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:
- From last night: “Jordan Poole is averaging career highs in both usage and assists this season which has increased his potential ceiling in DFS. Andrew Wiggins remains out and as the Warriors 2nd leading scorer this will continue to add to Poole’s opportunity. Poole is one of the strongest mid-range value plays on both sites tonight.” All of this remains true except tonight Klay is also out, Curry is questionable, and it’s a better matchup.
- Bogdan Bogdanovic has seen over 30 minutes in the last two games that he’s played with the injury to Dejounte Murray. He has made the most of these minutes scoring over 40 Draftkings points in both contests. While part of this has been due to some hot shooting, he is still very reasonably priced and makes for a strong value play once again tonight.
- Gary Trent Jr. is going to be very highly owned on a 10-game slate despite not being cheap and Van Vleet and Siakam still playing. Granted, OG Anunoby is out and Trent Jr. did play 42 minutes in the Raptors last game which was a blowout. However, there’s not a whole lot here to justify playing him at over 50% ownership in anything other than cash games. Feel free to pivot here 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
Jordan Poole
Gary Trent Jr.
Bogdan Bogdanovic
Charles Bassey
Daniel Gafford
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 Doncic, TJ McConnell, Alex Caruso
SG: Anthony Edwards, Quentin Grimes, Andrew Nembhard
SF: Jaden McDaniels, Tim Hardaway Jr., Kelly Oubre Jr.
PF: Pascal Siakam, Keita Bates-Diop, Evan Mobley
C: Nikola Jokic, Bam Adebayo, Rudy Gobert
Popular DFS Play: Jordan Poole
Price: $7,800/$6,700
Own%: 41.10%/70.00%
DFS Value Play: Bogdan Bogdanovic
Price: $5,000/$6,000
5x%: 65.90%/36.20%
Player to avoid in DFS: Gary Trent Jr.
Price: $5,700/$5,800
LevX: -30.37/ -34.74
NBA DFS final thoughts
The value centers tonight at their price and projections are really hard to come off of. However, the SG/SF spots have a lot more options to get different from the chalk players. A balanced build is once again going to be a popular choice so there is some leverage in targeting expensive guys like Luka or Jokic. Key news to keep an eye on is the status of Steph Curry. If he gets ruled out it will likely bump up ownership on guys like Jonathan Kuminga. As always try to leave roster flexibility in your G/F/UTIL spots on DK by playing the later start times in those positions. Good luck tonight!
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