Welcome to our NBA DFS Building Blocks article! Each day, we will dissect injury news and breakdown our favorite plays at each position. We also provide Core Plays nightly for our subscribers, as well as projections and a premium discord channel. You can sign up for access to today’s Core Plays and projections by clicking HERE — and can get access to a single day pass for just $5 HERE. Now, let’s get into today’s slate…
WHAT A SLATE! This slate is insane with 12 games on tap and endless plays and pivots for GPPs, it’s a little overwhelming. Draftkings did an amazing job on this one as the pricing is extremely efficient with only 1 or 2 glaring pricing errors. I’m sure as injuries pop up we get more value but this is looking like one of the most fun slates I’ve seen in a while. I’ve really dug in with some extra free time this morning and have some conviction behind these plays. Let’s dig in.
Injuries
- Lebron James – Questionable
- Shai Gilgeous-Alexander – Questionable
- Fred VanVleet – Questionable
- Andrew Wiggins – Questionable
- Aaron Gordong – Questionable
- Jarred Vanderbilt – Questionable
- Patrick Beverly – Questionable
- Eric Gordon – Questionable
- Justice Winslow – Questionable
- Seth Curry – Questionable
- Trent Forrest – Questionable
- Cam Thomas- Questionable
- Zeke Nnaji – Questionable
- Jordan McLaughlin – Questionable
- Naz Reid – Questionable
As expected there’s a lot of important injury news we’re waiting on with 12 games on tap. Tonight is going to be quite a test and we’ll need to devote a little extra time to research and being at our computer throughout the evening with games locking pretty much all night. If you don’t have a lot of time tonight I suggest either sitting this one out or building 1 lineup to make it easier to update for news. I’m a degenerate and will be entering 50+ lineups tonight, there are some huge contests on Draftkings so make sure we’re all practicing bankroll management (I’ll admit – it’s going to be tough to not enter the $888 contest tonight).
GUARDS
Guard is interesting tonight. There are a plethora of great plays at Point Guard to spend up for, but Shooting Guard looks horrendous tonight. The one Shooting Guard I like and provides a different lineup construction than the chalk build is Donovan Mitchell. He’s priced at a reasonable $9,000 in a match-up with a solid Chicago team. Utah is again without Bojan Bogdanovic and that provides a usage bump and fantasy points per minute bump to Mitchell. DMitch is at 1.34 fantasy points per minute and 35% usage with Bojan off the court and I’m expecting big minutes from Mitchell tonight in a marquee match-up. The Jazz are favorites at home and I just like the spot for Donovan tonight. He also fills a really weak Shooting Guard position and is projected at under 5% ownership. This is one of my favorite GPP plays on the board so I’ll be well overweight in GPPs. At Point Guard we have tons of great spend-up options (a recurring theme on this slate). Luca, Trae and Dejounte are all in great spots so picking one feels like a guessing game. It looks like initial ownership projections have all these plays similar owned. On this particular slate we aren’t going to be able to play all the studs since so many of them are in great spots, we are going to have to make some tough cuts to our player pool. At this point in the day I’m siding with Luca, but this is based on expecting more value to open up as he’s $1,200 more expensive than Trae. Why I really want Luca is because I like a few Nets tonight (Durant, Drummond) and to correlate line-ups I can try and pair them with Luca in hopes that the Nets vs. Mavs game goes bananas. The value is somewhat dicey at guard this early in the morning but Goran Dragic stands out (although he just laid an egg last night). Hopefully Dragic’s bad game last night will lower the ownership on him. With Kyrie out he should start once again. We need to monitor the Seth Curry news, if Curry is ruled out that makes the Nets back-court extremely thin and would solidify Dragic’s minutes and make him a much safe value option in my opinion.
FORWARDS
I’ll be spending up for Kevin Durant tonight as my favorite spend-up on the slate. Durant is priced at $10,900 which provides some slight savings off the top tier of studs. The Nets will be without Kyrie tonight and when we take Kyrie (and Harden who was traded) off the court, Durant produces at a rate of 1.6 fantasy points per minute with a 37% usage rate. The craziest part is Durant isn’t projected for much ownership (only 10% projected as of this morning). There are just so many studs in great spots that it’s looking like ownership will be spread out, so I suggest having conviction in the studs you like and make some tough cuts to the other studs since we just can’t play all these $10K+ players. The other Forward I’m high on tonight is Marcus Morris at $5,600. This price tag just feels too cheap should the game with the Raptors stay competitive. Morris should play 30+ minutes tonight and is close to a fantasy point per minute producer with Paul George off the floor this season. He’s also in the late night hammer so I never mind having an ace in the hole to take my lineups to the promise land at the end of the night. I’ll also list a third Forward I like but we may have problems fitting him into lineups if we’re paying up for studs. RJ Barrett gets the nut match-up with Sacramento and seems to be taking on a bigger role for the Knicks of late. Barrett’s usage has climbed to 31% over the last month and he’s produced at a rate of 1.07 fantasy points per minute over that span. He gets close to 40 minutes a night in a fast paced match-up. The $7,700 price tag just looks too cheap for this match-up so I’ll be well overweight on Barrett in GPPs.
Center
As always there are a ton of ways to go at Center. We have Nikola Jokic in a great match-up with the Wiz who can’t guard big men. He honestly could go for 80 fantasy points tonight and it wouldn’t shock me. He’s priced at $11,900 and I never have an issue playing Mr. Jokic. I’ll probably be rotating Durant, Luca and Jokic as my main spend-ups tonight. In the mid-range I like Drummond for GPPs. He’s produced at a rate of 1.28 fantasy points per minute with Kyrie off the floor and I think there’s potential for him to see 30 minutes. Last night he disappointed in a blowout and only saw 18 minutes. In a match-up with Dallas that I expect to stay close I see a lot of upside in Drummond at a $5,600 price tag. The big thing I like about Drummond is he’s expected to garner 1% ownership, for large field GPPs Drummond provides a path to a $100K payout. On the cheap end I have another hopefully low owned play that I always get overweight on. Mason Plumlee (The Plumdog) is again priced much too low ($4,400) for his upside. Plumlee is getting the majority of the center minutes over Montrezl Harrell lately. Over the last 3 games he’s played 28+ minutes in 2 of those games and put up 39 fantasy points in 2 of the 3 games as well. Looking back at the last month of data, Plumlee has been over a fantasy point per minute producer and he’s grading out as one of my favorite value plays of the slate. It does look like he’ll get some ownership tonight but I always get overweight on Plumlee. The last play at Center is probably going to be the chalk of the slate in Precious Achiuwa. Precious looks like the most glaring pricing inefficiency on Draftkings as they just didn’t bump up his price after a big game a couple nights ago. I’m again expecting Achiuwa to start and play close to 30 minutes tonight with the Clippers having 2 massive centers that play the majority of the 48 minutes. Achiuwa is just below a fantasy point per minute producer so at a $3,900 price tag he sticks out as the best value on the slate, but he’ll be chalky.
I’m in love with this slate and will be playing heavy as I see a big edge with a slate this large and games starting throughout the evening. What a great appetizer to March Madness. Let’s get it!
Cash Plays: Precious Achiuwa, Kevin Durant, RJ Barrett, Marcus Morris, Goran Dragic, Nikola Jokic
GPP Plays: Andre Drummond, Donovan Mitchell, Nikola Jokic, Kevin Durant, Mason Plumlee
Max
