Friends in fast breaks,

If Julius Randle wasn't playing one of the league's top defenses, he likely would have been our top pick.

WE OF LITTLE FAITH.

MAKE YOUR WEEK 19 PICKS

• Walking Bucket Wilt OAD >>
• The Worm Survivor >>
• Pick deadline: 4pm PT Friday (3/10)

Julius Randle has left his body in recent weeks, and his 43 points against a stout Miami D put him atop our One-and-Done board.

We had 12 people take him, but dude is still sitting at just 25% utilization for the SZN. Nearly all of us COULD have taken him this weekend.

Randle's last 9 games (43 points, 21, 23, 28, 46, 25, 18, 31, 30) are impressive enough from a scoring standpoint, but he's also averaging 4+ made threes in that timespan AND nearly 10 boards a game.

The Knicks are winners of 8 straight.

***

The key with Randle is that, going into this weekend, he'd been picked by fewer than a quarter of us. We're now 18 weeks in. Most of the big names are off the board for all of us.

Our final OAD standings will be determined by who can dig deep better than the everybody else.

When's the right time to pull that Bradley Beal lever? Darius Garland? BEN SIMMONS?

I'm kidding, people. But not about Beal and Garland. And this weekend was likely the best time to pull the Julius Randle lever, because while he's been hot, he's not a guy that's going to post 50+.

ONE AND DONE RECAP

Weekly Standings | Player Performance | Overall Standings

Backup Picks

• 14 of our pickable players didn't play this week, and 8 of them got at least one pick
• In total, we had 39 DNP picks
• De'Aaron Fox was our most popular backup pick pressed into action with 5 nods. He did his backup pickers well with 33 points
• We had 5 double DNPs; please be sure to use the injury report link and "Check injury report" note we've added to the picking page

Results

• It was a strong week, with a bunch of guys clustered around similar point totals
• 13 of our picked players scored 30+ this week, including top pick Anthony Davis (38 points)
• Davis is the main counterargument to "should have picked Randle". Without LeBron (hurt) and Westbrook (traded), and the Lakers needing Ws, Davis is going to carry a heavy load. So, now is probably the time to pick him, and he delivered
• Our second (De'Aaron Fox; 33 pts) and third (Damian Lillard; 33 pts) picks also acquitted themselves well
• That means all 104 people with the most obvious picks of the week posted at least 33 points. If you zagged, and your guy didn't get buckets, that's a tough outcome for you
• We averaged 28.2 points per pick, which is our most since Week 14 and the 7th highest total of the SZN
• The average picked player dropped 23.7 points, which was our 3rd highest mark on the SZN
• So, again, it was pretty consistent at the top. You weren't gonna pull away from anyone with an outlier pick, but if you missed, you likely got passed by a bunch of people just below you in the standings
• Our biggest flop of the week? Pascal Siakam put up just 15 points as our 4th biggest pick of the week.
  • He logged 37 minutes in an OT game...
  • ... but took just 10 shots, making 5 of them
  • Four of his teammates took more shots
  • Weird result, for sure

Standings Check
We have prizes for Overall points, as well as most points scored over three different Intervals (Weeks 1-8, Weeks 9-16, and Weeks 17-23). There's something to play for all SZN!

Interval 3 (Weeks 17-23) Standings

• We have our first Interval 3 leader in @ronang01
• They went De'Aaron Fox last week (42 points) and Julius Randle this week (43)
• 85 points so far is 1 better than @Takedown197, who went Embiid (41) before Randle (43)
• Five weeks to go, and given we're all digging deep, a LOT can change between now and then

Overall Standings

• @PurpleNurple19 continues to hold the Overall lead, despite posting a sub-30-point performance with Paul George (28)
• The lead is now just 8 over @Bigrv51, who got 43 from Randle. Big pick!
• @sholt417 is now T3 and lurking just 18 back after also picking Randle
• Here's the top 10, but remember, Overall prizes go all the way to 50th. (50th currently sits at 525 points)

Team SZN Performance

• @TheGM pulled the Lillard lever and got 33 from the Portland sharpshooter
• @TheCommish took a flier on Darius Garland and got burned, posting just 21 points while having both Anthony Davis and Julius Randle left on his board
• @StatCzar went with Ja and got 27
• @Merf got a solid 31 from Embiid
• With that, GM slipped past Commish into 63rd overall - tops for Team SZN
• 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 13 players and exited with 8, a 61.5% survival rate
• Last week, we posted a 61.9% survival rate; we're navigating these double pick weeks pretty well
• Boston inexplicably losing to the new-look (and not a better look) Nets knocked out 3 people, and it would have been more if more people still had the Celts available
  • Boston won the first quarter 37-15, and it was like "OK yep let's move on"
  • But they lost each of the next three quarters, including the 2nd by 13 points and the 3rd by 14 points
  • Mikal Bridges dropped 38 points on just 22 shots for the Nets, and added 10 boards while he was at it
• We're getting DEEP into the list of available teams for the remaining 8, so it'll be a fun next few weeks

Yours in hoops,
The Commish