Recap of Last Night
Last night was complete madness, and proved how valuable our discord channel is. James, Bales, Joey and myself are all in Discord post-lock to update/break down any new injury situations that arise. Not only did we get whacky news about the Nets lineup close to lock, but that resulted in all of us wanting to play a sub-10% owned Jarrett Allen, and we also covered Paul George as well. I ended up late swapping Damian Lillard and Ed Davis to Kawhi Leonard and Lou Williams in my optimal core plays given to subscribers post-lock. This resulted in a DK score of 279.75 which easily cashed all my double ups and min-cashed GPPs. This season is going to be even more crazy than past years with post-lock news, and if you are playing any real volume I would be sure that you can actively check news after 7pm.
Note: You can get access to our core plays and Discord server by clicking here!
Guard
Paul George/Lou Williams- The Clippers are going to be the hot topic of DFS today on the second end of a back-to-back. Paul George rested last night, and it would appear likely that Kawhi Leonard rests tonight. Initially that meant PG would be the lock of the slate, but now it seems like there is a greater than 50% chance that LA suits up for this one without both PG and Kawhi. If PG is in and Kawhi is out, you lock in George. If both miss, that would open the door for some more value in Lou Williams. Last season Lou Will was a 1.3 fantasy point per minute producer with both George and Leonard off the floor. This season, he’s at a 32% usage rate in the split.
Forward
Nicolas Batum/Luke Kennard- Obviously if multiple stars are potentially resting for the same team, that’s where the value is going to be. Batum has looked like the Batum of old this season, and is still priced below $5,000 on DraftKings. We are obviously dealing with a small sample size (30 minutes) but Kennard is second on the team in usage rate without George/Leonard on the floor at 28%. Even if we project George in and Leonard out, Kennard would start in place of Leonard and has been around 0.8 points per minute alongside George.
Utility
Trae Young/Steph Curry- I typically go position by position for my building blocks, but I’m extremely uninterested in the center position today. It seems like ownership is going to get pushed onto Andre Drummond below $9K on DraftKings, while I love that price, I don’t love the matchup with Nikola Vucevic. Ice Trae is set up for a monster game tonight against the Charlotte Hornets. Young has been one of the top players in the PNR over the last season and a half in Atlanta, and the Hornets have been unable to handle pick-and-roll basketball this season. Young’s last two games vs Charlotte have resulted in 61.5 and 53.3 DK points.
We’ve seen a much more aggressive Curry over the last two games, and he is still a value for me while he is under $10,000. Given that we are likely locking in multiple Clippers players, it would make sense for correlation to grab Curry on the other side. It is highly likely that I end up with one of Young/Curry as my third BB tonight.
Written by Ben Hossler (Follow @BenHossler on Twitter)
