NBA Medium Finale Review: Wednesday, March 30th
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 Wednesday slate GPPs.
This week we looked at the $300k Medium Finale [$300k Guaranteed] on DraftKings with a buy-in of $44.
Multi-Entry Grinders of the Game
Bcalicore tended to stay pretty close to the pro chalk plays of the evening while going slightly more heavy on a couple of players: Kyle Lowry (recent performance = low ownership), Jordan Hamilton (injury start), John Henson (recent performance & cheap price). With the chalk plays hitting and Hamilton/Henson each going for ~8.5x, bcalicore was able to cash in 50% of his lineups and landed 9x top 50 finishes.
On just 50 entries, ChipotleAddict went heavier on a smaller core of players: Toney Douglas, Khris Middleton, Derrick Williams, Zach Randolph, DeMarcus Cousins, and Alexis Ajinca all were over 60% exposure. With a strong core of stars and scrubs who all went over 5x value, mixing in some additional peripheral players pushed him into a 50% cash rate and a 24th place finish.
TheClone split the difference on the strategies as he went heavy with 200 entries and players with extreme exposure who he was most confident in. Derrick Williams had been thrust into the starting lineup with Kristaps Porzingas out and had played quite well in spot starts or when receiving heavy minutes (0.9 fpt/min). Demarcus Cousins had gone for a minimum of 4.4x over his last 16 games played, averaging 55.7 fpts/game, good for 5.46x and a peak of 75 fantasy points. While a little bit more volatile, Towns was also doing the heavy lifting on his team, boasting a high floor and even higher ceiling. TheClone’s picks paid off with 7x top 50 finishes and a 5th place finish over 200 entries.
Single-Entry Winner of the Game
EarlVJames played a mixture of players from different teams and didn’t stack any teams outside of Dwyane Wade and Hassan Whiteside. Goran Dragic, although locked in as playing, didn’t sound too optimistic that he was over his illness, leaving Wade, Whiteside, and Deng would need to do the heavy lifting (going into overtime didn’t hurt either). Hood, Parker, and Jonas had been on mini-heaters and continued their streaks in pace-up games in positive positional match-ups. JaMychal Green had been great value while filling in for an injured Z-Bo, but upon his return to the starting lineup, his ownership sank to 1.2% in anticipation of reduced minutes and usage. Fortunately for EarlVJames, Green played roughly the same number of minutes and returned 7x value (more than his last 2 starts).
Single-Entry vs. bcalicore/ChipotleAddict/TheClone
Out of 7,837 entries in the Medium Finale, 1,918 (24.5%) 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 bcalicore, ChipotleAddict, TheClone, and 25 other top NBA professionals picked off of RotoGrinders’ leaderboard:
