Welcome to the second edition of GPP Leverage. This article is going to be a catch-all space for my GPP thoughts. In every article I’ll address some of the relevant GPP plays for that day’s slate, but some of the articles will be more focused on plays and others more focused on strategy. Today is going to be more of a strategy session as yesterday’s slate highlighted some things to consider when playing GPPs in this NBA restart format.
Evaluating Incentives, Leveraging Late Swap, and Dealing with the Unknown
The August 4th slate was one that really highlighted some of the challenges we’ll have to navigate during this restart season.
A brief review of the slate would include:
- The Bucks late scratching Brook Lopez for rest and then playing their key players only a half
- The Mavericks announcing Trey Burke as a starter, only to start J.J. Barea
- The Heat late scratching Jimmy Butler on the second night of a back-to-back, opening up clear values late
I’ll briefly review how I dealt with each of these situations and with the benefit of hindsight evaluate how to get better in the future.
Bucks-Nets Madness
The Brook Lopez news was a signal that the Bucks weren’t taking this game particularly seriously and it should’ve set off red flags on Middleton-Giannis-Bledsoe (was already on a minutes restriction) and any veteran that is a normal part of the rotation (Kyle Korver and George Hill most notably). We had already baked in a lowered playing-time expectation for the Bucks starters but the question was if it would be a lost 4Q rotation (due to blowout or rest) or more. The lowered minutes projection led to very little exposure to Giannis-Middleton in GPPs but I could’ve just as easily x-ed them out and moved on. The slate had studs we were more confident in their playing time in James Harden, Russell Westbrook, Luka Doncic, Damian Lillard, etc – investing anything in Giannis-Middelton was a mistake.
The timing to evaluate this decision was limited and the slate was one that we knew needed value badly on DraftKings. I got suckered into some Robin Lopez and took a flier on D.J. Wilson in the hopes that a youth movement would open up big upside at lower ownership. In addition, with no other big injury concerns (fairly confident Brogdon was playing), this looked like the prime opportunity to get the value I needed on the slate to make the teams I wanted.
The results didn’t pan out as Robin Lopez was an utter disaster and D.J. Wilson shot poorly and didn’t get there either. Lopez ended up around 15-20% in GPPs while Wilson was in the 0-3% bucket I anticipated. Looking back, the Lopez play is one that I’ll deem as a mistake. I was still anticipating Ersan Ilyasova, D.J. Wilson, and Lopez all sharing the center minutes. Lopez didn’t really have a path to more than say 25 minutes and he’s typically been a weak fantasy-point-per-minute producer who was likely to garner some ownership. How much was a big question mark with the timing of the news, but everyone was starved for value. I should’ve exuded more patience there and saved some bullets in case more news broke. Robin Lopez probably had a ceiling in the mid 20s. He was always more likely to hurt my opponents than me in that situation. The Wilson play, I think made sense. He’s a more efficient per-minute producer and a young player that is far away from the playoff rotation. He stood to benefit most if the Bucks rested players, and he was coming with no ownership. The Wilson play I am still content with at the end of the day.
The one who panned out was Ersan Ilyasova, delivering the 30+ fantasy-point performance I thought Wilson could reach. Ersan has always been super productive in games Giannis has missed so it’s no surprise he was successful here. I was a little surprised the minutes got into the low 20s as I assumed he’d be capped in the teens as he’s closer to the playoff rotation. Still, a sprinkle of Ersan at no ownership would’ve been more prudent than putting any ownership into Robin Lopez. I give myself a solid C- in my execution of this news.
Mavericks Misleading Starters
This situation was the mess that really derailed my slate. I had lined up a decent bit of Delon Wright in GPPs in the absence of Seth Curry. I’ve always liked Wright as a per-minute producer and thought he likely benefits from Curry’s absence with more minutes. When Burke was announced as a starter I added a good bit of Trey Burke as it signaled smaller-ball lineups with Burke acting in Curry’s role and Wright hopefully as the lead initiator whenever Luka sits. I wasn’t playing Wright and Burke in lineups together but combined I held ~30-40% ownership of one of the two in lineups.
In the end, J.J. Barea started. It was a disaster scenario as it added another guard to the rotation and signaled no change to Burke-Wright roles when I was playing as if there was a big change to the roles. Perhaps, I could’ve taken a more measured approach on overall Dallas exposure to the situation but can’t control an incorrect announcement on starters. If you played Burke or Wright in GPPs yesterday, I think you ran pretty bad.
The grade here is incomplete. There really isn’t anything you can do with misinformation.
Jimmy Butler Scratched
The Butler scratch was a real slate changer as it opened up two immensely valuable cheap pieces in Kelly Olynyk and Tyler Herro. Unfortunately, if you had filled those slots with guys like Trey Burke, Robin Lopez, Delon Wright, and D.J. Wilson like myself you were limited from getting as much as exposure as you might want if you knew the information before the slate started. I did jam Herro and Olynyk but my fate was largely decided earlier in the day.
I handled the situation well once presented with it, but I didn’t set myself up as well to get lucky during the course of the day. I’ll give myself a B+ here.
How to Proceed?
I think the big take-away here is we need to be skeptical of how teams without incentives are treating their players on back-to-backs during the bubble seeding games. In GPPs, we care exclusively about upside. If the upside is mitigated by any semblance of playing time risk, we should manage our exposures and perhaps emphasize players whose incentives are clear or who are not involved in back-to-back sets. If you’re playing 150 lineups, this doesn’t mean removing these options from the player pool, but just making sure your biggest positions are on situations that don’t have as much clear risk. We’ll still have spots where we get burned (the Bucks weren’t on a back-to-back) because so few teams are truly incentivized when you remove home court and seeding implications.
As an example on the August 5th slate, we have this layout:
Teams on a back-to-back:
Front-End: Denver Nuggets, Los Angeles Lakers
Back-End: Orlando Magic, Brooklyn Nets, Boston Celtics
Teams with seeding/playoff implications: San Antonio Spurs, Memphis Grizzlies, possibly Boston Celtics (depending on if they prioritize getting the 3rd seed)
All Other Teams: Philadelphia 76ers, Washington Wizards, Utah Jazz, Oklahoma City Thunder, Toronto Raptors
In general, we’d want more of our player pool coming from the second grouping of teams and perhaps a more de-emphasized exposure to the teams on back-to-backs. Since the Celtics come into both categories, they’re a bit challenging to deal with and probably should be treated closer to all the other teams on the slate where exposure can be treated more normally.
So for this slate, we use incentive stability in minutes as the tiebreaker to decide exposures to players like Joel Embiid over Nikola Jokic / Anthony Davis / LeBron James as our key spends.
Additionally, we should evaluate value that opens up early in the slate based on the quality of the play and not the availability of replacements. With this schedule and teams losing incentives, alternatives will always have a chance at opening up. Firing a big position early at a shaky situation out of fear that it’s your only opportunity for value on the day is likely a mistake.
