Hot Streak

I’m on a hot streak on FanDuel. In fact, I’m so hot right now, it’s a little scary. I may be starting to figure out how to play NBA fantasy basketball like a pro. If this keeps up, I may realize my fantasy of making a living playing fantasy sports and quitting my job.

But that’s still quite a bit premature – the cart’s still before the horse.

Getting back to the hot streak, the header photo above is Ryan Anderson – who led the New Orleans Pelicans to a 114-105 upset victory last night (Thursday) over the Sacramento Kings – scoring two of his 36 points. The Pelicans were 3½-point underdogs.

While Anderson was keying the upset, he was also keying my two victorious lineups. Prior to last night, Anderson had been averaging 26.8 fantasy points per game (FPPG). But last night he racked up 51.8 fantasy points (FP) like so:

36 points
9 rebounds
4 assists
only 1 turnover

By putting Ryan Anderson in my lineups, I went 6-for-6 in my FanDuel pools last night – which came on the heels of an 8-for-9 performance the previous night (Wednesday). That’s 14 wins in 15 contests over the past two nights – and that’s a powerful embodiment of a hot streak.

The one loss I sustained on Wednesday night was because the Golden State Warriors sat Stephen Curry for the entire fourth quarter in their 127-107 shellacking of the Dallas Mavericks. Believe it or not, that’s already the 14th time this season that the Warriors sat Curry for the entire fourth quarter because of blowouts.

If not for sitting, Stephen Curry would’ve scored enough points to make me 9-for-9. I’ve written about being aware of blowouts in the past – and took it into consideration – but I still thought Stephen Curry would score enough points for me to win. Unfortunately, I miscalculated.

Getting back to last night, why did I play Ryan Anderson?

To begin with, I was looking for a power forward (PF) in the $6,000 salary range. That gave me a choice of four players:

Kenneth Faried
Zach Randolph
Julius Randle
Ryan Anderson

So I rated them.

FanDuel, DraftKings, and many online services have methods of rating players. Being an independent thinker, I decided to create my own method. Now, after several months of trial-and-error experimentation, I’m close to creating a winning formula.

Once I’m 100% confident in my methodology, I’ll allow fantasy players at-large to subscribe to it – for a very reasonable price, of course. Please stay tuned for that development.

I call my rating TG – which is short for TuffGuy – and here’s how TG saw my four PFs last night:

To me Ryan Anderson rated highest in three key areas:

His TG rating of 33.1 was highest of all.

His Over/Under of +6.3 was highest of all.

His Salary of $5,700 was lowest of all.

For me, it was a no-brainer – highest performance combined with lowest price.

So Ryan Anderson became one of my starting PFs – and it turned out to be a great choice. He went off, and his 51.8 FP were nearly 20 points higher than my TG prediction. Here’s my entire 7:00 lineup that scored 322 FP: