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.
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:
- Saturday injury edition of the Triple Threat. First up is Joel Embiid on the back end of a back to back here listed questionable with a calf issue. If Embiid is out, Harden (+5.8%), Melton (+4.5%), Harris (+4.3%), and Maxey (+4.2%) get the biggest usage bumps. Now Harden is also questionable, so that is a variable here, but Maxey, Melton, and Harris will all get huge bumps in fantasy viability if Embiid is out.
- Coincidentally enough Q tag #2 is James Harden, who sounds closer to doubtful based on some of Doc River's comments. With Harden off the floor this season, Maxey (+5.4%), Harris (+4.2%), Melton (+2.8), and Embiid (+1.3%) receive that largest bumps in usage. As long as one of Embiid or Harden are out, Maxey, Harris, and Melton will all pick up a huge boost in projection and depending on the timing of the news a huge boost in ownership as well.
- Lastly we have De'Aaron Fox, who appears to be the most questionable out of the bunch. Fox left yesterday's game in the third quarter with hamstring pain and did not return. While a hamstring injury makes me extremely skeptical about his potential availability tonight, it looked like he wanted to come back in the game but was held out, potentially for back to back reasons in an effort to play tonight. If Fox is ruled out, Monk (+4.2%), Barnes (+3.4%), and Huerter (+1.7% usage) would become far better plays and potentially under-owned given the fact that this game is a 10 pm game.
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
TBD
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: TBD
SG: TBD
SF: TBD
PF: TBD
C: TBD
Q tag #1: Joel Embiid
Price: $/$
Own%: %/%
Q tag #2: James Harden
Price: $/$
5x%: %/%
Q tag #3: De'Aaron Fox
Price: $/$
LevX: /
NBA DFS Final Thoughts
This entire slate hinges on 3 key pieces of injury news that are all apart of 10 pm est games. If you're going to play this slate you need to be around for news. Aside from that, my best advice is to try and not lock yourself into many pieces from the 8 pm and possibly 9 pm game. This is a short slate starved for value, so this isn't the easiest thing in the world to do. At least be cognizant of the positions in which big value can open up at and leave yourself flexibility in those positions to jam in value if it opens up.
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