Welcome to the NBA DFS Triple Threat here at Paydirt! This is going to be a daily article aimed at giving thoughts and notes on three important aspects of the NBA DFS slate. We will talk through the most popular player on the slate, a great value play, and a situation you need to monitor to find success. This article is best used with the projections models here at Paydirt (Found here), but it will still be valuable even as a one off piece of content. While the focus is on Draftkings, the content is applicable to Fanduel as well. Costs, Projections, and finishing percentiles format will be Draftkings/Fanduel.
Main Points:
- Paolo Banchero is going to be quite popular tonight for the shorthanded Magic. With only 9 active players, Banchero and the rest of the starters are going to have to play big minutes. Furthermore, with Franz Wagner off the court Banchero is averaging 1.13 FPPM. The one knock on Banchero is his current price. At $8k on both DFS sites there’s not a lot of meat left on the bone relative to his ceiling.
- Keegan Murray is projected to play right around 30 minutes in one of the best matchups possible. At his current price and median projection he sits at or near the top of best value plays on the slate. Additionally, he is not currently projected for much ownership making him an elite value play in GPPs tonight.
- Immanuel Quickley is going to be a moderately popular play tonight as the Knicks are at home versus the pseudo-G League Spurs. Despite the return of Jalen Brunson, Quickley still played over 35 minutes in the last game and should continue to see over 30 minutes as long as RJ Barrett remains out. The main issue here is that he’s seen a significant price increase all the way up to $6.2k on Draftkings and $6.8k on Fanduel. At his current price and ownership you may as well just find the extra $ for Brunson and take the higher ceiling player.
Depending on the size of the slate, there may be multiple situations, value plays, and popular options that you need to consider. Join the Paydirt discord with this link for more updates and game theory on all the slates details: https://discord.gg/mQ6u5dfawF
NBA Cash Game Core:
This core of players will help you build a strong foundation in cash games. While it is best to use all these players, it's not a requirement
Dennis Schroder
Naji Marshall
Jalen McDaniels
Paolo Banchero
James Harden
NBA GPP Core:
This core of players will help you build in differentiation in your lineups. These players are meant to be mixed in with some of the stronger chalk options. How many of these players you put in is dependent on the size of the field and personal risk tolerance.
PG: Trae Young, Kevin Porter Jr., Alex Caruso
SG: Grayson Allen, Austin Reaves, Ty Jerome
SF: Kevin Durant, Landry Shamet, Trey Murphy III
PF: Julius Randle, Jeremy Sochan, Keegan Murray
C: Domantas Sabonis, Nikola Vucevic, Wendell Carter Jr.
Popular DFS Play: Paolo Banchero
Price: $8,000/$8,000
Own%: 50.34%/67.58%
DFS Value Play: Keegan Murray
Price: $4,100/$5,100
5x%: 71.30%/49.90%
Player to avoid in DFS: Immanuel Quickley
Price: $6,200/$6,800
LevX: -8.55/-3.86
NBA DFS final thoughts
Outside of Giannis, who still won’t be tremendously high-owned, almost every high end player will be under 10% owned tonight on both sites. While there may not be the obvious, slam dunk value plays, there are quite a few strong options at the low-mid range price tier. As this is being written Embiid just got ruled out which likely results in James Harden being the highest owned stud option. Good luck as always!
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