We’re back! I hope everyone had a nice All-Star break of smelling the roses as well as enjoying the All-Star week festivities. Given the lack of games this week (besides yesterday, shout-out to the ETR members who put up strong performances), this week’s edition is going to be a bit different than usual. Instead of reviewing a particular lineup, I spent the All-Star break reviewing the winning Fadeaway lineups of all 113 main slates so far this season to see what we could glean from the results.
But first, some first-half fantasy awards:
Fantasy MVPs
- Tied for first place, with 11 appearances in winning lineups: Jalen Brunson and Tyus Jones
- Runner-ups, all tied with 10 appearances in winning lineups: Anthony Edwards, Fred VanVleet, Luka Doncic, and Nikola Jokic
Other Notable Performances
- Aaron Gordon (9 appearances)
- Jrue Holiday (9)
- Buddy Hield (8)
- Kyle Anderson (8)
- Steven Adams (8)
- Jordan Poole (8)
- Darius Garland (8)
- Christian Wood (8)
- Zach LaVine (8)
- Bam Adebayo (8)
- Deandre Ayton (7)
- Damian Lillard (7)
- Deni Avdija (7)
- Naz Reid (7)
- Anfernee Simons (6)
- Saddiq Bey (6)
- Bobby Portis (6)
- Brandon Clarke (6)
- Derrick White (6)
Notable Fantasy LVPs
- Joel Embiid (3 appearances)
- Tyrese Haliburton (3)
- Kristaps Porzingis (3)
- Kyle Kuzma (3)
- Stephen Curry (2)
- Kawhi Leonard (2)
- Brandon Ingram (2)
- Trae Young (2)
- Tyler Herro (2)
- Terry Rozier (2)
- Jusuf Nurkic (2)
- Myles Turner (1)
This is not something that’s necessarily predictive, and besides this being just interesting to see, I wanted to investigate some potential reasons for this. A primary driver of the success of the fantasy MVPs and other notable performers is price. Outside of the usually cheaper options (will get to that), certain players have been underpriced relative to their roles and potential upside throughout the season. For a large part of the season, Jalen Brunson was in the $6,500 to $7,500 range despite having 12 games between 44-50 DK points and 10 games over 52 DK points (with his highest being 61 DK points in January). A player with that production should be priced closer to where he is now ($8,000+). As pricing is always relative to the slate/other players available, certain players with notable upside can remain underpriced for extended periods of time — as we also saw with Fred VanVleet, Aaron Gordon, Jrue Holiday, Buddy Hield, and Anthony Edwards. As always, each slate should be evaluated on its own, but targeting players that are objectively mispriced for their roles and upside (despite other projection inputs such as matchup, pace, etc.) — especially those that are under-owned — make their way into winning lineups very often. One could also argue that Nikola Jokic has been underpriced all season relative to his role, despite being priced north of $11,000 the entire season — but his consistent ceiling performances suggest he should be closer in price to Luka Doncic. When evaluating a slate, we should be identifying misprices on all players — not just the significant ones (like when a starter sits and his backup opens up).
Next, I want to touch on several of the other notable performers with the following graphs (forgive the dataviz — I’m no Cody Main/Michael Heery — shout-out to those guys).
Before getting into the specific examples — the above graphs reflect all 904 players that were rostered in the 113 winning lineups this season relative to price, position, and ownership levels. The percentages shown reflect the number of players that fall into the noted category relative to the total number of players in their respective populations (i.e., 28.2% of all the chalk rostered in winning lineups was at the PG position, and so on).
A few sections in the above charts are highlighted to point out the most frequent occurrences/best places to roster chalk vs. uniques within your lineups. As we’ve discussed in prior editions, one of our main steps in building lineups is identifying good/bad chalk, as well as opportunities to be different. That said, Tyus Jones being the most frequently occurring player in winning lineups is no surprise given that typically, the starting PG role is the most valuable position for fantasy scoring and Tyus is usually priced around $4,500. As we’ve seen more recently with Jaylen Brown and Marcus Smart injured, not-so-min-cash Derrick White is shedding his former moniker by leading the Boston Celtics’ offense on his way to massive fantasy outputs and appearing in winning lineups often. Many times this season, either due to injury, matchup, slate size, or otherwise — Luka Doncic and other mid-to-high-priced guards like Jordan Poole, Darius Garland, Zach LaVine, Damian Lillard, and Anfernee Simons saw significant ownership and (as expected) completely dominated their way into winning lineups. Given the general weakness of the position outside of the superstars, chalky mid-priced PFs found their way into winning lineups almost as often as point guards. Typically as a result of a spot start or injuries, chalkier 4s with strong fantasy-point-per-minute production like Naz Reid, Brandon Clarke, Bobby Portis, and Deni Avdija become advantageous plays despite the ownership they typically carry.
The most commonly occurring low-owned players that find their way into winning lineups are mid-priced centers and threes. Mid-priced and unique centers and wings are the most and second-most featured player types in winning lineups with 56 and 45 instances (!!), respectively. Second only to PGs as a whole, but individually just as strong — centers have another unique aspect that results in their affinity for winning lineups — you can only roster two of them in any given lineup. With the significant upside many centers possess given the potential for monster scoring and rebounding totals coupled with defensive stats, lineup construction limiting us to only two of them leads to overall decreased ownership across the board. Taking advantage of this ownership discrepancy relative to expected ceiling performance is key — a completely absurd 50% (!!) of all winning lineups featured two centers (3-PG lineups accounted for another 25%). We can see this come to fruition with Bam Adebayo, Steven Adams, Christian Wood, and DeAndre Ayton’s frequent presence in winning lineups. We’ve discussed this in previous editions, but wings as a position are inherently the most volatile producers on the court. Often, it is because of their reliance on shooting — and when we’re rostering Buddy Hield, Saddiq Bey, and Zach LaVine at lower ownership and capturing one of their efficient shooting nights, it’s no surprise they end up in winning lineups. When players like this are carrying ownership, it’s best to avoid them — evidenced by the fairly pedestrian 8.4% of them that found their way into winning lineups.
Good luck! We’ll be back next week.
