Well, the first big slate of the NBA season came and went in similar fashion to opening night. Hassan Whiteside was a 6X pick, Dennis Smith Jr. was fine and D’Angelo Russell underperformed. Luckily, we play NBA DFS every single day. Here are my two favorite plays for tonight’s slate.
Justin Holiday
With the Bulls short on bodies, Justin Holiday is in line to play a bunch of minutes. Holiday is $4500 on FanDuel and $4300 on DraftKings. I have Holiday projected for 29 minutes tonight, which is more than enough time for him to get work done. I even expect him to be on the floor if this game gets out of hand. Take this with a grain of salt, but Holiday did see a boost to his fantasy points per minute last season when Kris Dunn, Lauri Markkanen and Denzel Valentine were not on the floor with him. I’m more comfortable going to Holiday over LaVine due to the match-up. I can’t see LaVine getting much run in the 4th quarter if this game plays out as expected.
Bam Adebayo
This feels a bit more risky. I like Hassan Whiteside tonight, but there’s a scenario where Scott Brooks goes small, limiting the minutes of Dwight Howard and Ian Mahinmi, which is turn should limit Whiteside’s run. This opens things up for Bam (and Kelly Olynyk) to play in a more small-ball style lineup. When the Wizards go small, Whiteside should come off the court immediately. With FanDuel’s new rules, grabbing a super cheap Adebayo makes it easier to pay up for talent at other positions (Hello Point Guards!), but still leaves you with a center that had legitimate upside. Worst case scenario, you drop his score and have more talent elsewhere.
Josh are you making the slam dunks this year or are you still getting them form awesemo?