Night 1 of 200ish slates this year is in the books, so if it didn’t go your way don’t panic, we have 199 more slates to hit the nuts. The plays from yesterday were hit and miss but the early game blowing out was a death sentence for me (and the Deandre Jordan call was not my finest moment). I hope everyone enjoyed the games but that was just an appetizer (a coconut shrimp appetizer, but still an appetizer nonetheless). We have a massive 11 game slate on tap Wednesday so a lot to get to….let’s dive in.
+EV Tips
- A slate this big brings late swap into play. With this being the first game for these teams I don’t anticipate much injury news to hit but we may have some surprise starting lineups to adjust to. In general I like to leave 2-3 spots on my lineups open for late news as we can not only adjust to late lineups but also adjust based on if we are ahead or behind and pivot to low owned plays.
- Projections are fragile to start the year as we don’t have much data on some of these new teams and how minutes will be allocated and how new players will interact with their new teammates. These are good slates to not follow the chalk in GPPs and take a few more chances, although NBA DFS is one of, if not the most predictable DFS sport, as their are no big events such as TDs, Home Runs, or goals that introduce more variance. This all leads me to take some chances but not go too crazy…if you are playing a team projected for 200 points and the optimal is 270 pts you are doing something wrong (even in GPPs). Play correlated, low owned, highly projected lineups.
Game Stacks:
TOR v WIZ
I started looking through the slate and of course my favorite team (The Wiz) stuck out right away. I love that Toronto v Wiz game for stacking purposes as there are lots of cheap pieces to stack and then you’ll have plenty of salary left to fill out your rosters around that stack with some pay-up options of your choosing. My favorite pieces are Dinwiddie, Gafford, S Barnes and Precious but you can also sprinkle in Kuzma, Harrell, OG, Van Vleet, Dragic (honestly there are 9 or 10 good plays in this game for GPPs).
CLE v MEM
The other game I like from a value perspective is Cleveland v Memphis. The Cleveland side has a few cheap pieces (Markannen, Mobley) and Memphis has a number of cheap options as well (JJJ, Adams, Melton, Bane). So similar to the Wiz vs TOR game we have lots of cheap stackable pieces here that let you fill out your roster with studs from other games. If this game goes off and you pick the right studs you give yourself a shot in GPPs.
Core Plays:
- PG: (Tons of good plays here as it’s almost impossible to pick)
- Dinwiddie $4900 – love his price point and he looked good in the preseason…the concern here is minutes coming off an injury but if he sees around 30 minutes I think he smashes this price.
- Maxey $4000 – With Simmons out I’m expecting Maxey to start. Just too cheap for his role and minutes.
- SG: (limited options for an 11 game slate)
- Jalen Green $4200 – For some reason DK priced down a bunch of rookies. There may be some ownership on Jalen Green but he is in a good spot against Minnesota and is way underpriced for his role.
- KCP $3400 – This one I’ll admit is pretty gross…but KCP is really cheap, in a good game environment and will be low owned. He looked good in the preseason and I’m expecting big minutes here. For large field GPPs he’s a direct pivot off a probably chalky duarte. He’s also in my favorite game stack so lots of reasons to like this play in GPPs…I’m not recommending this for cash.
- SF: (no good pay up options)
- Scottie Barnes $3400 – By now you should be noticing a theme as a lot of plays are from this Toronto v Wiz game. He will be chalky but at this price tag it’s going to be hard for him to fail based on the minutes he’s projected.
- Giddey $3800 – yet another value play that should be 10% or less owned. Even if this game gets out of hand I can see Giddey getting minutes so don’t be worried about the high spread.
- PF: (can spend here)
- Tatum $9400 – Tatum is pretty much appropriately priced, but horford is out and I believe jaylen Brown may sit. Either way I like this spot for tatum and he becomes a smash play if brown is out.
- Precious – $3100 – I love Precious tonight as he’s almost the stone min. He should get at least half the center minutes with upside for more and we saw what he’s capable of in the preseason. The only thing that may get me off him is if Boucher is active so what the news on this play.
- C: (tons of plays here so just listing a couple)
- Jokic – 10400 – Jokic is in a tough matchup but the whole offense should flow through him. As long as this game is competitive he should get there. It looks like he’s coming in at half the ownership of Embiid and if that’s the case I’ll easily pivot off embiid to Jokic. I looked up how he did in this matchup last year and he was at 1.58 fpm v PHX (sounds good to me). There are a lot of spend ups at center (KAT and Embiid as well) so this is a big decision point on the slate.
- Gafford – $4900 – This guy is a pogo stick and just racks up fantasy points in a number of ways. Because there are so many cheap options his ownership is still down below 15%. I love getting him at low ownership and including him in a game stack. The direct pivot here would be Harrell if you want an even lower owned play. (I even think Harrell and Gafford are so low priced that they could both get there but on a slate this size you probably don’t want to do that in GPPs).
It should be a fun slate with an abundance of cheap options. There are lots of good plays here as DK did not seem to have the A team working pricing today, so look at ownership as there are just too many good plays for them to all get ownership. If the industry is condensing on one or 2 plays I would try to pivot.
Good Luck tonight!
Max
