NBA $500K Valentine's Day Special Review: Tuesday, February 14th
The Grinder review series will provide the reader with a breakdown of the exposures of “top of the leaderboard” players, the top single-entry lineup, and a comparison between all single entry lineups and professionals for large slate DraftKings GPPs. All players have been merged into the positions they are eligible for on FanDuel to give a more accurate and concise view of exposure by position.
This week, we looked at the $500K Valentine’s Day Special [$50K to 1st!] on DraftKings with a buy-in of $4 and maximum entry limit of 150 lineups per person.
Multi-Entry Grinders of the Game
Devobrain played true point guards more than any other position besides small forward. He was overweight on Ricky Rubio compared to both the field and average pro ownership, which resulted in a near 6x pt/k$ value. He avoided the slate landmine that was Kyle Lowry as he owned him close to the field rate, but just 17% less than the average pro (~4.1 pt/k$). He whiffed on both highly owned shooting guards which didn’t hurt him as much due both being less than $4500. Small forward was packed with talent due to the multi-position eligibility on Draftkings, but for those players highly owned, he only seemed to exceed the standard 5x on Jimmy Butler. Ironically, his performing small forward on a ratio-basis, Doug McDermott, was only owned twice in his top 27 lineups. Devo was high on Larry Nance, who put up 26.5 points on just 24 minutes and 6 FGA. He was a popular pick among the pro’s, but Devo gained the additional edge by owning him at an even greater 18% clip (+34.5% over field). Overall, many of the duds capped devobrain’s top-end potential, but his overall well rounded picks allowed him to cash at a 52% rate.
Drolson22 ended up heavy on the Lakers, owning Jordan Clarkson at a 90% clip, Lou Williams at 46%, and Larry Nance at 61%. These values all outpaced the field and pro’s by significant margins and paid dividends as each went for over 6.2 pt/k$. While landing those Laker values, he also managed to limit his exposure to the Lakers busts: Julius Randle and D’Angelo Russell. The overall position structure mirrored a typical setup with an over-abundance of ball handlers, but lacked big men due to the value at small forward on the small slate. In the end, a significant ownership in Kyle Lowry, Matt Barnes, and Jonas Valanciunas put a damper on some of his strong value plays, but he still made out with a 58.8% cash rate. However, he was only able to top-out with a 932nd finish.
Shawnzhan’s ownership structure was quite different than the other pros and quite even across the board. He still played a significant ownership at each position, like the others, due to the compacted player pool of a 3-game slate. A quick review of his top plays would make you believe that he made out like a bandit: Ricky Rubio (5.94 pt/k$), Lou Williams (8.38 pt/k$), Jimmy Butler (5.47 pt/k$), and Larry Nance (6.63 pt/k$). However, just like the other pro’s (besides devo), he was under-owned on a number of top-plays for the slate to break into the top-heavy money: DeMarcus Cousins (5.92 pt/k$), Channing Frye (8.67 pt/k$), & Andrew Wiggins (6.81 pt/k$). Shawn still managed to cash at a 59% rate.
Single-Entry Winner of the Game
Awoitas543 & Crowell19 split 7th place with a shared a core of number of high owned picks and the top raw point plays on the slate, as in required on such a small slate (DeMarcus Cousins owned in the top-19 lineups). There had been a number of great low-owned plays, but they did not blow up enough to be required in top-10 lineups: Doug McDermott (5.5%, 7.57 pt/k$), Derrick Williams (4.2%, 6.82 pt/k$), Norman Powell (4%, 6.41 pt/k$). This allowed Awoitas543 to play Lebron James, Brandon Rush, and Doug McDermott, while Crowell19 used Andrew Wiggins, Nick Young, and Tristan Thompson. They each took home $3k on their single bullets.
Single-Entry vs. devobrain/Drolson22/shawnzhan
Out of 147,058 entries in the Four Point Play, 16.2% of those entries were entered courtesy of players using a single bullet. The table below compares the exposures of those single entries to the above multi-entry grinders and 75 other top professionals picked off of RotoGrinders’ NBA leaderboard:
