THE HANGOVER: DRAFTSTARS WEEKLY WRAP

By now you have probably had enough time to realise the year is back into the swing of things. And it’s another 350 or so days until your Christmas holidays start again… Sorry to do that to you, but it’s true. As miserable as it sounds. Thankfully, when the world was being thought up by God, Buddha, Allah, Ghanesh, the Dalai Llama and Gary Ablett Snr., they thought it best to inject a thing called sport into our lives. To make the inevitable monotony of work more manageable. And here we are. Seven days a week, we have sport. And we have Draftstars.

All last week we were blessed with a slather of sports from across the globe. On our shores, Australia won the first ODI of 2019 and have now won half as many ODI’s they won last year. Keeping on the cricket theme, the Big Bash carried along its somewhat unpredictable trajectory. The Renegades and Heat split the point over two games, the Strikers aren’t sure whether they’re good or not and the competition suffered from some stars getting called into various ODI squads.

The umpires aren’t too sure what is going on either after this seven ball over from Ben Dwarshuis yielded him the wicket of Michael Klinger.

Draftstars fan favourite competition, the NBA, is now taking a fairly familiar and expected form. Most teams are sitting in their probably end of season positions and the cream is rising to the top. The Warriors are finding some form, the Raptors will win the East and the Suns suck again. Nikola Jokić had another monstrous week for the Nuggets, who are top of the West. And Luka Doncic put half of his second hand on the rookie of the year trophy as he became the youngest player since LeBron to put up 25 points and have 10 assists.

And the NFL held its second week of playoffs with eight teams going head to head. Unsurprisingly, the home side, and the side coming off a bye, took the chocolates in each match. Despite wilful battles from the Eagles and Cowboys, the home sides all won for the first time since 2016-16. Now the conference championships will play host to two of the most anticipated playoff matchups in recent memory, and the NFL continues to please its fans (on field at least).

CRICKET CONTESTS

Starting off by looking at the ODI on Saturday, Australia posted a competitive target and then Jhye Richardson and Jason Behrendorff reminded Australia of WA’s bowling stocks by having India three down for two runs. Things were looking bleak, and the game all but over, but India is in any short form format with Rohit Sharma at the crease. Although they fell short of Australia’s 288 run total, Sharma was peerless with 133 runs from 129 balls and a DS return of 230.25.

Tickets for the Biggest Bash Live Final were flying off the shelves during the week and now only 38 contest winner and nine fast pass tickets remain. Winning the Sunday contest between the Renegades and Heat, Brickasboys were dominant. Finishing almost thirty points clear of second, the team featured the top three scorers of the contest- Brendon McCullum, Mitchell Swepson and Chris Lynn.

After that game, the Scorchers hosted the Sixers. After notching up 178, the Sixers would have been confident. But they didn’t anticipate the building form of Cam Bancroft. Opening the batting, Bancroft nailed a classy 87 from 61 and collected 120.75 DS points. He was the best value pick of the match and also the top scorer. He is getting better with every match and should be one to watch each contest, despite his growing pricetag.

NBA CONTESTS

As we’ve spoken about, unicorns dominate fantasy NBA. James Harden is averaging 76.3 DS points over his last three, AD- 64.8, Karl Anthony-Towns put up 63 against NOLA and Nikola Jokić hasn’t scored less than 40 in 2019 while racking up three triple-doubles.

But Draftstars contests are typically won by the outlier. On Saturday, in the big $15,000+ contest, Kevin Huerter and Royce O’Neale were those outliers. And contest winner LordVito selected both. Before the games kicked off, you could have snared both for less than $14k and would have received and output of 77 DS points. Good enough for almost 20% of the winning sides total score.

Meanwhile, Lamarcus Aldridge has just been going to work. This blog pointed towards him being a valuable choice last week and he delivered in spades. His past three games have yielded 131.3 DS points and include a scoring outburst of 75.5 against OKC. In that game he scored a career high 56 points in a double OT victory, bucking a trend in the process as he eclipsed the 50 mark without a three pointer (in the 2018-19 NBA season, wow).

NFL CONTESTS

The NFL playoffs are rarely predictable, they never stick to script and they regularly produce a result which leaves you in your chair saying, “yep, that makes sense, all seems about right.” But that is exactly what happened this week.

Not only did the results go the way you would think, but the victories came on the back of the players you would think would orchestrate them.

Tom Brady, at 41-years-old, lead the Patriots to their eighth straight conference championship game, Drew Brees and Michael Thomas carried the Saints past the magic Philly were playing with, Pat Mahomes did what we have come to expect of him and Todd Gurley… wait, Cj Anderson (?!), blasted his way through the Cowboys D at will.

Sunday saw one of the greatest ground playoff performances in history as the aforementioned CJ Anderson and Todd Gurley combined for 238 rush yards and three scores to send the Cowboys packing.

Another RB, Sony Michel, in his playoff debut went nuts, running alllllll over the Chargers seven man pass D. He ran for 129 yards and 3 scores himself. While many doubted whether he was first round talent, he proved himself in one outing on Monday and was the catalyst for a Patriots win.

And Saints pro-bowl wide receiver, Michael Thomas, had his way with the Eagles pass coverage. He exploded for 12 catches, a touchdown and 171 yards! Proving once again his tandem with Drew Brees is the most unguaradable in the league, #cantguardmike.

Check in all week online or by the Draftstars app for another smorgasbord of contests across the NFL, NBA, BBL and ODI series.

Written by Brin Duggan

By BBL, Latest, NBA, NFL