JeffelJefe's Winning FanDuel PBC Qualifier Lineup
FanDuel recently announced they will be holding their exclusive $750,000 Playboy Basketball Championship in February, hosted of course at the famous Playboy Mansion. You can only get one of the 70 entries to this contest through qualifiers that they run, and winners of these tickets are flown out to Los Angeles to compete for the $100,000 grand prize. After hearing glowing reviews about how well FanDuel ran their live finals for NFL, I was really excited about trying to qualify for this contest. I fired a single bullet into the $175K Monday Slam and three into the $25 PBC Qualifier, and I hoped for the best. In this article I want to provide some insight into my thought process that night.
First, a little background about me: I’m an experienced high-stakes season-long player and sports handicapper and only got into DFS a little over a year ago. I quickly become obsessed with all of the daily sports and entered this NFL season with a mindset of taking it very seriously moving forward. That mindset led to an incredibly successful NFL season with a couple narrow misses at attending some big live finals. Entering the NBA season, the goal was simple: Make one of these live finals. This point was highlighted on a short list of goals for 2015 that I had written out a few days before we entered the new year.
I’ll be including some of the analysis from the NBA Grind Down I wrote that Monday on RotoGrinders. I used three GPP lineups, but this will focus on the one that was used as both the single entry in the Slam and as one of three entries in the PBC Qualifier.
The Core
Bradley Beal, Kemba Walker and Brandon Knight were my main targets of the night. I knew I’d start my lineup with them and go from there. Here were my comments:
Bradley Beal — Beal is one of my favorite plays today. I don’t think Patrick Beverley will completely shut down John Wall, but I do think he will have enough of an impact to where Wall will need some help. Beal gets the best matchup for the Wizards and is shooting 50% from three point range in his last four games. Get shooters in your lineup when they start to heat up.
Brandon Knight — Kemba Walker is having a hard time defending opposing point guards right now. Elfrid Payton had probably the best game of his career against Kemba on Saturday, and Knight himself put up 34 actual points against Walker a couple games before that. Knight loves the matchup and is averaging 50 fantasy points per game in their two meetings already.
Kemba Walker — I mentioned in the previous section how much Brandon Knight loves this matchup, but Walker has had nearly as much success, averaging 42.1 fantasy points per game against Knight. With Jefferson still ailing, Walker will need to continue to be more aggressive, and the 31 shots that he took against Orlando is evident of that.
The Value Plays
After inserting my main targets, I then wanted to figure out which value plays I was most comfortable with to determine how much of my cap room I’d have left over to fill in the other positions. Marvin Williams and John Henson were guys that I plugged in right away, and with some tinkering and hearing that Gary Neal was doubtful to play, I added Gerald Henderson. A few minutes before lineup lock, it did come out that Neal would play, but it was going to be in limited minutes and at that point I liked my lineup too much to change it. Marvin Williams checked in at 10.4% owned despite averaging over 30 fantasy points per game against the Bucks this season, so I was stoked to see that.
The Elite Plays
I had told everyone that if I was going to spend up on one guy, it would be DeMarcus Cousins. Jimmy Butler was also a guy I listed as a safe, elite play and he ended up being extremely under-owned for how well he has been producing. Here is what I wrote about each:
Jimmy Butler — Butler leads the league in minutes at 39.6 per game. Even in blowouts he usually plays well over 30 minutes. That, combined with his role in the offense, establishes a high floor night in and night out regardless of the matchup.
DeMarcus Cousins — If you’re looking to spend up on one player today, it should be Cousins. He touches the ball on offense more than any big man in the league and is fourth overall in usage percentage. The other high-priced options all have warts: Harden is still adjusting with Josh Smith, John Wall is being guarded by Patrick Beverley, and Chris Paul/Blake Griffin are at the highest risk of sitting in a blowout.
The Last Guy In
When the rest of your lineup does as well as this one did, you’re able to miss on a guy. Tobias Harris definitely qualifies as a big swing and miss. I had the rest of my lineup set and had enough for Harris, a guy that wasn’t thrilling and didn’t have the best matchup but was a decent option compared to the other small forwards. As you can see in the writeup, I wasn’t in love with him, yet he was still a recommended secondary option.
Tobias Harris — This could be a trap because I don’t like the matchup or pace, but when you factor in Harris’ price on FanDuel, the position scarcity, and the requirement of rostering two small forwards, he does make for a fine option. He’s not a guy that you want to target, rather you slot him in where remaining cap room dictates.
So I guess I buried the lead here, but I ended up winning the Q and finishing 10th in the Slam! No matter how great you are at DFS, it’s pretty rare that you’re able put it all together like this in one night, so I feel very fortunate for that. I’m wrong plenty too, but I hope that seeing the process on a big winning night can be helpful to someone. I’ve always said that if I win a big GPP or Q, I hope I put content out that day so that others could benefit. It was great to hear people come back and thank me for the Marvin Williams pick that led them to a winning night.
I can’t wait until February 7th so that I can try to take this thing down! If you’re able to win a spot also, let’s grab a drink.
- El Jefe