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NBA Big Events: Big Money Wednesday Recap

by Stephen Keech (SBK) Last Updated 2014-03-14 00:08:59

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Another Wednesday night is in the books, and it was a strange one to say the least. It’s not often that a score of 300 will win you a GPP on a site like DraftKings or FanDuel, but that score was good enough last night to land you at the top of several big events. Poor stat lines from a few highly-owned players in the PHI/SAC game (DMC, Derrick Williams, MCW, Thad Young) played a pretty big role in that, since there weren’t many teams across the industry that lacked exposure to that game. Last night was Day 2 of the DraftStreet DSBBC, with the final night of action tipping off on Friday. FanDuel ran the usual Wednesday tournaments ($110K Super Slam, $50K Super Baller), and DraftKings hosted a WPT qualifier that sends the winner to a VIP poker trip to Miami as well as the $25K Showtime.

In addition to the tournament breakdowns, there will be a section at the end of the article that covers the night’s top scorers/biggest busts around the NBA. Last night featured a 13-game schedule, so there was plenty to pick from. More on the studs and duds of the evening later, but let’s break down the night’s big winners in our community first. All RotoGrinders members who finished in the top-10 of a major tournament will have their names bolded.

DraftStreet DSBBC: Day Two

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Congratulations to all of the top-ten finishers in this event for moving on to day three of the DSBBC finals! Several Grinders will have their shot at being crowned DSBBC champion on Friday night. Here is a breakdown of our remaining members:

The biggest difference maker last night may have actually been sub-4K Cole Aldrich. He was on 9 of the 10 rosters that advanced last night, and hitting 8x value made him almost a must-have player in tournaments on DS. There’s an 80% chance that one of our members takes this thing down, best of luck to everyone on Day 3!

DraftStreet Weekly 50K

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Rudy22ForMVP (aka Troll4MVP, 2nd on NBA Grinder leaderboard) took third place in the $50K last night due in large part to big games from Anthony Davis, Chris Paul, Cole Aldrich and Amir Johnson. The Brow was only 6% owned thanks to the match-up with Memphis along with the popularity of DeMarcus Cousins, but he proved to be one of the nights top GPP gems. Superk444 (582nd on the NBA Grinder leaderboard) finished 4th, followed by j21willy (77th on the NBA Grinder leaderboard) in 5th. GrindersLive host dean78904 (23rd overall, 24th on the NBA Grinder leaderboard) finished 7th, followed by wahoowarrior (1445th overall) in 9th and kenric (338th on the NBA Grinder leaderboard) rounds out the top-ten.

FanDuel $110K Super Slam

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Slamson (aka aami4) finished 4th in this week’s Super Slam, taking home a cool $2,500 with big games out of Nikola Vucevic, Rudy Gay, Kenneth Faried and Amir Johnson. Avoiding DeMarcus Cousins was a good avenue to success last night, especially if you were wise enough to have some exposure to Vucevic at a $2,000 discount. Davelyford (637th on the NBA Grinder leaderboard) and dryan202003 tied for 8th place with bighip21 (1179th on the NBA Grinder leaderboard) two points behind in 10th.

FanDuel $50K Super Baller

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Congratulations to drolson22 (80th on the NBA Grinder leaderboard) on taking down the Super Baller last night! I had my eye on this scoreboard throughout the night and I noticed towards the middle of the late games that he was on the bubble in terms of whether or not he would cash, but he had more minutes remaining then anyone else in the top ten. A second half push from Chris Paul and a nice game from Klay Thompson pushed him into first place late in the LAC/GS game, and he never looked back. Stlcardinalsfan84 (8th overall, 11th on the NBA Grinder leaderboard) finished 3rd, and the only thing holding him back from fighting for the top spot with this entry was a poor game from Kyle Singler. KCcheifsfan73 (29th on the NBA Grinder leaderboard, 33rd overall) finished 4th, followed by uncleflew (1850th on the NBA Grinder leaderboard) in 5th and another entry from stlcardinalsfan84 in 7th.

