Art of the Audible

Today, I’m going to extol the art of the audible.

Even though I’m talking about NBA-Style Fantasy Basketball, there’s a crossover lesson to be learned here for Chip Kelly. Unless you’ve been out of touch with the NFL world for the past nine days, Chip Kelly is the recently-deposed – and rightly-so – head coach of the Eagles.

To not allow your quarterback to audible out of plays in which the defense is stacked against him is tantamount to gagging him and tying his hands behind his back. Had I not audibled out of my NBA lineups on FanDuel last night, I would’ve – pardon my French – lost my ass.

FIVE LINEUPS FOUR TIMES

Last night, using numberFire as a resource to help with my decisions, I designed five lineups that pleased me. And there was a common element in all five lineups – Sacramento PG Rajon Rando. Moreover, I entered those five lineups in four contests each:

50/50
Double Up
100-Player League
Tournament

So that’s 20 contests entered – and here’s one of my original lineups:

Man, oh man, was I pleased with that lineup. According to my reckoning at the bottom of the “TG” column, this team had the potential to score 306.4 points. The “TG” refers to my screen name “tuffguy” and my selection methodology.

I was anticipating lots of points – and FanDuel victories.

FANTASY BASKETBALL LESSON #1 LEARNED

Last week, I learned Fantasy Basketball Lesson #1 – and wrote about it. The lesson occurred when Phoenix Suns PF Jon Leuer sprained an ankle in a game the night before – but didn’t report it.

When I designed my lineups for the next night, I used Jon Leuer – and then went about my business with good intentions. But Jon Leuer scratched prior to game time with that bum ankle. I had no idea; thus made no changes to my lineups; and – pardon my French – lost my ass that night.

So, lesson learned, I made a last-minute check last night around half-an-hour prior to tipoff and found out that Rajon Rando was not playing Tuesday night. Without Rando, my scoring potential suddenly looked like this:

Without Rando’s 43.5 points, my scoring potential plummeted to 262.9 points – and gave me no chance of winning.

Crossing over to football once again, I had to audible at the line of scrimmage. I had to go back into my FanDuel account and change 20 lineups. If not, I was going to – pardon my French a third time – lose my ass.

So I audibled and made the changes.

When I removed Rando, I was left with Jose Calderon as my remaining PG – $4,100 and 23 points. But I didn’t like that option, so I removed Calderon as well. With Rando and Calderon out, that gave me $12,000 to allocate on their replacements.

I substituted Jordan Clarkson ($6,100 & 29.4 points by my reckoning) and Darren Collison ($5,400 & 28 points) in three contests.

This lineup dropped by about 6 points – but the potential for 297.3 points put me back in the ball game.

For my fourth contests – to spread the risk – I substituted Jeff Teague ($6,400 & 30.2 points) along with Collison.

By my calculations, my new lineups should score around 297.3 and 298.1 points respectively. These numbers were a little less than my original lineup with Rando (306.4 points) – but still good enough to win.

Or so I hoped.

BOTTOM LINE

All four lineups turned out to be winners. In fact, they were blockbusters that exceeded my projections, set new PRs for me with 361.9 and 375.7 points, and earned handsome wins:

The Jeff Teague/Darren Collison lineup placed second (2/100) in a 100-Player League by scoring 361.9 points.
The Jordan Clarkson/Darren Collison lineup placed 35/8,620 in an NBA Block (Single Entry) Tournament.
The Clarkson/Collison lineup also finished 5/100 in a 50/50 and 18/568 in a Double Up Tournament.