap for him. And Kevin Love against the Celtics was in a premium spot; he had over 20 points at halftime, then got hurt early in the second half and missed the rest of the game. Even if he’d stayed in the game and hit 40 points, I would not have cashed, as he was 25% owned and I finished 22 points out of the money. But things at least would have looked less ugly than they looked.
Ultimately, however, this day didn’t come down to an unlucky Love injury; it came down to one big mistake: using Jordan Hill over Thaddeus Young. That’s definitely one I wish I could have back.
2/6/16
Score: 244.00
Result: Finished even farther out of the money than I did the day before.
Team:
32.50 T.J. McConnell – $3400
5.25 Bryce Dejean-Jones – $4500
13.50 Joe Johnson – $5100
29.50 Marvin Williams – $5300
24.25 Brook Lopez – $7700
41.25 Derrick Rose – $6500
42.00 Thaddeus Young – $6300
55.74 Russell Westbrook – $11,200
Typically, if your team is chalk from top to bottom, you will cash in double-ups more often than not. Now, that’s not the best way to maximize profit. In NFL, where I’ve notched a 78% cash rate in double-ups over the last two seasons, I find myself straying from the chalk all the time. But NFL is a sport in which I feel I understand things better than just about anyone else, and I rarely worry myself too much with whether my plays fall inside or outside the “chalkiest plays on the slate.” Far more often than not, the non-chalky plays I roll with in NFL outscore the chalky plays in the same price range. But I don’t know NBA well enough just yet to continually slide to the non-chalky plays, and to outscore the chalky plays. The day before this slate, I used Jordan Hill over Thaddeus Young for a big loss. On this day, I used Marvin Williams over Stanley Johnson (as with the Hill play, the thinking was sound for tourneys, but it was completely unnecessary in cash). Thankfully, Stanley only outscored Marvin by four points – with each guy putting up a nice point-per-dollar day. I also, however, used Bryce Dejean-Jones over E’Twaun Moore, for absolutely no reason. It was weird – I made some last-minute changes to my team that left “$4500 at shooting guard” as my last spot to fill. In spite of the fact that I had E’Twaun on my “narrowed-down list of players” and did not have BDJ on my list, I used BDJ. No idea why. I guess it was a bit of self-flagellation for my poor performance the day before: “You sucked yesterday, so you have to punish yourself by making what you know is a bad play.”
E’Twaun outscored BDJ by 26.25 points. (Strangely, E’Twaun was only 11% owned – but I wrote him down on my list assuming lots of people would be on him.)
Had I used E’Twaun and Stanley, I would have scored an additional 30.25 points. That would have put me at 274.25.
That also, incredibly, would have still left me out of the money, as 279.25 represented the cash line on this day.
Every other player on my team was at least 25% owned. In fact, Joe Johnson was 25.3% owned; each of the other five players was at least 40% owned. That’s why I brought up the fact that “being on the same side as the high ownership will get you into the money in double-ups more often than not.” This was not one of those slates.
The plays that bombed most heavily were Joe Johnson and Brook Lopez. I would still make both of those plays – against the 76ers – again. The 76ers are probably the worst team in the NBA against centers, and the Nets’ offense largely flows through Brook. It was the right play, and most days on this slate, it would have been the 50.3% of entries without Brook that would have regretted it, rather than the 49.7% that did use him.
As for Joe Johnson…
Let’s rabbit trail for a moment.
I know that a lot of top NBA DFSers watch a lot of NBA games. You know why I don’t? Because I would not know what to look for.
Extending the rabbit trail a bit:
Next Friday, any of you who are Incentives members are going to be delivered a treat, as @Jumpahoo (that should take you to his RotoGrinders profile, so you can check out his NBA, Tournament Player of the Year, and Superheavyweight rankings) will be launching a new NBA article that he will be tackling every weekday for the rest of the NBA season. Last year, when I was learning NBA, I studied Jumpahoo’s tournament lineups daily, as the guy is an absolute NBA wizard. Early last baseball season, I received a message from him asking a few questions about MLB, and we struck up a friendship from there. Over the next few months, I am going to be taking on a much bigger role with RG Incentives, and my first order of business was recruiting Jumpahoo to start writing NBA articles for us. Seriously. If you’re an Incentives member, you’re going to be in for a treat the rest of the NBA season.
