Happy Holidays, and Merry Christmas to all those who celebrate! I’m on the road for the next 12 days and not working with my typical setup, so please bear with me on these next two editions of NBA Leverage.
With that said, the NBA always brings us a day full of basketball on St. Nick’s Day, with five games each separated by a couple of hours. This slightly changes the game theory relative to a normal slate when it comes to late swap, given the set intervals between games and one game per time slot. Keep this dynamic in mind, especially if (and when) we have injury news — there is a massive benefit to leaving yourself flexibility, and/or playing the right side of injury news given the progressive limiting of available options throughout the day.
I wanted to review prior Christmas Day slates, as well as the 21 other five-game slates since the start of the 2022 season.
One thing that stands out remains consistent across basically every slate — five games or otherwise — the significance of differentiation. The last three Christmas Day slates have featured winning lineups with at least two players rostered below 10%, and there have only been two prior five-game slates without at least one. The second thing that stands out is the general degree of “stacking” and correlation involved.
To clarify, the “Correlation Players” section above is defined as players within the same game, and “Correlation Games” is defined as how many games those players are in. For example, last season’s Christmas Day slate featured six correlated players across two games. “Stacking” is exactly what you think it is, at least two players from the same team — with last year’s winner featuring three “team stacks” or two players from three different teams. Speaking of prior winners, let’s take a look at a few of the past years’ Christmas Day winners:
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