With our Trends tool, you can see current and historical matches for players in matchups that meet the specified criteria. This makes it pretty easy to track performance within the result set. In this series, I thought it might be cool to take it one step further. I will be creating a Trend early in the week, playing the “Current Matches” in my lineups throughout the week on FanDuel and then reviewing the Trend at the end of the week.

This Monday, I created the following Trend:

Description

In many of my articles in the “Trend Testing” Series, I try to provide something new to think about, but this week’s Trend falls more under the category or “testing conventional wisdom.” This week, I created a trend that matches players whose opponent is on a back-to-back, with a couple of additional caveats. Firstly, I added a minimum Projected Usage threshold so that I wasn’t matching entire teams, but instead, only the most fantasy-relevant players and secondly, I matched teams who are playing at home.

 

The filters I used were:
• The opposing team has had 1 day off
• The team is the Home team
• The Player’s Proj Usage is Above 25

Results

2/29

Both the Pacers and 76ers played on 2/28, which meant that their 2/29 opponents, Cleveland and Washington were going to match this trend. Because of the usage filter, that made our matches for the night Lebron James, Kyrie Irving, John Wall, and Brad(ley) Beal:

 

Beal hadn’t really been right since returning from his injury, but the other three players all came through. Although Wall’s ownership was relatively high, at 21.5% on a seven-game slate, I think blowout potential is what kept his ownership level from reaching astronomical levels. He had just eclipsed 45 fantasy points in three-of-four recent games, was playing at home, and had a superb matchup.

With that in mind, take a look at this team, which finished second in this GPP:

 

How simple is this lineup? The guy triple-stacked Washington vs Philadelphia and Milwaukee vs Houston. Sure, there was risk that the Wizards were going to blowout the 76ers, but:

A.) By rostering Washington players on the same team, he was able to isolate that risk to only one team
B.) If the game remained close, he was going to have a unique combination of players who were in a good position to exceed value

If you end up using this trend, keep this roster in mind. If a bad team is on a back-to-back, yes, there is a good chance they will get blown out. But they won’t always. In GPPs, you can find ways to mitigate your overall risk by isolating your exposure to certain games like jnord did.

3/2

On Tuesday, there were no matches, however, on Wednesday, Charlotte, Portland and Chicago were on back-to-backs and here were the matches from their opponents:

 

All three players did exceed value, though you could certainly make the argument that the matchups for IT and Vucevic were good regardless of the B2B. Still, the ownership levels were pretty nice and the results were positive.

They didn’t quite meet the Projected Usage threshold, but Hezonja (34 fantasy points) and Aaron Gordon (35.5 fantasy points) took advantage of their opportunities to post strong GPP plays as well. Both Hezonja and Gordon were rostered by a handful of top finishers.

One of the main things we’re worried about with this trend is the potential for a team to get blown out in the second half of the season when they are on a back-to-back and on the road. It’s not a good sign then that both Portland and Chicago (down 17 entering the fourth quarter) lost by substantial margins.

Although the 76ers were not on a back-to-back, they were playing their third game in four nights, so this was a rough part of the schedule for them too. Also, they are the 76ers.

3/3

 

Curry, of course, was questionable through lineup lock last night, which meant that his 21.4% ownership level is probably not very representative of what it would have been had his status been more clear. Both he and Klay basically hit their implied point total right on the nose.

I do want to take a look at Davis’ matchup here because I think that is the most interesting one, even though he fell just shy of his 41.48 implied point total. The more I think about it, if there were a team to target on back-to-backs in GPPs, wouldn’t it be the Spurs, particularly as we get into March and April? Yes, they are a solid defensive team regardless, but in tournaments, I’m not sure getting a player at their absolute lowest ownership level to face off against the likes of Patty Mills and Rasual Butler is the worst idea. Pop did keep his usual starting lineup intact last night, but this may be something to watch as the regular season starts to wind down.

Results

Although overall, “only” eight-of-12 matches exceeded their implied point total, two of the misses were by less than one fantasy point, which means this Trend was just a couple bounces of the ball from having a huge week.

I do like this Trend as a GPP tool. Over the second half of the season, people are often scared off of back-to-back situations, particularly when the matchup seems one-sided to begin with, and for good reason. But as we saw a couple of times this week, the games don’t always turn into blowouts and if you’ve played your cards right, you can find yourself sitting in a good position if you have taken that risk.