NBA GPP Leverage: November 10

Another week passed in the association, and once again we had swinging lists. Thanks to Discord member rzaroch36 for his winning Fadeaway lineup last Friday, taking home the $100,000! It looks like we have another Friday slate with games included for the cleverly named NBA off-season tournament.

Last week we discussed our list evaluation process and some differences between increasingly smaller slates – this week I want to delve into this a little more. Early in the season, we usually get a lot of back and forth between 14-game and 3-game slates, with some occasional mid-sized ones on weekends when the prize pools dwindle out of respect for the NFL – so I think it is useful to explore this topic further.

First, let’s take a look at some winning lineups from the flagship Fadeaway contest on DraftKings:

Wednesday, November 8, 2023 – 14-match main slate

The biggest slate of the season so far has had very modest results, with the winning teams scoring a lukewarm 330.25 DraftKings points. Now, this was most likely the result of each player owning over 10% with an average outcome of a measly 4.47 times their salary – however, this can be easily explained by normal variance. I neglected to show the second team out of spite, because who plays Grayson Allen at an inflated price with Bradley Beal back against the snail-paced Chicago Bulls? A DraftKings user who wanted EIGHT three and a stat line 26-8-4, that’s who.

Regardless, looking at Hankfarley’s winning lineup, you’ll notice two chalk games correlated in the best playing environment on the list, and then no one else topped 7.6% – with four players held below 1.7%. Third-placed team “kcelite13” followed suit with only two players holding over 10% and the rest below 4.2%. You will also notice that ONLY Jordan Clarkson ($6,200) was on both rosters, with 14 unique players on both teams. Now, both rosters were constructed in an extremely contrarian fashion – and while it worked for them, I’m not saying we need to field five players held at less than 1% to form winning teams.

As I mentioned in last week’s edition, slates this size have so many players scoring fantasy points that it becomes much easier to beat the more owned options. A common theme, just six of the top 50 (12%) Fantasy players on the list were listed in more than 9% of lineups. The Charlotte Hornets were missing Terry RozierAnd Ball LaMelo ($8,900) was probably the cheapest price he would get all season after starting the season on a minutes limit. LaMelo rightly attracted a lot of attention, with a 52.3% participation, and he had a great game – lined up 34/7/4 – for 50 DK points and almost 6 times his salary. Everyone would be very happy with this score. LaMelo Ball was not in the winning lineup, nor in any of the top five lineups that day.. Including the lists above and the second place team I omitted, 21 unique players were included in the top three lineups.