It’s been a very profitable week for me as variance has been on my side and last night was another solid night with my cash lineups in all slates making a profit. It’s crazy how after one week of NBA I was questioning myself and if I’m doing something wrong in my process and then a week later it’s the complete opposite and it feels like I can’t lose. It really is a long season and even the best players in the world are going to have prolonged down swings. Try to keep a level head, do your research and stick to a sound process…at the end of the season you should be profitable if your putting in the work. Let’s get to tonight’s slate as it’s a 5 gamer, so much more manageable than last night’s 11 gamer.
+EV Strategy:
- This is yet another slate where we are going to have to plan for late swap since there is a lot of injury news that we may have to wait to get until after lock. We have D Mitch, Ayton, Lebron and AD all questionable and a lot of that injury news may not break until after lock. I like to try to get a feel for if a player is going to play or not and make an assumption as I build my MME lineups. In cases like tonight I actually hope news breaks after lock so we get lower ownership on some obvious plays (like Kaminsky/Mcgee).
Game Stacks:
This is a weird slate, I don’t see one game stack I like. It feels like one team in each game is overpriced so this makes things interesting for stacking purposes:
- This early in the day my lean is to stack the Houston v PHX game, although this game does have some blowout risk. Playing a stack of this game gives you flexibility to adjust for the Ayton news. Also, Houston has a minor injury of their own with Theis listed Questionable. Theis getting ruled out would open up a few value plays (Sengun, Tate and KJ Martin). There is the potential we see a lot of value open up in this game if both Ayton and Theis are ruled out. The issue is the spend ups are overpriced, but when looking at the slate on a macro level, most of the spend-ups on the slate are overpriced. This early in the day it’s hard to pick a favorite game as injury news will really shape things so keep an eye out regarding anyone getting ruled out. Typically, the more people ruled out, the more I like stacking that game.
GPP Plays:
- Joel Embiid – I’m going back to the well here. The more I dig into this slate, the Center position on Draftkings is going to decide GPPs. You may have Whiteside and Mcgee as good cheap value at Center and in theory this should make Embiid come in at very low ownership. I’ll go back to the stat I pulled yesterday: Embiid was at 2.1 fpm with 45% usage last year without Simmons and Harris. This year he’s at 1.44 with 35% usage without both Simmons and Harris. The usage is there and the match-up vs. Detroit is nothing to be scared of. He could smash here and with all the other pay-up options being overpriced, I love Embiid in this spot and just hope he comes in somewhat low owned. I’ll be playing a lot of double Center lineups on DK.
- Tyler Herro – at first glance there is some sticker shock with a $6700 price tag on Herro. Digging into the numbers though he is playing close to 35 minutes a night (basically playing the last 17 minutes of each half). He’s at 1.2 fpm on the year and the usage of 29% supports that rate. The last 2 games he’s put up 19 and 20 shot attempts. He should be very low owned and has major upside. I’ll be getting overweight here for large field GPPs.
- Josh Giddey – I just love this guy. Every night he fills up the stat sheet. On the season he’s at 1.1 fpm and has upside for 35 minutes. The price is slowly trickling up but still much too cheap for his role on this team. I expect him to be close to a $7K play within a week. If he comes in at moderate ownership I’ll be well overweight the field.
Fades:
- The fades so far this year have been going well. Tonight I’m fading Georges Niang. I think he will get some ownership here based on his last 2 games. He’s below a fantasy point per minute guy and with some minutes coming next to Embiid I’m not sure he can keep this up. He’s now coming off the bench so the minutes are not as stable as they may seem (he played closing minutes last game which I don’t think is guaranteed). He’s also starting to get priced up a bit (now listed at $4400 on DK) so no longer a dirt cheap price tag. I’m expecting him to come back down to earth in this spot and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s back closer to 20 fantasy points. Hopefully he gets some ownership as I like a fade/underweight stance for GPPs.
If you like the article feel free to tag me on discord as I do love talking DFS (time permitting). Check on the core plays before lock as I’m sure some injury news will drop that will change how I view tonight’s slate.
Good luck tonight and let’s keep the heater going.
Max
