NBA Core Plays: Tuesday, March 12th

by Andy Means (meansy53) Last Updated 2019-03-12 22:24:18 Premium Content Part of the product SimLabs+

Andy Means will be bringing Premium subscribers his top cash game plays and tournament pivots to build around. A former Duke basketball walk-on and now full-time DFS player, Andy will take an in-depth look into each of his core plays, and then blend it all together from a roster construction perspective. On weekends, the great Justin Van Zuiden takes the reigns.

Tuesday, March 12th

For those that read this article the past few years, welcome back. For those that are new, I appreciate you stopping by! Here is a quick review of what I am trying to accomplish with NBA Core Plays.

First and foremost, the Core Plays I reference below are for cash game formats (e.g. 50/50, H2H, double-ups). They are the players I think you absolutely must have in your cash game lineup(s) on that day’s main slate. There is a ton of great DFS information available nowadays. However, it can also be difficult to comb through all of that information and know whom exactly to put in your lineup. After reading a lot of articles and listening to a few podcasts, you suddenly are left thinking that there are 20 guys you should be putting into your cash game lineup (“Player X is an elite play!”; “Player Y is perfect for cash games!”; “Player Z is viable in all formats!”).

My goal with this article is to actually prioritize all of those viable plays. So the first player you see listed below is who I think is the most important. The second player listed is the second most important and so on and so forth. I will usually provide 3-5 players each day. While some (or all) of the plays may seem obvious, we still want to make those plays and let our opponents be the ones to make the mistakes. Not building around this core set of players, in my opinion, is a recipe for an unprofitable slate.

Since I know a lot of DFS players only play tournaments, I also provide tournament pivots off of those Core Plays. I usually try to have the pivots be from the same position, same game, or same price range. The Core Plays will usually see some of the highest ownership on the slate, so how you mix them into your lineups for tournaments is up to your own personal tournament strategy.

IMPORTANT: I will make every effort to update this article as news breaks throughout the day until approximately one hour before rosters lock. So please check back often as I update my Core Plays. Remember, what may be a great play at 2:00 PM is not always a great play at 6:00 PM. To get my most up-to-date thoughts on the slate before lineups lock, be sure to tune into Crunch Time. Kevin Roth and I will go live thirty minutes before lineups lock, and you can watch right there in LineupHQ as you build lineups.

If you aren’t already doing so, give me a follow on Twitter. I won’t answer too many specific DFS questions there in order to keep everything behind the paywall, so hit me up on our RotoGrinders Discord chat if you have any specific questions. I will try to get to everything as time permits. Now let’s get to it!

THE CORE

Perhaps the best part about working for a company like RotoGrinders is that they give us the freedom to treat the articles we write as our own. If we want to go off on a random tangent, that is okay. If we want to share something personal about our lives, that is okay too.

And the latter is what I am going to do right now. Feel free to skip down to the plays if you’d like, but I really hope you stick around and hear my story.

20 years ago tonight, something happened that has left a bigger imprint on me than anything else in my life. Bigger than when I got married. Bigger than when I was able to fulfill my lifelong dream of playing basketball at Duke.

On March 12, 1999, I watched my high school teammate collapse and die during our regional final tournament game.

This is the best article I can find on it all of these years later, but I also want to tell everything from my side and detail what I remember.

It was my junior year of high school, and boy was our team legit. Our point guard was the heart and soul of our team. He was this weird combo of Wojo (when thinking grit, toughness, competitive spirit, etc.) and White Chocolate J-Will (when thinking flair, swagger, etc.).

Chris Hill was our shooting guard, who went on to start for four years under Tom Izzo at Michigan State.

I started at small forward.

We had this trio of towers that rotated at the four spot. The starter was a 6’7” beanpole with bounce as well as range to the three-point line. Another was 6’8” and went on to win the state high jump in track and field later that spring. The other was 6’9” with incredible post moves and passing ability for someone that age.

And then there was Big John. He was 7 feet tall, and one of the biggest kids I’d ever been around. And by “biggest kid”, I mean that both literally and figuratively. He towered over everyone, but he would also be the first one to “pants” you or give you a wet willy if you weren’t looking. There was never a dull moment around Big John.

He had gone to two different high schools before coming to Lawrence North. Each place prior said he would never play for them. “You are too slow” or “You are too heavy” are things that were said to him. When he came to Lawrence North, he underwent a transformation and ultimately just started beasting everyone he faced. That year, he committed to go play for Tubby Smith at Kentucky the following fall.

We were #1 in the state almost the whole year from what I recall, only losing our last regular season game in a difficult conference road game. We got through sectionals unscathed, and went on to face the team that catapulted us in the rankings after our only loss, Bloomington South.

That’s right…#1 vs. #2. The common thought was that this was the REAL state final; whoever made it out of this should easily go on to win it all.

To be honest, most of the night is a blur, although there are a few things I remember. I know for sure I played like crap; just couldn’t buy a shot. I know Chris struggled shooting that night as well.

The only one who had it going that night was Big John. Bloomington South was pretty much the only team that decided to play him one on one that year. Every other team would at least bring a double-team.

And later in the season, teams even started throwing a triangle-and-2 at us. They would have someone shadow Chris. They would have someone shadow me. And they would basically zone up the other three. And by zone up, I really mean triple team John. They would dare the other two on the court to beat them.

