Friends in fast breaks,

Did we KNOW LeBron was going to celebrate 38 hard? Who was the lone genius on Paul George? How did we lose so few Survivors?

MAKE YOUR WEEK 11 PICKS

• Walking Bucket Wilt OAD >>
• The Worm Survivor >>
• VC's Knees Survivor >>
• Pick deadline: 4pm PT Friday (1/6)

LeBron is out here in season 20, chasing down Kareem's total points record (and his total minutes record) and still dropping 40+ to remind the kids that he's still got it.

Let's look at season 20 for every player who managed to make it that far and see what it looked like...

* = Actively playing 20th season

One of these things is not like the others, my goodness. You need to appreciate this kind of greatness while you can.

One last interesting LeBron stat for his birthday - 13 years ago, on his 25th birthday, LeBron dropped 48 against ATL. This year, on his 38th birthday, he scored 47 against ATL. So we have PROOF that he's slowing down... eventually.

ONE AND DONE RECAP

Weekly Standings | Player Performance | Overall Standings

Backup Picks

• 14 of our pickable players didn't play, and 8 of those got at least one pick
• In total, 19 picks were on those 14 DNPs, with no player 9 on S. Curry being the most
• We had 1 double DNPs that receive zero points this week, apologies to the unlucky picker
• Reminder - the Injury report is now linked near the top of the picking page, it can't fix last minute DNPs, but it's a very quick and basic line of defense!

Results

• 15 of our picked players scored 30+ points this week, netting 190 of us awesome results
• Our top performer was L. Doncic AGAIN, with 51 points for 16 lucky pickers
  • That's ONE point more than he netted pickers last week
  • His last 5 games:
    • 51 pts / 6 reb / 9 ast
    • 35 / 12 / 13
    • 60 / 21 / 10 (!!!!!)
    • 32 / 9 / 9 (this is the "worst" game)
    • 50 / 8 / 10 
  • That's an AVERAGE per game of 45.6 / 11.2 / 10.2
  • We're talking video game numbers over here
• Second place for the week was L. James with 47 points on his 38th birthday
  • Clearly we thought he'd celebrate, as 41 people picked him
• An insane 7 players scored 40+
  • Major props to @dcwiek as the only person on P. George getting 45
  • Slightly smaller props to @BigDaddy, @mfc13, and @medicalmatt224 (our VC's Knees Champ!) for getting 43 out of Z. Lavine
• We averaged 31.1 points per pick (new high!)
  • The "average" picked player scored 27.2 points (new high!)
  • Tough to imagine a much better result than this week
• Our big miss this week was C. McCollum, who's been showing MUCH better flashes of his former self and dropped 42 points
• Our worst flop this week is debatable
  • K. Durant (23 pts, 45 picks) was our top pick and our second worst performance for a top pick this SZN
  • D. Mitchell (15, 24) has hit a cold streak the last few games after a hot month of December
  • S. Gilgeous (14, 15) just belly flopped, playing the full 1st and 3rd quarters but only a fraction of the 2nd and 4th... weird?
• Our worst weekly performances: D. Ayton (4 pts, 1 pick), T. Maxey (9, 1), S. Bey (10, 2)

Standings Check
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!

Interval 2 (Weeks 9-16) Standings

• Three people managed to hit the "perfect" picks these last two weeks, snagging the max 97 points possible
• Four people hit the next best total for the last two weeks at 95 points
• We'll see things spread out over the next couple weeks, but we're blazing so far!

Overall Standings

• We've got a new entrant (@ocho91589) into the top "5" thanks to Luka this week
• Three of the these top "5" used the birthday boy
• Props to @PurpleNurple19 and @Merlinemei383 getting 41 points out of J. Poole, a high leverage pick this week
• We're UP to 73 (from 70) people averaging 30+ points per pick thanks to another strong week, our second time increasing this number  after last week

Team SZN Performance

• I (@TheGM)and @TheCommish both got fooled by K. Durant and his 23 points, but @Merf got 34 from D. Lillard and @StatCzar slipped with N. Jokic's 19
• Overall, @StatCzar has our best placement at 36th
• Reminder: We play along for fun and pride, we can't win anything

THE WORM RECAP

Weekly Standings | Game Outcomes | Golden Spreadsheet

Results

• We entered the week with 198 players and exited with 179, a 90.4% survival rate
  • I'M SO PROUD!
• This is EASILY our best performance so far
• That's not to say we DIDN'T have some close calls
• CHI (vs DET) was a tight game for 3.5 quarters
  • There were 17 lead changes and no lead bigger than ten points
  • Only in the last 4 minutes did CHI secure the win, saving 60 pickers
• DAL (@ SAS) barely saved 20 pickers
  • It required not only the aforementioned 51 point Luka performance, but also holding off SAS for the final six minutes and the amazing perfectly missed free throw to end it - Link if you missed it
  • Seriously, how has Luka had two insane free throw plays in the last week?
• CLE (@ CHI) saved 8 pickers
  • Seriously, opposing our top pick on the back-to-back, already bold
  • CLE had the lead the entire second half and CHI made the final two minutes interesting, but DeRozan couldn't secure another clutch game winner this time

Team SZN Performance

• Team SZN did well, with TheCommish surviving on DAL, Merf  on CHI, and myself on WAS.
• Reminder: we play along for fun and pride, we can't win anything

VC'S KNEES RECAP

Weekly Standings | Game Outcomes | Golden Spreadsheet

Results

• Reminder: @medicalmatt224 is our champion! He and Commish are just playing for pride at this point
• Both players pick CHI (vs DET) and survived

Team SZN Performance

• @TheCommish continues to play for the pride. 
• Reminder: we play along for fun and pride, we can't win anything

Yours in hoops,
The GM