Anyhow, Jumpahoo watches a lot of NBA games. What’s more, he knows what to look for. Early in the season, when Kristaps Porzingis was priced in the low-$5k range, Jumpahoo told me that after watching a couple Knicks games, he was going to be rostering Porzingis every chance he had until his price went up. There have been lots of other things he has said to me throughout the season (about a player’s skill set, or about a team’s rotations) that have conveyed to me just how far I still have to go in my NBA knowledge.
One thing I can do, however, is follow along with the play-by-play of games and pick up some valuable information in that way. I remember a year ago in the RG forums, top NBA cash game player Kaetorade did a Q&A, and he talked about how he tries to follow the play-by-play of all games each night. I’ve been trying to do that lately, when I have time. And one thing I had noticed about the Nets was that, in their previous few games, Joe Johnson had been facilitating a lot of their offense – almost playing a point guard-like role (or a “Khris Middleton when Jason Kidd is having hip surgery” role – not just shooting a lot, but also grabbing a lot of rebounds and facilitating a lot of the shots his teammates were taking). Even though Johnson’s involvement dropped quite a bit on this night, the thought process that led me to feel good about rostering him was very sound. I would make that play again, with Johnson being involved over the Nets’ previous few games in the way he had been involved. It just didn’t work out.
I should have played E’Twaun Moore over Bryce Dejean-Jones – without a doubt – as E’Twaun was on my narrowed-down list, and BDJ was not. And although the process that led me to Marvin Williams was sound (and although he performed well), I probably still should have used Stanley Johnson in cash. But I would not have changed anything else about my approach to this slate, and no matter what, I was not going to cash on this slate. Sometimes, that’s just the way things go.
2/8/16
Score: 290.50
Result: Cashed in double-ups – just barely; fell short in tourneys.
Team:
28.50 Emmanuel Mudiay – $5600
24.75 E’Twaun Moore – $4900
52.25 Nicolas Batum – $6700
34.50 Aaron Gordon – $5500
57.50 Pau Gasol – $8700
32.25 Evan Fournier – $4500
39.25 Markieff Morris – $6200
21.50 Brook Lopez – $7800
I needed this cash, after back-to-back poor days, and I just barely got it, as the cash line for this slate was an insanely high 285.75.
I say “I needed this cash” because my greatest weakness in DFS is that I can be an extremely streaky player. I’ve mentioned this before, and I’ll mention it again (even though it slices deep into my soul each time I bring this up): last baseball season, I went through a more-than-two-week stretch during which I did not cash once in cash games. The total tally from that stretch? – 0-17! Some of it was variance. But the longer the losing streak stretched, the worse my play became. I have looked back on that streak during the offseason to figure out what I can do next time around to stop one of those streaks more quickly. I have since used what I learned from that losing streak to “stop losing streaks before they start” (or, at least, to try to). After all: I had a pretty nice MLB season last year, money-wise…and then I confront the jarring reality of how much better the season, as a whole, would have been if even seven of the slates during that 17-day stretch had been turned into winning slates. (To give you an idea: I played about $1k a day in cash games last baseball season. If I had cashed just seven of those 17 days, that would have been an extra $14k in my pocket at the end of the season.)
Anyhow, I was able to play well on this day because I looked at my previous slate and saw that even if I had played E’Twaun and Stanley, I would have fallen short in cash. Somehow, that works as something of a powerful elixir for me. It’s funny, right? – in the first slate we looked at in this article, I used Jordan Hill over Thaddeus Young honestly, it was partially my (subconscious) frustration with myself over that mistake that led me, the very next day, to use Bryce Dejean-Jones over E’Twaun Moore. Because I intentionally took a day off after that “BDJ over E’Twaun” slate to clear my head, however, and because I would have fallen short in cash even if I’d made the correct plays (which somehow makes things a lot better in my mind), I was able to get on the right track with this one.
