NBA Four Point Play Review: Monday, February 7th
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 Four Point Play [$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
Awesemo played 150 lineups and took strong stances at each position, which can be required on such a short slate in order to differentiate from the moderate ownerships at each position. Damian Lillard had bounced back to an expensive salary relative to his previous game (+$1100) in OKC while putting up 3 forgettable DFS performances over his last 4 games. These aspects, along with an insignificant injury scare, lead to low ownership and a perfect opportunity to take a stand on a superstar who has regular 60 point upside. On the same note, Kemba Walker was priced up and had a three straight games under 5x (with one under 2x). However, he was going up against Brooklyn which can be a “get right” spot for anyone seeing an iota of usage. Small Forward was a bit of a wasteland where only one SF-only-eligible played was owned over 10% (Michael Kidd-Gilchrist), and we mostly saw Batum, Bojan, and Aaron Gordon slotted there. At power forward, Frank Kaminsky started for Cody Zeller and has shown over 1 FPT/min potential. He was was a lock and load for most pro’s (2nd highest owned player [61.7%] for pros behind Marvin Williams [63.3%]). Clint Capela was seeing the increased minutes as he returned to starting in his 4th game in a row. Earlier in the season, he saw a productive stretch of consistently scoring 30-40 DK points on ~30 minutes. Awesemo took advatnage of Clint’s cheaper salary (-$700) from his early productive stint and carried it into a stellar performance: 94% cash rate, 1st and 2nd place, with 14 lineups inside the top-100.
Pianoclub couldn’t afford the wide array of low-owned superstars due to his 60% ownership in James Harden. However, as Damian Lillard and others didn’t perform out of this world, he made due with a combination of Kemba, Elfrid Payton, and Patrick Beverley. In the end, the James Harden exposure ended up costing him significant upside on a majority of lineups due to his 4.4x return. Piano only finished with one lineup inside the top-100, but made it count with a 3rd place finish. The lineup featured Patrick Beverley and Trevor Ariza as a leverage play off of Harden, Dirk Nowitzki at a reduced salary, and Nikola Vucevic going up against a neutral DRPM Clint Capela. Marvin Williams was seeing an increase in minutes alongside Frank Kaminsky as to where combined, they were almost owned at a 100% rate and overlapped on only a handful of lineups.
ThatStunna featured a similar ownership structure to that of Awesemo, which can be more expected on these short slates, but did not feature as much success. He still finished with a 91.3% cash rate, but did not snatch up the top-end finishes, with only seven lineups in the top-100 and none in the top-10 (actually splitting a 31st place finish with the same lineup as Awesemo). Stunna featured Kemba in significantly more lineups as he favored the Nets matchup heavily. On the same token, he took a 12% stab at Jeremy Lamb, who would see more minutes late in the game if their lead took off (finished with 28.75 DK points on 19 minutes; 9.27x) at only $3100.
Single-Entry Winner of the Game
Gandini33 tied for 22nd as the top-single entry player. The $4 buy-in for the feature NBA prize pool makes the Four Point Play a multi-entry endeavour for some of those players who may have only played a bullet or two in the NFL Millionaire Makers. This drives down the overall single-entry ownership but that doesn’t stop those from buying in just for their shot at $50k. With that being said, the low-owned portions of Gandini’s lineup were structured around a down game from James Harden as he looked to Trevor Ariza and Patrick Beverley to pick up the slack. Lillard and McCollum would look to take advantage of Dallas’ poor defensive backcourt while Batum and Kaminsky were seeing heavy minutes versus the porous Nets. However, the most important piece of a top-end lineup for the slate went to Nikola Vucevic, who was featured in the top-23 lineups.
Single-Entry vs. Awesemo/Pianoclub/ThatStunna
Out of 147,058 entries in the Four Point Play, 16.9% of those entries were entered courtesy of players using a single bullet. The table below compares the exposures of those single entries to the exposures of Awesemo, Pianoclub, ThatStunna, and 75 other top professionals picked off of RotoGrinders’ NBA leaderboard:
