Whats up guys and gals? Its Tiers Thursday! With only four games tonight, I wanted to run back the Tiers concept with an extra little wrinkle I have been working on: Optimal Lineup Percentage!
What does it mean? Simply put, Optimal Lineup Percentage (henceforth known as OLP) is an estimate of how frequently each player will win his group, based on the aggregate floor, mean, and ceiling projection.
How does it work? The short answer: I use the aggregate projections we all know and love to calculate a normal distribution of outcomes (think bell curve from college). Each sim randomly selects one of these outcomes for each player, and then we compare the players scores to see who wins.
Now you may notice some oddities every once in a while. For instance in Tier 6 today, Saddiq Bey trails Cameron Payne in percentage of times hitting all three group winning numbers, yet Bey has a 1% higher chance to win the group according to my simulations. Now I am sure if we ran 1 Million sims instead of 100, we’d likely get a different result, but the lesson I take here is that many times, the differences we see aren’t as meaningful as they may seem.
A quick reminder: the first three numbers on each chart represent the floor, mean, and ceiling of the range of target winning scores based on historical data.
Lets jump in to it!
Tier 1
Kevin Durant is the overwhelming favorite to win this tier with James Harden out tonight for the Nets, and if you are playing cash or small field contests, don’t get cute, there is only one option.
For tournaments, the other guys have viability, simply because KD will very likely be owned more than 62% of the time. I imagine Embiid will pick up the majority of the remaining ownership, leaving both Sabonis and Randle as our leverage plays in the group.
Tier 2
This tier is a little closer, but once again we have one player standing out quite a bit in CP3. However, I don’t feel like we will see the Point God run away with ownership, as a decently projected Bradley Beal should stay close.
As for Ayton vs Tobias: the OLP is being a bit “quirky”, but I’d say we can call them both 10%. I don’t think either player will see more than 10% ownership, but I also don’t think this is quite the leverage opportunity we see in Tier 1.
Tier 3
Ok we got a close one! And I think an opportunity. Based on raw mean projection, Cunningham has a nice little lead, but we see two things at play here that I think can help us get a leg up on the field:
There are strong options, and one decent option. No duds for Cade to run up the score on, so he is optimal fewer times.
The power of floor - Brogdon has the same advantage in floor that Cunningham has in mean, meaning he is always competing. No duds for him.
I’d expect Cade to lead in ownership by quite a bit here, despite offering no advantage. I plan to have plenty of both Pacers tonight, but obviously more Brogdon than LeVert.
P.S. - Embiid is expected to play as of now, so Drummond is an NP.
Tier 4
Digging into these numbers, it looks like Tyrese Maxey and Patty Mills should be flipped really, but again, we see what’s possible once outcomes start coming out, so to speak.
How much D. Rose will the field play is the big question here. On the main slate he has a big advantage right now despite a fairly tight group of pricing, and I imagine that continues here, only none of the other guys really stands out, so we’ll need to spread it around.
This is also the first tier I’m really concerned with correlation. If a non Rose player wins, try to imagine what circumstances led to that scenario? The Sixers/Nets went to OT? Maybe another Knick dominated the ball? Work through the possibilities to find your groups.
Tier 5
This could change quite a bit if Christian Wood does play. Last night Rockets coach Stephen Silas said his chances were “slim”, but the team officially label his as questionable. We will have to keep an eye on this situation this afternoon.
But for now we have an opportunity with Kyle Kuzma looking like he will be underowned relative to his chances to win. Armoni Brooks could offer leverage as well - last night Sengun crushed Brooks - box score scouts will have a difficult time clicking Brooks’ name.
Finally Isaiah Stewart has been removed as he scored zero wins… so…
Tier 6
Finally we have T6, where we see some good options, some decent options, and Shake Milton. If you want to exclude Shake from your player pool, I don’t blame you, I likely will as well.
The bulk of our shares will be with Montrezl Harrell, Cameron Payne, and Saddiq Bey of course - with these three guys also leading in ownership. Without any real ownership inefficiencies to exploit, correlation should be our guide for this group.
Ok that is all I have for today! No thread, but be sure to check out my twitter feed @SNGSports for updated charts and/or analysis.
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