Rise & Grind: Tuesday, March 17th
Welcome to the RotoGrinders cup o’morning joe. Start your day off right here, as we sort through the yesterday’s happenings and take a peek at the upcoming DFS day.
In Case You Missed It
St. Patrick’s Day – Happy St. Patrick’s Day Grinders! Today is the one day we all get to pretend we are Irish. If you are planning on all-day pub crawl, please be safe and remember not to drink and set lineups. Also, in honor of St. Patrick’s Day you must have some Green in your lineup. I recommend Jeff Green, but we will get to that a bit later.
NBA Last Night – If you were doing a little pre-St. Patty DFS last night, hopefully you included Draymond Green in your lineup. Green scored 39.1 FanDuel points as the Warriors clinched a playoff spot, beating the Lakers 108-105. On the other end of the spectrum, LeBron “King James” needed garbage time to reach 30.4 FanDuel points in an ugly loss to the Heat. If you continued to ride the Rodney Hood bandwagon, you noticed it’s getting a bit crowded. The wheels are probably going to fall off soon, but for now Hood continues to reward point chasers. Hood filled on the stat sheet in only 22 minutes, scoring 34.1 FanDuel points. I’m not even going to point out that Hood outscored LeBron, I’m sure you are aware.
A Nugget to File Away – Yesterday, I highlighted that the Atlanta Hawks are not sorry that they rested their starters, even if it cost you money on FanDuel. The Hawks have since apologized, well sorta. Mostly they just said stop complaining. Either way, the Hawks have a playoff seed locked up and are thinking long term. It made sense to rest their stars. What about the Denver Nuggets? Aren’t they pretty much eliminated from the playoffs? Why did they rest their stars? I’m glad you asked. Here at the Rise and Grind we seek out answers to questions like that. Lucky for us, Chris Dempsey of the Denver post caught up with interim coach Melvin Hunt to ask that very question. Hunt responded with the following:
“Yeah, but we’re in a very unique situation here, having come off what we did last year with so many injuries. We had players with ACL injuries; our owner’s dog had an ACL injury. We had a little bit of everything going on. We have to be very, very careful. We have to be really wise, given the situation that we are in.”
There you have it folks. Last year the owner’s dog had an ACL injury. You really can’t be too careful out there. Also, I did not make up that quote. Today is St. Patrick’s Day, not April Fools. Here is the source.
Big Winners – Even though a few stars rested last night, most of you Grinders never do. I’m personally not worried about my dog tearing its ACL anyways. A few Grinders were rewarded handsomely for not giving up on NBA this late in the year. Grinder eye_on_the_prize had his sites sets on first in the FanDuel Slam. He fell slightly short of that goal, but I’m sure a second place finish is fine with him. Bradhammond05 finished right behind him, claiming third and fourth. In high stakes DFS, stinger88 claimed first in the Monster as well as the Baller. The rest of the tournament link are listed in this forum thread.
On the Menu
Soccer Today – If you are going to pretend to be Irish today, you need to take at least a small interest in DFS soccer. You should also call it futbol not soccer. In fact, here is a quick primer on some soccer terms so you can fit in if you happen to watch a match at an Irish pub today. The field is known as the pitch. Don’t get that wrong or it will be obvious right away you aren’t a bloody soccer fan. A boot is a really strong kick, but could also be a glass that Germans drink out of. Lastly, “parking the bus” is when a team plays stall tactics in order to draw (tie) a match. That should do it. Now that you have the jargon covered, check out ernestsilko’s UCL Tues/Weds Preview and fire up some teams. The matches lock at 3:45 PM EST today.
CBB Tonight – March Madness kicks off tonight with the play-in games known as the First Four as well as the opening round of the NIT. Both FanDuel and DraftKings have combined the tournaments to offer a rather appealing nine-game slate. As always, Varncass has you covered and will have a daily plays article available. You can also join the conversation in our CBB Forum Thread. Even if you aren’t an expert yet there are plenty of Grinders willing to help you learn CBB.
NHL Tonight – Today is Tuesday, which means a large NHL slate of nine games. If you enjoy picking chalk goalies, tonight’s slate offers two goalies with a Vegas moneyline over -450. While you can feel confident with Neuvirth, I much prefer Tuukka Rask just because he has an awesome name. Rask! Rask! Rask! Anyways, Pepsi7 and Boggslite will have the usual NHL offerings posted today, including Daily Plays, GPP Plays, and The Frozen Five. Pepsi and Boggs will also be on GrindersLive at 3:30 PM EST for the Daily Fantasy Face Off.
NBA Tonight – Notorious already has his First Look posted for tonight. With just five games on the menu, the initial reaction Twitter is that tonight’s slate is ugly. You guys are looking at this the wrong way though. Sure, the usual advice pieces will be posted today, including the NBA Grind Down, Starting Five, and Advanced Matchups. While you could build a team off those pieces, DFS is supposed to be fun. Building a team based on Narratives is much more fun.
#NarrativeStreet – The great thing about building #NarrativeStreet teams is that we can always assign narratives in sports even if they don’t actually exist. Tonight, you will want to pick players based on their connection with St. Patty’s Day. For example, Jeff Green. That’s easy. Green, St. Patty’s Day, don’t overthink this one. Ditto for Danny Green and JaMychal Green. Next, you need to find names that sound Irish. For example, O’Quinn and O’Bryant, lock those guys in right away. Just for good measure, you can even throw in Patty Mills because Patty, St. Patty day. You get it. With that said, give me your best St. Patty’s Day team in the comments. I will be back later with mine once I finalize it.
With that Grinders I bid thee goodbye until tomorrow. May the luck of the Irish be with you today.