Well, guarding John one-on-one wasn’t a very good idea. Early in the 3rd quarter, he already had 22 points and 13 rebounds. The article above says he scored the first 10 points of the second half.

I still smile about it to this day, but one of the few things I remember specifically about that night was I assisted on his last basket. And let me tell you, it wasn’t because I was some savvy passer. We had the ball out-of-bounds underneath our own basket. Somehow, I was wide open right next to the hoop. I received the pass and thought I had an easy lay-in.

NOPE.

Many other players might have had an easy dunk in that situation, but I was what you’d call a below the rim type of player. A defender had stuffed that crap right back into my face, but I was still able to corral the rebound. By that point, at least two or three defenders had me trapped on the baseline.

Panicking, I did what most of us did when we were in that situation. Threw it to John!

Except this time I didn’t throw it way up to him so no one else could get it; I think the basket was blocking me. He had been camped out near the basket on the other side of the lane and was the only teammate I saw. I somehow found a crease a fired a rocket right at his stomach. I kid you not, I threw the ball so hard at it him that it literally caromed off of his stomach and dropped right into his hands. It probably would have knocked the wind out of anyone else, but Big John grabbed it with his massive hands and then (I’m almost positive) proceeded to just dunk all over someone. That is how I remember it anyways; no one is going to tell me any different 20 years later.

Soon after that is where everything gets real blurry for me. The article says he asked out of the game due to shortness of breath. All I remember is seeing him collapse on the bench as a timeout was wrapping up. Being only 16 years old at the time, I didn’t really think anything of it. No way in my worst nightmares would I even consider a kid that age could just collapse and die like that.

I soon realized though how serious the situation actually was. I glanced into the stands during the lull and literally everyone I looked at was crying uncontrollably. Our team had started forming a prayer huddle on the court. What in the world was going on??

The only other thing I remember is our team being told to go in the locker room, where we were told that “John had been stabilized”, and it was our decision whether we wanted to continue the game. From what I remember, we jumped at the chance to go out and win the game for John so that maybe he could play the next week in our next step in the tournament.

I later learned that he had never been stabilized; he had pretty much died right there on the court. I don’t know why we were told that (or if those words were ever actually uttered to us), but we did go out and finish the game. Unfortunately, we ended up losing in overtime.

We gathered on the bus to drive home, and that is when our coach told us that John had died. The only thing I remember is bursting through people trying to hold me back from getting off of the bus. I escaped their clutches…and just started running. I don’t remember why or to where. After all, I’d never been to this gym or this school.

Writing the words down now though, I think I know what I was running from: basketball. It had been my whole life up to that point, and that season in particular was the most magical thing I have ever been a part of. It was the perfect team, the perfect coaching staff, and the perfect student body.

(Our fellow students showed more support for us that year than any group of students should. I mean, they showed up to road games before the home team’s crowd and laid claim to a specific section of the arena as if it were their own. Who does that? It is so cliché to say it, but we honestly were one big team.)

After that night, basketball went from being a passion to becoming a burden. I was able to mask it okay during AAU that summer; the change of scenery—not having Lawrence North on my chest—helped. But I honestly wanted nothing to do with playing basketball the following season for my senior year. There was a huge part of me that just wanted to quit, but I don’t think I ever vocalized that to anyone. Besides, basketball was what I knew, so I figured things would get better over time.

They really didn’t though. We ended up losing early in the tournament that year to a team we shouldn’t have, and looking back I felt like I was almost sleepwalking through that game. I didn’t record a single point and was probably the sole reason we lost. It was almost as if my subconscious wanted the basketball version of my life to be done for good that night. And honestly, I wouldn’t have argued against it.

Looking back now, I see how crappy that was for my coaches and teammates. But I was so young, I just didn’t know any better. I still didn’t know how to handle such an impactful life event that hit me like a ton of bricks only a year earlier.

As expected, I felt a massive sense of relief once I was able to wipe my hands of basketball. I remember feeling so much more joy after school the rest of my senior year when I could go be a normal student and not have to go to practice. It was almost as if a new part of my life was about to begin.

Of course, soon after that is when I started to find out that walking on at Duke was suddenly a realistic possibility. That would later open up a new personal battle between separate parts of my inner self: the one who had grown up with his sole dream being to play basketball at Duke vs. the one who vowed to never touch a basketball again.

We know now which version of me won that battle, but it certainly wasn’t an easy decision. Maybe I will delve into that more another time!

I appreciate any of you who made it this far into my rambling and let me tell my story. I don’t think I have some profound thing to say to recap all of this other than: it is okay to open up and talk about things.

Here we are 20 years later from that night, and I can count on one hand how many times I have talked about that night in this much depth. And barely at all in written form. It felt very therapeutic being able to open about something so impactful that happened to me, even if I’ve never met almost all of you who are reading this. If you have something bottled up inside, good or bad, talk to someone about it! It can be your significant other, your best friend or, just like in my case, a complete stranger.

And now that I have depressed all of you, let’s move on to what you all came here for. It’s NBA time baby! There are plenty of relevant injury situations that we are monitoring that are going to have huge impacts on this slate (Minnesota and Lakers specifically), but we know we can start with two salary relief plays based on things we already (mostly) know. Depending on how the news cycle goes today, I may hold off on tagging anyone else until the afternoon injury report is released.

Ryan Arcidiacono, Chicago Bulls

FanDuel: $3,500, PG