DraftKings $25K Showtime

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Since a Grinder didn’t take down the WPT qualifier, I’m going against the typical $50K prizepool cutoff and including the $25K Showtime… Mikaryke (339th on the NBA Grinder leaderboard) finished 2nd, and was just 2.5 points behind 1st place with that entry (he also had an entry in 4th place). He avoided the Sacramento landmines by rolling out Rudy Gay and Isaiah Thomas and avoiding DMC/D-Will, and also hit on a few under-owned gems (Nikola Vucevic, Chris Paul, Chris Bosh). DGTballer (264th on the NBA Grinder leaderboard) finished 7th, followed by Traeko (227th on the NBA Grinder leaderboard) in 8th, superk444 in 9th and radthad in 10th.

StarStreet PBC Qualifier

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Big ups to Illinsquad (510th overall) on taking down the PBC seat and a trip to the Mansion! He edged out Al_Smizzle (9th on the NBA Grinder leaderboard, 15th overall) and TommyG1979 (114th on the NBA Grinder leaderboard) by just 1.25 points for the seat with big games from Melo and Amir Johnson in what was a abnormally low scoring night Wednesday night. Tommy had a second entry finish 4th, followed by a tie for 5th place between McJester (1st in the TPOY rankings, 26th overall) and halman (111th on the NBA Grinder leaderboard).

Studs & Duds of Wednesday Night

As you can see from the tournament breakdowns above, there are always a few players that make or break tournament teams on a nightly basis. We dealt with a slew injuries (both pre-game and in-game) last night, but at least most of the critical news broke before 7 EST, minus the Tyreke Evans and Eric Gordon news. Let’s take a look at the difference makers in last night’s games…

Studs

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Anthony Davis – The Brow was somewhat of an afterthought last night due to the tough match-up with Memphis, but he came out and had another one of his 50+ FP performances at home. He’s capable of a monster performance in any match-up, and if you decided to fade DMC and roll with Davis for around the same price, it put you light-years ahead of the field in GPP’s. His final line from last night: 29/10/2 with 4 blocks and a steal.

Blake Griffin – Blake was another way to avoid the down game from Cousins, as he went for over 50 FP’s on sites that don’t deduct for missed shots. He wasn’t very efficient from the field (13 of 28), but no one will complain with a 30/15/3 line to go along with three steals. If you managed to pair up CP3 (16/12/8/3) and Blake, you watched yourself climb up the leaderboard very quickly during the late games.

Carmelo Anthony – Speaking of 50+ FP performances.. Melo was in a very nice spot last night with both Chandler and Stoudemire out of the lineup, and there isn’t a soul on the Celtics capable of defending him one-on-one. He actually wasn’t that efficient either (just 11 of 25 from the field), but you know what you’re getting when you roster Melo. He finished with 34 and 9, which along with a tiny bit of peripheral stats put him over 50 FP’s on performance-based sites.

Isaiah Thomas and Rudy Gay – While targeting the 76ers is almost always a good idea, it’s also possible to bury yourself if you get too invested in their opponent, which was the case last night. There’s always a player or two that puts up big numbers against them, and last night the honors went to Rudy Gay and Isaiah Thomas. Both were right around the 40 FP mark on FanDuel, which was pretty much what you needed from both guys in order to reach value on the price you paid for them. The duo hit value thanks to nice night’s at the free-throw line, going a combined 27-31 from the stripe.

Nikola Vucevic – If you managed to save some cap space at center by rolling out Vuc instead of DMC, you saved yourself a major headache. His match-up with Denver would have made him one of the most popular plays of the day at center had it not been for DMC’s match-up with the Sixers (and the extreme value offered by Cole Aldrich Tyler(player-profile)”:/players/Jeremy_Tyler-13303). Not only was Vuc about $2K cheaper on FanDuel, but he outscored DMC by 12.3 points and finished with a solid 20 points/16 rebounds.

Henry Sims – Uh, where did that come from? I’m not sure Nostradamus could have predicted that Henry Sims would outscore DeMarcus Cousins, but this was the case last night. Sims has gained some notoriety on GrindersLive dating back to his days with the Cavs, but he’ll actually have to be considered as a serious punt option after what he did last night. It’s very likely that we just saw his best game of the season though, so don’t roster him expecting 20/10 again.

