Quote of the day
"The fact that we shot 61 percent ... and won by two is a scary number, when you think about it. It took a 61 percent effort from us tonight to win a basketball game at home. That tells you how good [San Antonio] is." -- Celtics coach Doc Rivers, after a 105-103 win over the SpursDaily blurb
Fortunately, I read my own blurb yesterday, decided that San Antonio was not a defense to be avoided, and started Rajon Rondo in my daily FanDuel contest entry. He responded with a monster triple double (53 FanDuel points, 91.5 RotoHog salcap pts!). My $55K FanDuel contest entry totaled 290 points which is way above my average of about 220 – but I needed most of those points, as my opponent (who also had Rondo) scored 272.
Since the week in mid-December when I chronicled my daily FanDuel results, I haven’t been quite as successful (or in some cases, as lucky), going 7-9 since that time - which included one cold streak when I dropped 5 straight. Overall, I’m now 28-21 in this contest format, which still puts me slightly in the black.
Actually, with full disclosure, I may not have actually needed Rondo to pull out that win. It’s quite possible that Jose Calderon would have been my alternative (he was on my short list), once I learned that he would be starting and Jerrod Bayless would DNP. Calderon responded with 20 points and 17 assists, good enough to top Rondo on most nights. Ever since the Raptors traded away Jarrett Jack, Calderon has been quite productive – when he suits up. Unfortunately, he’s missed six games in the past month, and you almost always have to wait until gametime to find out if he will play. For daily contests, that’s often OK, since the Raptors often play in the early time slot, which means his status is generally known before the contest locks. For a traditional salary cap format, that’s problematic, though, as you can’t pick him up in advance of a decent schedule and have any reliance that he’ll play all of them.