4 Penn Plaza was once the third-best team in The Bubble. Now the Plaza find themselves deeply buried in the midst of a five-game losing streak that has brought the once undefeated team to its knees.
There are no excuses for our play recently. Sure, the experts can blame the handful of game cancellations and a boatload of COVID cases, but even that doesn’t make up for the lack of production for our stars.
Despite being down two of our best players, Andre Drummond (Cleveland) and Anthony Davis (Los Angeles), we should be able to stay competitive. During our win streak, we only blew out one team. However, our last three losses have been by 400 points.
As we cling to the last playoff spot, we only have four weeks to clean up our act or call it an early offseason.
Week 10 of action marked only the third time this season we exceeded our original matchup projections, 1164.20 compared to 1141.56. Those numbers didn’t mean much since Giannis Akumpo mopped the floor with us, despite failing to reach their projections by 114.76.
Lucky for us, we managed to keep the matchup closer than the computers expected. We were originally supposed to lose by 504 points, and our depleted lineup managed to cut into that deficit and lose by 366.60 points instead, 1530.80 to 1164.20.
For the fourth straight week, the Plaza opened up a matchup with a winning edge on opening night. And just the three previous weeks, they went on to find themselves on the losing side the remaining six nights.
We were up by 68.20 points after Monday, and then a 173.50 point swing on Tuesday turned the score into our opponent’s favour, and it was curtains for us after that. They slowly built up their lead over the week, reaching 200 points by Thursday and 300 by Saturday, before finishing 366.60 points ahead.
Our daily average was 166.31 points, which is our third worse daily output of the season. The daily deficit ran up to 222.50, which ended up as our third worse hole to climb out of during the five-game losing streak.
In week nine, our overall team statistics took a hit and remained the same after another loss. The only change occurred in steals, where we dropped from third to fifth.
Regarding the other five categories, we remain the best team in the league in regards to rebounds and blocks. Our next best category is turnovers, where we rank second. After that, we are the second to the worse team (9th) in assists and the third worse team (8th) in points.
When we take a look at the standings after 10 weeks, nothing changed from the previous week. Only two significant things occurred. First, Damn KD secured the first playoff spot of the season. They haven’t earned the top spot yet, but they have punched their ticket to the playoffs. The second thing is Giannis Akumpo moved to 4-6-0 on the season and now sits one win behind us for the final playoff seed.
 149.30 points |
 10.20 points |
Utah Jazz star Robert Gobert scored his first best player award, despite being one of our leading scorers all season. In week 10, the center put together 149.30 points thanks to 55 points, 49 rebounds, five assists, two steals, 11 blocks, and 11 turnovers.
Justin Jackson (Oklahoma City) joined his teammate Donte DiVincenzo (Milwaukee) as the only player to win back-to-back worse player awards. In week nine, the forward scored 14.30 points and followed that performance up with just 10.20 points in week 10 before he was cut. Jackson collected six points, one rebound, and one steal in his only appearance of the week.
4 Penn Plaza followed a pattern that many of our other losing fantasy teams fall into, and that is when the losses pile up; we make moves and grab players from our favourite teams.
After Jackson failed to mustard more than 25 points in his last two weeks, we cut the Oklahoma City forward in favour of a New York Knicks player, Nerlens Noel. The power forward has found his playing time jump up due to injuries and should have the opportunity to score more points and contribute to a desperately needed turnaround.
Weekly Move Total: 1/5
Season Move Total: 15/50
Follow 4 Pennsylvania Plaza all season long @keepingthestats or facebook.com/keepingthestats.
Keeping the Stats 