Cole Aldrich – He was rostered by 9 of the 10 teams that advanced in the DSBBC last night, going for about 8x value on DraftStreet. Aldrich was priced under $4K so once it was announced that Chandler and Amar’e were out, the starting center spot was left to him. It was anyone’s guess as to how many minutes he would play or how productive he would be with those minutes, but those who took a chance on him had a huge leg up with over 30 FP’s coming from just under 4% of the cap.

Amir Johnson – With Patrick Patterson out of action, Amir remained a popular play and he didn’t disappoint with his 33 minutes of playing time, finishing with 20 and 9 to go along with a combined 3 blocks and steals. His price is still down thanks to Patterson’s emergence over the past month or so, which led to him exceeding value on all sites across the industry.

Wilson Chandler, Kenneth Faried and Ty Lawson – All three of these guys were solid plays in a high scoring game against Orlando, and all three would have double-doubled had Faried come up with just one more rebound. Chandler kept his recent hot streak going, finishing with 21 and 10 while Faried racked up 26 and 9. Lawson did the distributing, as usual, accounting for 12 assists to go along with 17 points and 3 boards.

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Monta Ellis – Monta can be a tough guy to figure out, but he can put you in a really nice position if you take him on one of his good nights. Dirk could have just as easily been mentioned here, but his lack of peripheral stats held him back from having a monster fantasy total, although he was a very efficient 12 of 14 from the field. Monta double-doubled with 16 points and 11 dimes, and was just three boards away from the triple-double.

Duds

Michael Carter-Williams – Coming off a huge game against the Knicks, MCW really struggled in what looked like an even better match-up against the back-court of Isaiah Thomas and Ben McLemore. It’s tough to count on consistent production from anyone on this Philly team, especially a rookie being asked to play huge minutes every night, but I certainly expected more then 19.4 FP’s (FD scoring) out of him against Sacramento.

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DeMarcus Cousins, Derrick Williams and Reggie Evans – It might be a little unfair to call DMC a dud when he puts up 19 and 12 in just 27 minutes, but for what it costs to roster him you need his blocks and steals to exceed his turnover total, but that didn’t happen last night. He turned it over five times and accounted for just 1 steal, which left him under 30 FP’s on some sites. Derrick Williams and Reggie Evans were considered viable punt plays against Philly, but the field shifted to Williams once he was announced as the starter. D-Will posted just 5 points and 6 boards on the night, while Reggie Evans managed to find himself on the court for a total of just three minutes.

Thaddeus Young – As you can see, the Philly/Sacramento game wasn’t nearly as fantasy-friendly as most people had hoped for. Thad’s price has actually been coming down over the past week due to some poor performances following a few monster games after the Turner/Hawes trades, so he seemed like a worthwhile gamble against a Kings team that was starting Rudy Gay at the 4. He ended up shooting an atrocious 5 of 18 from the field, which really hurt owners on efficiency sites like DraftStreet. At least his price will continue to fall…

Gordon Hayward – His price was really tempting on FanDuel last night considering the roster requirements over there, leading to him being about 30% owned in last night’s Super Slam. At this point, we’re all aware of the volatile nature of Hayward’s performances, so I doubt many people were super surprised to see him finish with just 8 points, 6 boards and 6 assists. He didn’t rack up any steals or blocks and turned it over three times, so it was basically an all-around disaster that led to him barely crossing the 20 FP mark last night.

Josh Smith – Smoove was almost as bad as Thad Young from a shooting standpoint, finishing 5 of 17 from the field on the way to a 13/6/1 line. Like Hayward, Smith is one of those guys that is almost impossible to trust in cash games, and he’ll usually make or break your GPP lineups on nights like these. On the second night of a back-to-back on the road, it’s not terribly surprising to see him struggle like this.

Kyle Singler – Like Smoove, Singler couldn’t follow up his strong game Tuesday night with a good game against Toronto. He racked up an uncharacteristically high number of steals against the Kings which led to his big fantasy night, but he finished with just 2 points, 3 boards and 3 turnovers in 28 minutes against the Raptors… ouch.

Maurice Harkless – It was surprising to see people still on him with Oladipo, Afflalo and Harris now healthy, but in fairness he still has been playing a healthy dose of minutes with those guys in the lineup. He drew the start last night with Harris and Oladipo coming off the bench, but his run of success came to an end with just two points and a rebound in 29 minutes.

About the Author

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Stephen Keech (SBK)