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:
- In typical Steve Kerr fashion, lots of minutes for the starters on the front end of a b2b = rest all the starters on the back end of a b2b. It is expected that Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green will all be out tonight, thus opening us to some heavy Jordan Poole exposure. Poole is just $6,500 on Draftkings tonight and with those three players off the court this season Poole has bolstered a ludicrous 35% usage rate and averaged close to 40 Draftkings points per 36 minutes. Expect a whole lot of ownership on Jordan Poole tonight.
- Ty Jerome is the dead minimum on Draftkings tonight and close to it on Fanduel. On a typical slate that would make sense, but the Warriors may be without 3 of their starters tonight and in similar situation in the past Jerome has played quite well. The last time the Warriors sat their starters Jerome played 41 minutes and scored 40 Draftkings points. Now that was undoubtedly an outlier, but we just need roughly half of that for Jerome to crush his salary tonight.
- Xavier Tillman has been really solid in the absence of Steven Adams, scoring 25+ Draftkings points in 4 of the last 5 games. However, Tillman has only exceeded 30 points once, and that was in a game vs Portland where Jusuf Nurkic got injured. Tillman's minutes are very matchup dependent, and Clarke could see the bulk of them tonight against a huge Cleveland team. Given Tillman's inflated ownership following his last game, he becomes an intriguing fade tonight.
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
Jordan Poole
Ty Jerome
Tyler Herro
Xavier Tillman
Santi Aldama
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, Reggie Jackson, Jrue Holiday
SG: Isaac Okoro, Andrew Nembhard, Quentin Grimes
SF: Dean Wade, Kawhi, Troy Brown
PF: Julius Randle, Giannis, Derrick Jones
C: Jamychal Green, Nikola Jokic, Jeff Green
Popular DFS Player: Jordan Poole
Price: $6,500/$7,000
Own%: 70.00%/70.00%
Value DFS Player: Ty Jerome
Price: $3,000/$3,700
5x%: 90.90%/83.90%
Player to Avoid in DFS: Xavier Tillman
Price: $4,200/$4,700
LevX: -14.19/-43.53
NBA DFS final thoughts
Given that our assumptions about the Warriors starters comes to fruition, this appears to be a slate where balanced builds are going to be heavily favored over stars and scrubs despite some solid value being available. Luka, Giannis, and Julius Randle all project to be in the single digits when it comes to ownership, and every single one of them can break the slate purely through raw points. To win GPPs you should be focusing on zigging while others zag. I would prioritize the studs on this slate and avoid the chalkier middle tier. Good luck!
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