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

This week, I created a trend whose aim was to identify players who were expected to see increased usage in a particular game. I’m not looking for players who always command a high usage rate, but rather players whose usage rate is generally fairly low who are receiving a bump. Sometimes a fringe starter will actually command a higher usage rate when coming off the bench, as the top scoring option for the second unit, so it’s going to be interesting to see which types of players are returned as matches throughout the week.

Here is the overall rating for the trend:

 

The filters that I used were:

• The player’s Usage is between 2.2-20
• The player’s Proj. Usage is between 22-27.4

In other words, we are first finding players whose overall usage on the season is under 20%. From that group of players, we are looking to see if any of them are projected to have a usage rate above 22 in one of their games.

Results

The screenshots below are from teams I entered into FanDuel’s $5 Layup

1/26

Surprisingly, there were no matches on Monday, but we do have a few to look at from Tuesday, 1/26.

 

Actually, there was a third match in Nick Young. Kobe wasn’t ruled out until after lineup lock, but once he was ruled out, that bumped up Young’s usage enough that he would have qualified. He finished with 20.2 fantasy points, which paid off his $3,500 salary on the night.

The other two options were both pretty chalky. In a large GPP on an eight-game night, both Parsons and Booker easily cleared 30% ownership. Compared to their implied point totals based on usage, each came through.

Anytime you’re going to see increased usage and the opponent you’re facing is the Lakers or the 76ers, good things are probably going to happen. These plays were easy to spot, so I won’t waste too much time going into detail. It was nice to see the trend start off the week on the right foot though.

1/27

 

Here’s an interesting result set. While none of these guys went off, I like that I was able to get two cheap options who were tagged to see a significant increase in usage at under 1% ownership on a medium sized slate (eight games).

Shabazz was actually a top 10 play according to the Phan Model on 1/27 and he had a decent ownership number, around 9%. While Kevin Martin had been out for the Wolves, Muhammad had been on a mini-tear coming into the OKC game, having scored 20+ in four straight games while maintaining a reasonable price tag. It’s pretty disappointing that he did not play well in a game where his team scored 123 points, but he did have his opportunity – he played 25 minutes and took 12 shots. But when Shabazz’s shot isn’t falling and he’s not getting to the line (1 FTA), he’s probably going to dud since he doesn’t contribute too much in other categories.

TJ McConnell was pegged for a usage bump based on the statuses of Stauskas, Canaan, and Sampson. Unfortunately, Stauskas and Canaan both ended up playing, which put a hard cap on TJ’s upside for the evening. On FanDuel, sometimes you have to speculate on what’s going to happen after lineup lock, and it doesn’t always work out the way you want it to.

TJ Warren was one of the beneficiaries of the Suns’ dire injury situation and he exceeded his implied point total by about 5 points against the Cavs. While nearly everyone was on Booker and Goodwin, I kind of like getting Warren at 0.6% ownership, although it didn’t pay massive dividends tonight. We’ve seen before that he can get hot and he has all the opportunity in the world right now.

1/28

Yesterday was just a mess – you had key players being ruled out before (Melo, Brow) and after (Porzingis) lock and you even had a guy who had logged less than 50 career minutes starting at point guard (Dejean-Jones) for the Pelicans. When there are punt options everywhere like this, you need to figure out which have the most chance of staying involved throughout the game. Luckily, the trend did a pretty good job of this last night.

Due to the Knicks being so shorthanded, Afflalo’s Projected Usage rose to 25.7%, which represents a season high for him. Even in a less than ideal matchup, Afflalo was able to exceed his implied point total by almost 10 points. Taking into account his reasonable ownership level on this six-game slate, Afflalo ended up being one of the better plays at the position.

Teammate Jrue Holiday was a much more popular play (48.8%), but Norris Cole turned in the better game from a points-per-dollar perspective. Cole was tagged for an obvious boost in both minutes and usage with Evans, Gordon, and Davis out for New Orleans and he also had a great matchup against the Kings.

Norris had been playing well lately (exceeded his implied point total in three straight games), so the ownership level is a bit curious. I would guess that many people were reluctant to pair Holiday and Cole on the same team together. I’m generally more pro-stacking than most in NBA, and I’m very pro-stacking when a team is missing multiple pieces.

Conclusion

The Usage Bump Trend closes out the week with nine of its 11 matches exceeding their implied point total. It also identified several low-owned GPP punt plays who were expected to see increased usage. While none of them really went off this week, I think there is potential for the future. The Plus/Minus isn’t quite as high as some of the other trends that we have looked at and it will return its fair share of chalk, but I would still recommend the Usage Bump Trend to others.