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:
- Marvin Bagley is going to be an incredibly popular DFS play tonight, but with good reason. The Pistons will be without Bogdanovic, Duren, and Stewart in the frontcourt. Additionally, higher usage players like Cunningham and Hayes are also out. On the other side of the matchup, Portland will be without Nurkic which means Bagley has little to no resistance tonight. This all sets up for Bagley to absolutely crush value at his current price.
- Grant Williams should see increased minutes and opportunity with Jayson Tatum, Al Horford and Robert Williams out for the Celtics. Thankfully, aside from Jarrett Allen Cleveland isn’t really a huge team so there’s a decent chance we see some smaller lineups in this game which would benefit Williams’ minutes projection. At a price on DK of $3.4k and a minutes projection around 30 Grant Williams rates as one of the strongest value options.
- Trey Murphy III is going to carry more ownership then he probably should. Granted, it’s a solid matchup versus the Kings who may be without D’Aaron Fox. Additionally, the Pelicans are a little thin with Zion, Richardson, Nance Jr.,, and Alvarado all out and JVal questionable. However, even with all of that Murphy doesn’t have a median/ceiling combo that much higher than some other players in his price range to warrant such a large gap in ownership. This is fine spot to get different in GPPs.
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
Derrick White
Cam Reddish
Grant Williams
Marvin Bagley
Joel Embiid OR Damian Lillard
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: Jaden Ivey, Trae Young, Jamal Murray
SG: James Harden, Alec Burks, Chris Duarte
SF: Jaylen Brown, Jordan Nwora, Matisse Thybulle
PF: Jimmy Butler, Blake Griffin, Keegan Murray
C: Nikola Jokic, Jarrett Allen, Domantas Sabonis
DFS Popular Player: Marvin Bagley
Price: $5,500/6,200
Own%: -%/-%
DFS Value Player: Grant Williams
Price: $3,400/4,500
5x%: -%/-%
Player to Avoid in DFS: Trey Murphy III
Price: $4,400/$5,200
LevX: -/-
NBA DFS Final Thoughts
Tonight is definitely shaping up to be more of a stars and scrubs roster construction with the amount of value available. The chalk is going to be concentrated around Celtics value, Marvin Bagley, and Cam Reddish, while the popular spend ups are Dame Lillard and Joel Embiid. There are a few ways to approach this. One is with direct leverage by playing guys like Jerami Grant, James Harden, and Blake Griffin. The other is by finding pivots in the same price range, particularly for the spends ups where you can get an under-owned Jokic or Sabonis hoping for a late Fox scratch. Good luck tonight!
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