Welcome to the NBA Yahoo Cup Picks for Round 10! This is a free-to-enter, multi-round, single-entry contest with 24 rounds where the top 6,950 entries overall and top 540 entries per round share $50,000, with $10,000 to first overall and $100 to first per round. Scoring will be cumulative across all rounds. Your five lowest daily fantasy basketball scores will be dropped, and you can enter at any point, but enter today to give yourself the best chance to compete for the title. Click here to begin the chase!
The focus will be on three players – one guard, one forward, and one center – to be NBA DFS players for the Round 10 NBA Yahoo Cup contest.
NBA Yahoo Cup Fantasy Basketball Picks | Round 10
NBA DFS Guard: Jrue Holiday, Milwaukee Bucks — $34
Tonight’s NBA slate is dictated by health and safety protocols and injuries, and the Bucks are going to be strongly affected by the former. Giannis Antetokounmpo, Bobby Portis and Donte DiVincenzo are all out of action tonight, and that means Jrue Holiday is going to have to carry a lot of the offense for Milwaukee. Khris Middleton is listed as probable after missing the last game, but those two will be the focal point in this game. The Bucks face the Pelicans, who rank 25th in defensive rating on the year.
In the last game for the Bucks, Holiday had a usage rate of 30.7% and 1.60 fantasy points per minute, which are amazing ratios for a player of this salary. Holiday also dished out 14 assists while taking 18 field goal attempts. New Orleans averages 23 points given up to point guards per game, and Awesemo has Holiday projected for 20.3 points tonight, two higher than his prop. Holiday is going to be a very popular pick tonight, and it is justified. Much of the field will likely pair him with Kings guard Davion Mitchell, who is minimum salary on Yahoo. The Kings will also be missing multiple players tonight, and this two-guard combo allows the ability to roster more expensive players.
Despite Holiday looking like a great play tonight for Yahoo fantasy lineups, the Awesemo projections have him slated for 6.6 assists tonight. That makes his assists over/under NBA player prop a great bet, which is sitting at over/under 7.5 tonight, and Awesemo has an expected win rate of 66% when betting the under.
NBA DFS Forward: Jaren Jackson Jr., Memphis Grizzlies — $25
Another way to get exposure to the Grizzlies game against the Kings is to roster Jaren Jackson, who has excelled this season while Ja Morant has been injured. Hunting for upside in the NBA Yahoo Cup is vital, and Jackson offers just that. Across a 409-minute sample size, Jackson has 1.28 fantasy points per minute and leads the Grizzlies with a 30.3% usage rate. While he did have foul trouble in the last game, he is cut down his fouls per 36 minutes from 5.9 last season to 4.5 this year, allowing him to be on the court more.
Jackson is averaging 2.8 combined steals and blocks, a big boost in Yahoo scoring since they are worth 3 points each. Even though Sacramento is missing players, they are still top 10 in pace and bottom 10 in defensive rating. That is a DFS gold mine for opposing players and Jackson is underpriced for the game environment and his current role for Memphis.
NBA DFS Center: Jusuf Nurkic, Portland Trail Blazers — $24
While rostering Mitchell can allow a two-center build with Nikola Jokic, Jusuf Nurkic is less than half the price of Jokic and can rival him in points per dollar tonight. The Trail Blazers host the Hornets, and that has been a matchup that big men have crushed all season long. Nurkic is averaging 6.1 paint touches and 18.1 rebounding chances per game this year. He is converting his rebounding chances 56.7% of the time, and the Hornets rank 29th in rebounds allowed in the paint and 30th in points allowed in the paint.
Portland is also still missing C.J. McCollum, and that has bumped up the usage for Nurkic by 2.4% to 24.3%. The matchup could not be better since the Hornets are dead last in defensive rating and third in pace, which should allow Nurkic to post a ceiling game for the NBA Yahoo Cup.
