Friends in fast breaks,
Embiid's great, no doubt about it. But Maxey unleashed has been impressive as heck, especially with the super efficient 42 he dropped this weekend. In Survivor land, BKN got WAS-hed to the tune of 35 wrong Survivor picks, we're thinning out! And did you know DET broke their losing streak? Congrats!
REMINDERS
MAKE YOUR PICKS >>
Due Friday (1/5) at 4:00pm PT
1) Our "second half" pools start January 12th! There's a Survivor, Weekly Pick'em, and Wins Battle with $4,000 in prizes. Then we have two Playoffs pools for $2,500 in prizes. There's a lot more basketball and prizes coming! Make sure you're in >>
2) NBA Squads lock on Jan 12th with the start of our H2 Pools. Squads are a way to play in our pools with your friends and win BONUS prizes together for every pool we run. Get three friends in a Pool, add them to your NBA Squad, and you're elgible! We give out Prizes to pool champ's Squad, as well as the Squad with the best combined Top 3 scores. There are only 6 eligible NBA Squads (out of 19) right now, so get some easy money just for playing with your friends!
3) Get $10 for each new NBA referral! Send your friends your referral link, have them buy the NBA Bundle, and you'll get $10 for each of them. They must be a new user (join after 12/21). Add them to your NBA Squad from #2 and get even more cash.
4) Who do you want added to NBA Points One-And-Done? As stated in our rules, we're going to evaluate adding players to the pool after Week 11 for the second half. The goal is to add any high-performing players that didn't make the original roster. I may add none, we won't add more than ten. I'll be evaluating over the next few weeks, but I'm happy to consider requested player from you all. You can submit them in a pick comment or email gm@theszn.com.
RESULTS SUMMARY
Points One-And-Done
T. Maxey was our top scorer this week, dropping an "answer for life, the universe, and everything" 42 points on the Rockets, they just had no answer. 25 pickers scooped these points up.
Our next best performer was SGA with 40, picked by 11 of us. With his consistent scoring the last couple years, it's crazy that his max points in a game is 44, it feels like he should have crushed that by now. But he's not a big 3 shooter, so that probably caps his upside. But the way he seems to so consistently score ~30 feels Durant-esque.
This puts our best possible weekly performance at 82 points. Nobody managed that combo, but @trashking got very close with 78 points from SGA and J. Randle.
Our other top scorers were L. Doncic (39 pts), J. Randle(38), and D. Booker (35).
J. Morant, our top pick, let us down tremendously. He only managed 19 points, crushing the dreams of 76 pickers this week. He had come in hot, but it looks like we got caught holding the bag.
Best value pick goes to F. VanVleet who scored 33 points for one picker. Worst value pick goes to K. Thompson, scoring an atrocious 3 points for one picker.
We scored 25.5 points/pick last week, a decent but not amazing amount based on the other weeks so far.
For DNPs, 9 pickable players from our roster didn't play, leading to a 79 DNP picks. This was driven heavily by A. Simons, who was a late scratch with a sudden illness, catching 42 pickers. This led to 13 Double DNPs, resulting in zero points. Not an ideal week, but definitely a surprise you couldn't plan for.
As always - Double check the injury report (linked on the pick page) on Thursday or Friday to make sure your picks aren't out. We leave a note on known injured players during the week and remove players with longer-term injuries to try and help prevent this issue, but you have to take control of your destiny here.
Overall Standings Check In - @Dufresne is holding the lead right now with an impressive 581 points (32.3 points/pick). Prizes cut off at 20th, which sits at 537 points right now. There's still nearly 2/3 of the SZN to go, so still plenty up for grabs!
Interval 2 Check In - @trashking jumped into first this week with their top tier combo at 219 points. Interval 2 runs through Week 16 (just before the All Star game), so 6 more weeks to go to try and get in the running. There are three Intervals and five places each, meaning every few weeks you've got something new to play for.
Squads Check In - DFS Sweatshop is in the lead with 1,579 points. But the top 3 are all within 40 points. Reminder that Squads lock on Jan 12th, get yours together to compete for bonus prizes!
Survivor #1
There were 44 incorrect picks this week, resulting in 30 eliminations. We had a 71.6% win rate, and lost another 8.8% of the Pool in the process. We now stand at 36.5% remaining.
BKN was our biggest loss this week, with 35 pickers. WAS just wouldn't lie down like usual.
Overall Standings Check In - There are still 125 players alive, 52 with no mistakes and 73 with one mistake. Lots of ball left to survive through!
Squads Check In - There's a two-way between WITS Legends, and DFS Sweatshop at 26 wins. Every Squad still has at least one member still alive, so any Squad could still win something. Reminder that Squads will lock on Jan 12th, get yours together to compete for bonus prizes!
All 30 One-And-Done
BKN was our undoing here as well, with 43 pickers missing out on a W. But we did have some lower volume losses as well like MIA, SAS, and DEN.
Our win rate was 67.5% this week, despite our picked teams going 15-9. We matched our SZN high of 24 picked teams, a glorious reminder of the chaos this format provides.
Overall Standings Check In - We're now at a 21-way tie for the lead with 9 wins. Reminder that the NFL's All 32 Pool lasted through 11 weeks and 18 total picks with perfect records. We don't start double picks until Week 19, so we'll see if anyone can last until then staying unbeaten.
Our Squads Leader is Basket-Balling with Nigel at 25 wins. Still a lot of season left! Reminder that Squads will lock on Jan 12th, get yours together to compete for bonus prizes!
Yours in Roundball Rock,
The GM