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:
- Dennis Schroder is coming off of a double-double where he played over 30 minutes, but shot under 40% from the field. The key takeaway here is that the peripheral stats keep his floor relatively high along with secure minutes, and a better shooting night can give him a ceiling performance. The Lakers are already without Lebron and now AD is out, so the opportunity for Schroder to get up more shots is certainly there tonight. However, while it’s a great spot for him, Schroder is going to be the highest owned player in DFS tonight.
- Malik Beasley is another strong value option tonight. Lebron is out for multiple weeks, D’Angelo Russell out, and now AD is sitting. This should lead to a significant bump in usage and if there’s one thing Beasley can do it’s score. What killed him last game was only taking 8 shot attempts and a ceiling game from AD, but with Davis out he should be able to chuck. Additionally, the minutes have remained secure as he played over 30 last game and projects for 31 tonight.
- Luguentz Dort and Gordon Hayward are both projected to be chalky wing options tonight but neither is priced as a value which is resulting in more viable pivots at their price ranges. The easy move here in GPPs is to just play Jalen Williams who is a pivot off of both and direct leverage off of Dort.
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
Malik Beasley
Luguentz Dort
Jarred Vanderbilt
Giannis
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: James Harden, Donovan Mitchell, Jalen Brunson
SG: Austin Reaves, Jalen Green, Isaiah Joe
SF: Jalen Williams, Cam Reddish, Herb Jones
PF: Julius Randle, Paolo Banchero, Evan Mobley
C: Mitchell Robinson, Nic Claxton, Nikola Vucevic
DFS Popular Player: Dennis Schroder
Price: $5,400/5,900
Own%: 60.05%/70.00%
DFS Value Player: Malik Beasley
Price: $4,500/5,300
5x%: 74.00%/53.00%
Player to Avoid in DFS: Luguentz Dort/Gordon Hayward
Price: $5,100($6,400)/6,000(6,700)
LevX: -14.19(-10.45)/-11.58(-44.09)
NBA DFS final thoughts
Another night, more Lakers value. We should expect to see a lot of lineups with the 3-man combination of Schroder/Beasley/Vanderbilt at even more with 2 of those 3. The unfortunate injury to LaMelo Ball is also going to have people on Charlotte players but this was a team that was in tank mode with Ball healthy so we could see some shenanigans here. Thunder are another team with some perceived value with Shai out, however, we’ve yet to see any one guy step up consistently. The sub-$5k chalk appears to be stronger than a lot of chalk mid-range so keep that in mind as you build your DFS lineups for this slate tonight. Good luck!
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