Rise & Grind: Monday, February 9th
Welcome to the RotoGrinders cup o’morning joe. Start your day off right here, as we run over yesterday’s happenings and take a peek at the upcoming DFS day.
In Case You Missed It
FanDuel Playboy Basketball Championship – Congratulations to user pmiles for taking first place in the Playboy Basketball Championship (PBC) over the weekend. She (yes, she) built a very impressive team that narrowly edged out “vicksdoggydaycare”. You can view the results here. As much as I wanted vicksdoggydaycare to win, it probably wouldn’t have been good news for FanDuel’s promotional deal with the real Michael Vick. Instead, a woman won a DFS live final for the first time. This is exciting news. While pmiles isn’t a Grinder, Dan Back has requested an interview. Hopefully she will grant the request and we can hear her story.
Ganondorf is Taking His Talents to South Beach – Yawn. Ganondorf punched his ticket to the FanDuel WFBC in Miami last night. I feel obligated to mention it, but honestly this isn’t even news. Ganondorf qualifies for every live final. Seriously though, it takes a lot of work and skill to do what Ganondorf does. Show him some love if you see him around. As far as other big wins over the weekend, you can find them here in the forums. Lots of Grinders had notable wins.
Eric Bledsoe Does it Again – The only thing less newsworthy than Ganondorf qualifying for a live final is an Eric Bledsoe late scratch. Last year, you may remember “notgonnastop” sending Bledsoe a tweet after he was announced as a late scratch. If you don’t remember, the story is here. Last night, Bledsoe was a late scratch again, this time for personal reasons, which we later found out was due to his child being born. Feel free to hop on Twitter and congratulate him, but if he “cost” you thousands, I wouldn’t mention it. He doesn’t take to kindly to that sort of thing.
On the Menu
NBA Tonight – Tonight is one of three NBA DFS slates left before the All Star Break. We have nine games tonight, five tomorrow, and 12 on Wednesday. It will be hard living without late scratches for an entire week, but we will get through it together. For now, let us just enjoy these last few slates. Notorious has his First Look posted already. I’m a little disappointed Hassan Whiteside isn’t highlighted, but I understand why since he is doubtful. It’s hard to look on the bright side without Whiteside, but I’m still going to try and find some other options.
#NarrativeStreet – One good source of DFS goodness is finding players with a little extra motivation. Why not take a stroll down Narrative Street with me? For tonight, Marcin Gortat gets the #RevengeGame bump going against Orlando, where he played from 2007-2010. Sure, that was a long time ago, but revenge has no expiration date. K.J. McDaniels chose this day in 1993 to be born, and officially gets the #BirthdayGame bump. Fire these guys up. Narratives are a real thing.
NHL Tonight – Did you know that someone named Byfuglien had one goal, two assists and six shots last night? If you did, that means you took my advice on Friday and started learning NHL in time for the NBA All Star break. You probably already know how to pronounce By-fuge-lean. Is that right? Let’s check on YouTube. Nope, I guess it’s Buff-lin. Anyways, these are the kind of things you will need to know come Thursday. For tonight, you just need to know that we have five games and Pepsi7 will have you covered with his NHL Daily Plays.
RG Offerings for Today – With an impressive NBA slate of nine games, be on the lookout for the NBA Starting Five as well as the NBA Grind Down. For the auditory learners, we have three hours of NBA advice kicking off at 3:30 PM EST on GrindersLive. As I always say, you will come for the opening nonsense, but stay for the picks. Or at least we hope you stay for the picks.
With that my friends, I bid thee adieu until tomorrow. If there is something you would like to see in this column feel free to comment below.