If you compare the “points scored” to the “price” of all the guys on my team on this day, you will see that all of them except Brook Lopez hit value, at worst. (In fact, if every guy on the team “hits value,” you’ll score 250 on DraftKings – which is usually enough to fall just short of the cash line. On this team, Brook Lopez only got about halfway to hitting value, as my second most expensive player, and I still scored over 290 – which indicates how well the rest of my team performed.)
Also worth noting: Brook was the only player on my team who was under 20% owned (and half of my team had ownership of 40% or higher). Which again illustrates that if you can be on the side of high ownership across the board, you will be on the correct side in cash games more often than not. Also, this illustrates just how powerful recency bias can be. Brook Lopez was 49.7% owned just one day earlier. But on this day, in a matchup against Denver that was almost as good as the matchup the day before, he was only 15.2% owned. Once again, he disappointed – but he was still very much a quality play (maybe not “the right play”; I did switch off DeAndre Jordan at the last minute in favor of Brook, which cost me about 20 points, and if I had been in the midst of a winning streak, I surely would have stuck with DeAndre – which indicates to me that he was the better play; with that said, however, Brook was still an extremely solid play on paper). This is a reminder that paying attention to ownership percentages (every single day!) can help you spot areas where quality plays are set to be under-owned, providing you with a big edge in tourneys over time.
2/9/16
Score: 224.25
Result: Finished miles out of the money; this was my worst finish since we started this article.
Team:
13.00 Raul Neto – $3600
28.50 Evan Turner – $5600
57.25 Carmelo Anthony – $8400
18.25 Jabari Parker – $5000
13.75 Miles Plumlee – $3100
59.75 Stephen Curry – $11,000
25.75 Draymond Green – $9300
8.00 Tyler Zeller – $3800
This was a solid tournament lineup. The thinking was correct in a lot of spots. The lineup just wasn’t quite great for cash – and the lineup as a whole worked out a lot worse in a lot of places than could have been expected going in.
It was also sloppy in a few spots. Let me show you what I mean.
Everyone was on Avery Bradley at the same price as Evan Turner, because Bradley is the starter and sees about five or six more minutes per game than Turner. But Turner was going to be lower-owned, and he will outscore Bradley about half the time. When Turner was still priced in the mid-$4k range, he was clearly the better play. When both guys are priced the same, the safety of the guy who sees more minutes is the better play in cash, while the guy with lower ownership is the better play in tourneys. Evan Turner was not, by any means, a bad play; but simply put, he was not the right play, either. The fact that Avery Bradley outscored Evan Turner this night is not the proof of that; the proof is simply in the fact that each guy was priced the same as the other, and we know for sure Bradley will see more minutes.
Carmelo was 44% owned. Curry was 54% owned. Draymond was 40% owned. All of those were, obviously, quality plays on paper. The big problem – and the main reason I said this slate was sloppy in spots – was because I actually did not like Draymond Green at all. Of course, there was no way I expected him to put up only 25.75 fantasy points, but I also did not feel he was worth his price, when his involvement in the offense is all over the place, and it is rare that he actually hits the 46.5 points he would have needed to justify this salary. I also didn’t like Jabari Parker. I’m not sure why I used him. It seemed clever, I guess, given his poor performance in recent games and his guaranteed low ownership. He was not a bad play at all in tourneys when you consider his high upside and his matchup against the Celtics. But it didn’t make sense in cash. What made a lot more sense was using Derrick Favors and the overlooked LaMarcus Aldridge for $200 less than Draymond and Jabari cost. I knew going into the slate that this made more sense. Somehow, I couldn’t do it.
Favors and Aldridge combined for 77 points. That’s 33 more points than Draymond and Jabari combined for. That also would have gotten me into the money in double-ups.
A lot of plays on this night did not work out. I couldn’t bring myself to use Greg Monroe against the Celtics once he was coming off the bench – and I don’t regret that (in cash games, at least), as the inability to predict exactly how he would be used in this game made fading him the right move. I also don’t regret using Miles Plumlee, in spite of his poor performance. He can be counted on for about a fantasy point per minute, and even though Greg Monroe was certain to see the court plenty, I figured we could count on 20-22 minutes from Plumlee. He saw only 18, but in his previous two games with 18 to 19 minutes, he put up 17.5 and 21.8 fantasy points. He made sense here. And while the Celtics’ unpredictable rotations with their big men (as well as their overall depth) should have scared me off Tyler Zeller a bit, I feel comfortable that I had done enough digging on this pick during the day to feel it was the right play; I just happened to use him on a night on which he started slowly and Jonas Jerebko got scorching hot, which left Zeller on the bench more than he’d been on the bench in a while.
In all, I didn’t hate this lineup, even after it crashed so spectacularly. A lot of things simply didn’t work out, and I was still just one switch (Favors and Aldridge over Draymond and Jabari) away from cashing.
That’s sort of a theme throughout this horrible week, huh? On the first night, I used Hill where it made a lot more sense to use Thad, and this knocked me out of the money. On the second night, I used BDJ over E’Twaun and Marvin over Stanley; thankfully, I would have finished outside the money either way, but it was another night in which a couple dumb plays made my score far worse than it should have been. The third night, I made a last-minute switch from DeAndre Jordan to Brook Lopez that cost me about 20 points (though thankfully I still cashed). And on this night, my last decision was “Draymond and Jabari or Favors and Aldridge”? If I had polled a collection of smart NBA DFSers that night, the opinion may very well have been split, as Jabari’s upside made his $5k price tag extremely appealing in that matchup against the Celtics, and 40% of the field felt Draymond Green warranted a spot at $9300. The way I played things was not necessarily “dumb,” and I’m aware enough to acknowledge that if things had been reversed (if I had rostered Favors/Aldridge instead of Jabari/Draymond, and if, say, Aldridge had bombed while going overlooked by most of the field while Draymond had a huge game at 40% ownership), I’d be explaining why it had been wrong for me to do what I did. But the simple truth is: on that night, I did not feel Draymond was worth the price tag. As such, I should have trusted myself.
I was one decision per night away from being 3-1 in cash games to this point last week. I just happened to make the wrong decision each time.
Can we make it five for five on being “one decision away from a much better score”? God, I hope not…
2/10/16
Score: 255.75
Result: Finished a few points out of the money in cash.
Team:
23.25 Ish Smith – $7200
25.00 Archie Goodwin – $6100
30.00 Marcus Morris – $5300
35.75 Zach Randolph – $6500
48.50 Jahlil Okafor – $6300
26.75 Derrick Rose – $7000
31.50 Jerami Grant – $4800
35.00 Rudy Gobert – $6800
This was the best team I built all week. I played this slate with more confidence than I had played any other slate throughout the week – preventing myself from overthinking things, and forcing myself to fully trust my research and approach.
I also liked Mike Conley, Elfrid Payton, and Dwight Howard a lot on this slate. I could have moved from Ish Smith or Derrick Rose down to Conley and moved up from Gobert to Howard, and I would have cashed. But I am also happy with the decisions I made.
Lately, I’ve been trying to avoid “sweating a slate throughout the night.” In my opinion: when you simply sweat a slate, it adds nothing of value to your life. This is important for me, as I spend about 25 hours each week doing fiction reading and writing, another 12 to 14 hours each week playing DFS (that number grows during MLB – and honestly, that number may even be higher during NFL, in spite of the fact that I spend the whole week playing with roster combinations for one single slate – for which I typically build one single team), and on top of that I throw in a good 20 to 25 hours of work each week on RG articles and other writing projects (which swells to 30+ hours during NFL, with how long the NFL Edge takes to research and write). In all, that’s a good 60+ hours each week. I don’t sleep a lot, and I don’t have kids, so I’m able to pull it off. But I do have a wife with whom I love spending time, and I do like to have some time to enjoy life outside of “work” (though I also, admittedly, enjoy “work” quite a bit). All of this has combined to help me realize: sitting around and doing nothing but watching the scores update on my phone is a waste of time compared to other things I could be doing.
