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:
- Kyrie Irving sees his first game of the season without fellow star Kevin Durant against his former team, the Boston Celtics. Neither Draftkings or Fanduel have had the time to increase Irving's price yet so with him staying around the same salary he's been at all season with Durant playing, he is now clearly underpriced with Durant out of the lineup. With a massive increase in usage likely, expect Irving to be extremely popular on tonight's slate.
- The Heat, as always, are short on bodies tonight with 3 of their regular starters out due to injury. Gabe Vincent started at PG in Kyle Lowry's absence last game and we can expect the same tonight. At just around $4,000 on both sites and likely to see into the mid-upper 30s in minutes tonight, Vincent projects to be a great value play tonight.
- Now there is a lot of uncertainty about what the Nets rotation will look like with Durant out of the lineup, but given Simmons's high projected ownership, it appears that the field is making assumptions that could be ill advised. Simmons is awfully cheap for his per minute production and likely increase in usage without Durant. However, his minutes have been all over the place this season, some nights he seeing into the 30s while others he stays in the low 20s. Simmons may be a good fade candidate tonight given the uncertainty of the situation in combinations with the fields' overconfidence.
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
Gabe Vincent
Seth Curry
Jrue Holiday
Kyrie Irving
Bobby Portis
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: Luka, Donovan Mitchell, Dame (if he plays)
SG: Jaden hardy, Gary Payton, Joe Harris
SF: Haywood Highsmith, Kenrich Williams, Reggie Bullock
PF: Jayson Tatum, Yuta Watanabe, Jalen McDaniels
C: Eugene Omoruyi, Dwight Powell, Nurkic/Eubanks
Popular DFS Play: Kyrie Irving
Price: $8,800/$9,300
Own%: 51.77%/40.50%
DFS Value Play: Gabe Vincent
Price: $4,000/$4,100
5x%: 66.40%/80.50%
Player to avoid in DFS: Ben Simmons
Price: $5,400/$6,800
LevX: -9.9/-9.73
NBA DFS final thoughts
Barring more value opening up, it appears that tonight's slate is likely to be more of a balanced build type of slate, which creates an opening for the GPP bros to flip the build and opt for more of a stars and scrubs approach. There is a decent amount of value already available, but it appears that not many people will be playing Luka Doncic at his incredible 12.8K price tag on Draftkings. However, Luka has consistently been putting up 70+ point performances with upwards of a 100 point ceiling. In a primetime matchup against the Lakers I would try to be as overweight on Luka as possible. Good luck tonight!
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