In this series, I thought it might be cool to take our trends tool 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

This trend matches players who are currently ranked within the top 15 players by rebound rate who are playing in games where their team is favored by five or more points. The idea is that as a team gets out to a lead and forces their opponent to play catchup, the opponent will force more poor shots, leading to more rebound opportunities. Here’s the overall rating:

The filters I used were:

• The spread is between -20 and -5
• The player is Drummond, Jordan, Howard, Kanter, Monroe, Whiteside, Sullinger, Noah, Valanciunas, J Hill, Faried, Love, Gobert, T Thompson, Chandler

 

Results

The screenshots below come from teams I entered into FanDuel’s $5 Layup throughout the week.

11/23

This night, the Cavs were favored by eight points over the Magic and the Heat were favored by five over the Knicks. That meant we had matches within this trend for Kevin Love, Tristan Thompson, and Hassan Whiteside.

The Cavs power frontcourt was pretty chalky, probably due to their prices not rising fast enough on FanDuel to compensate for Mozgov’s injury.

At center, many were on Towns vs PHI (30.9% ownership) and Cousins vs CHA (20.4%). Whiteside was clearly a nice play, facing the Knicks at home, who don’t really have an imposing interior presence. But on FanDuel, you can only roster one center, making it easier to find a player at lower than expected ownership levels.

All three players exceeded their expected point total. Kevin Love led the way, scoring 49.6 against an expectation of 31.88. Both the Heat and the Cavs did win their games handily as the Vegas spreads had forecasted.

 

11/24

This was a fairly light NBA night, with six games. The one match was DeAndre Jordan, whose Clippers were facing the Nuggets and favored by seven to win the game.

I was pretty surprised to get Jordan at 9.8% owned considering his price point and matchup. Many were instead on Nikola Jokic, who was coming off a big game leading into this night. To be fair, Jokic did score 25.2 fantasy points at $4,300, but Jordan ended up beating his point expectation by 15.55 points. The Nuggets won by 17 and Jordan pulled down double-digit rebounds, making this a textbook example of what we are looking for using this Trend.

 

11/25

This was a huge NBA night, with 12 games leading into the Thanksgiving break. There were three matches for this Trend:

• DeAndre Jordan – Clippers vs. Jazz, Clippers -5
• Enes Kanter – Thunder vs Nets, Thunder -12
• Jared Sullinger – Celtics vs 76ers, Celtics -11.5

 

I wouldn’t have played Enes Kanter if not for purposes of this article. With the Thunder finally back to full health, it was pretty obvious he was going to be fighting for fantasy scraps. He did have nine rebounds in an 11-point win, so I can’t really fault the trend here – he just didn’t do anything else.

The Jared Sullinger play didn’t really go as expected. The Celtics actually needed a fourth quarter comeback to pull out a win against the 76ers and the game was very low scoring. While game script didn’t work out as anticipated, he did pull down 15 boards and surpassed expected production by over nine points.

Jordan vs the Jazz is another play I definitely wouldn’t have been on if not for writing this article. It turned out to be an okay play as DeAndre exceeded his projection by two points. That’s usually not going to cut it on a night with 12 games, but he did fine.

Review

Six of the seven plays ended up beating their point expectation. The one exception was Enes Kanter, but as I mentioned, that was kind of easy to see coming. The trend did produce a couple off the board plays, but most of the suggestions will be chalky. With this trend, you’re looking for players on teams that are easy favorites and so many people start with Vegas these days. For that reason, I’m not sure I would recommend using this trend in GPPs, but I think it is a fine one to consider when putting together cash game lineups.