Friends in fast breaks,

NBA SZN is going to be a learning experience for all of us. While the OAD and Survivor formats are familiar, understanding the cadences, which teams are ACTUALLY good, and when we should take risks is going to take some time. We're gonna need some GOLDEN RULES.

MAKE YOUR WEEK 4 PICKS

• Walking Bucket Wilt OAD >>
• VC's Knees Survivor >>
• Pick deadline: 4pm PT Friday (11/18)
• Don't forget that daylight savings ended!

NFL SZN has the advantage of HISTORY. Gathering data for more than a decade will give you an opportunity to spot patterns, AKA Commish's "Golden Rules". They don't always pan out, but guidelines can go a long way in helping you not do anything TOO crazy.

I'm not certain we're going to get perfect Golden Rules hammered out for NBA this year, but Commish and I did some thinking, and here's our "first draft". 

Avoid road teams if you can

Home court advantage is meaningful in the NBA. Since 2010, only seven teams are below .500 at home. On the road, only five teams are above .500. You just can't dispute the POWER of home court in the long run. 

Avoid teams playing with no rest

Cramming 82 games into about six months is going to cause some tight scheduling. Yes, they've gotten better about trying to reduce consecutive nights of games, but it still happens. Since 2010, only nine teams have are above .500 when playing with no rest. With one or more days of rest, more than half of teams are above .500. And 18 teams are above .500 when they have the "rest advantage" AKA more days of rest than their opponent. Recovery and game planning matter.

Point Differential matters more than Record matters more than Perception

This is a twist on the NFL rule thanks to the sheer sample size you get from the NBA both in terms of number of games AND scoring opportunities. Losing by 20+ is rare in the NFL, but can happen on any off-night of shooting in the NBA. Trust consistently outscoring opponents by meaningful margins, then record of wins, then (maybe) reputation.

Check the injurt reports!!!

Obvious, yes. But you have to master the basics to succeed. NBA is a star-driven sport, and with only five players on the court, losing a star has an enormous impact. Checking for ouchies and boo boos is just straight up prudent when it comes to making your selections. There can always be last minute load management, but between keeping your eyes on the injury report and avoiding back-to-backs, you'll be minimizing how much a DNP harms you.

Like I said, this is just our first draft. If you have ideas, leave them in a comment. We'll keep learning as we go and try to maximize our success and joyment in the picking department.

ONE-AND-DONE RECAP

Weekly Standings | Player Performance | Overall Standings

Backup Picks

• 13 of our pickable players didn't play, and 8 of those got at least one pick
• In total, 52 picks were on those 8 DNPs
• 48 of those picks had a backup that DID play, leaving 4 with a double DNP selection that received zero points this week
• Reminder - the Injury report is now linked near the top of the picking page, it can't fix last minute DNPs, but it's much better than nothing!

Results

• 6 of our picked players scored 30+ points
• This included a LOT of pickers on some of the biggest performers: 40 on L. Doncic (42 points), 12 on J. Embiid (42), 30 on S. Curry (40)
• That's 82 pickers who all banked 40+ points this week, hot dang!
• This lead to our best overall points per pick so far, just a hair under 29 👏👏👏
• D. Mitchell, our top pick of the week with 62 picks, scored a very respectable 29 points
• Big performers we DIDN'T pick: J. Grant (37 points), J. Green (33)
• Underperformers we DID pick: T. Haliburton (8 points, picked by 1), C. McCollum (9, 1), K. Towns (13, 2)
• A big shot caller this week: K. Porzingis (31, picked by 1)

Standings Check
Remember that we have prizes for Overall points, as well as most points scored over three different Intervals (First 8 weeks, middle 8 weeks, and final 7 weeks). There's something to play for all SZN!

• Right now, Overall and the First Interval are the same
• @SharonP has the overall lead after three weeks with 119 total points, averaging an amazing 39.7 points per pick so far
• Rounding out the top five are @Merlinmei383 (111), @bpnorment (111), @Dddd662 (110), and @cferengul (109)
• We've actually got 116 players averaging 30 points per pick so far, let's see how long that holds

Team SZN Performance

• Merf, StatCzar, and I all score 29 this week, and Commish scored 20
• Overall, I've got our best placement at 75th
• Reminder: we play along for fun and pride, we can't win anything

SURVIVOR RECAP

Weekly Standings | Game Outcomes

Results

• We entered the week with 125 players and exited with 84, a 67.2% survival rate
• We left a lot of space out there for this to play out, double picks don't even start until Week 17... I just don't feel like we're gonna get close at this rate
• Our picking this week was REALLY top heavy, with nearly 74% of pickers on three teams
  • NYK (30.3%), NOP (23.8%), and PHX (19.7%)
• We were picking on the tankers, and but any time you have this density you know that things can go south REAL fast
• PHX (@ ORL) was the weak link, costing us 24 players, when they barely put up a fight after the second quarter started
  • PHX had weak games from Bridges, Ayton, AND Booker 
  • ORL put their foot on the gas and cruised to the win without Banchero, having six players score 10+
• NOP (vs HOU) almost brought catastrophe
  • After leading by more than 15 points in the third quarter, HOU stormed back to a five point lead early in the 4th
  • Luckily, HOU is young and tanky, and they gave it all up in the final four minutes
• MIL (@ SAS) was our other "big loss" dropping eight players, when they played with no Giannis, no Holiday, and no Middleton
  • They just couldn't stand up to the Spurs amazing jerseys 🤷‍♂️

Team SZN Performance

• Commish and I survived another week on NOP and MIA respectively
• Reminder: we play along for fun and pride, we can't win anything

Yours in hoops,
The GM