With all that said: paying attention to how games are being played really can be valuable. Lately – as I mentioned above – I have tried to keep up with the play-by-play of a couple games each night while doing other work, as this can be valuable in understanding how various players are being employed. And on this night, keeping up with games (rather than just checking scores when the night ended) helped me see that I really did build a good team and simply got hit hard by variance.
Ish Smith against Sacramento should have been a shoe-in for 5x value. If we played this slate 100 times (and if he didn’t get hurt in any of those game), he would probably score above 23.25 in 95 of those games. This was just a situation in which things did not work out.
Since the coaching change in Phoenix, Archie Goodwin had played at least 37 minutes in every game. In this game, he played 28 (in spite of a sparkling 9-15 shooting – most of which came at the very end of the game when they finally let him loose).
With KCP, Ilyasova, and (late announcement) Reggie Jackson all out for the Pistons, Marcus Morris was in a tremendous spot to take on extra offensive responsibility. He had over 20 points at halftime, but finished with 30, as he sort of disappeared in the second half.
Z-Bo was 75% owned with Marc Gasol out, so extra minutes would not have made a massive difference in my cash game standings…but he did not play at all in the fourth quarter of this blowout against Brooklyn, which left his points short of what they should have been.
Derrick Rose also did not play in the fourth quarter. Even with his price rising and with the matchup against Atlanta being not-exactly-great, Rose was still an excellent value at only $7k with Jimmy Butler missing in action, and he was on pace to exceed value once again if this game had not turned into a blowout. (Playing Rose also brought the regrettable side effect of “Kiss From A Rose” getting stuck in my head – which is mostly unrelated to this article, but is worth pointing out as a negative detail from the night nonetheless.)
Jerami Grant and Jahlil Okafor were late changes for me with Nerlens Noel out. Grant was demolishing Sacramento, and then got hurt in the fourth quarter.
Finally: I used Okafor and Gobert knowing that Al Horford would be more popular in the same price range, but feeling that these two were superior plays. Each guy I used outscored Horford (though, of course, Horford owners were hurt by the same blowout that hurt Rose), but Gobert should have done even more than he did in his matchup against new Orleans. His minutes were severely limited in the first half after he picked up two fouls in the first few minutes of the game.
Through paying attention that night to what was going on in some of these games, I was able to endure a fourth losing slate in a five-slate span without suffering any negative impacts on my DFS psyche. If I could go back and play this slate again, I would make the same plays. If we played this slate 100 times and I made these plays each time, I am absolutely certain I would cash far more often than not. Which is a concept of DFS I talk about a lot, and which, really, is the best way to approach DFS.
Heck, if I had approached this entire week that way, I would have gone 3-2 overall in cash games, as two of the non-cashing slates would have turned into cashing slates.
I realize that now (now that I have endured this painful recap of the train wreck that this last week became). That’s the lesson I’m taking from this:
“With each slate – at each position – make the plays you feel would enable you to cash ‘far more often than not’ if we played that exact slate 100 times.”
If you constantly do that, you will cash far more often than not.
That’s a lesson we all know, in theory. But oftentimes, it becomes a lesson we need to be reminded of again and again.
And now, I’ll spend a week trying not to be frustrated with myself over how poorly I closed out my NBA play before the All Star Break. I’ll try to use my time in a positive manner, rather than in a self-destructive manner, as I prepare for my next week of play.
Hey – you might as well do the same! Use this week to study a bit. Use this week to examine your play. Use this week to get ready to come back and dominate.
Deal?
I won’t see you at the top of the leaderboards this week, because there are no NBA leaderboards to visit. But I’ll see you next Friday, when we’ll take a look at some things we can do moving forward to continue our progress toward consistently profitable NBA Play.