The NBA Slate Starter: DFS Picks for DraftKings + FanDuel

Showdown is the name of the game for DFS today. Whether that’s NBA or the NFL, there’s plenty of action to go around on DraftKings and FanDuel with massive prize pools and big money to first. Let’s get to right to work breaking down the NBA Showdown slate for Game 4 between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Denver Nuggets.

The Correlation Situation

By now, you’re familiar with the plays from this series and the general stars-and-scrubs roster construction we’re faced with today. But as I scroll through random lineups from the big $20 contest on DraftKings from Tuesday, there’s a pattern of poorly correlated lineups I’d like to address.

First off, plays from the same team are all correlated to a certain degree. If a team goes on to win, the fantasy production should be good enough to have an absolute minimum of two players in the optimal, with up to five if they blowout the competition. So right off the bat, if you’re getting cute by Captaining a single player from one team and Flexing five from the other, don’t. I don’t think a lot of hand-built lineups will ever do that, but if you’re using an optimizer there’s a good chance that type of construction will show up. Scroll through your lineups, delete those 1-5 builds and re-crunch as necessary.

Secondly, in baseball we get positive correlation in our DFS lineups by stacking batters from the same team. If the leadoff hitter hits a double for five points, and the next batter hits a home run, the leadoff hitter scores another two points as a result of the run they score. By playing both hitters, we gain access to more upside than we would playing them individually. In basketball, there is only one correlated event: A player assisting a teammate’s basket. If LeBron James passes to Anthony Davis and the shot is made, both players accrue fantasy points. Otherwise, every statistic accumulated on a basketball court is individual. In order to score points, you best be on the floor.

So what am I getting at? Stop putting negatively correlated teammates in the same lineup. That means if the players don’t tend to be on the court together, or a player gets more run as a result of another’s foul trouble (i.e. Nikola Jokic and Mason Plumlee), don’t play them together. Some might argue Dwight Howard and JaVale McGee are cheap enough that they could both get there, but they’re as negatively-correlated as it gets. Simply, it’s an unnecessary risk you don’t have to take. Enough lineups are pairing these plays by accident anyways, so don’t think you’re getting contrarian by playing them together. You’re getting way too cute and way too -EV.

A Scrubby Dub Dub for Your Player Pool

I’m loving these Conference Finals showdown slates because we have such a contrast between the two roster constructions. In the Heat – Celtics matchups, there’s a myriad of plays with Captain potential. We saw Tyler Herro go for the second-most raw points last night as the ninth-most expensive play, which goes to show just how many players have access to a ceiling in that series.

The opposite is true for Lakers – Nuggets, as I will continue to jam in one of the four studs (LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Jokic, Jamal Murray) into the Captain spot of every lineup. It’s math, really: all four project for double the raw fantasy points of every other player from the game, so it would take an extreme outlier performance from a mid-price play to be an optimal Captain. Not saying it’s impossible, but it’s unlikely enough that I’ll pay up for the top-priced guys and live with the result.

That means we’ve got to find a scrub or two we like at the bottom of the barrel to pair with them. P.J. Dozier was over 25% owned across the board on DraftKings in Game 3, but after a DNP-CD, I expect that ownership to spread elsewhere. My lean as of this morning will be to go most overweight on Monte Morris. His price went down $400 to $2,800, and he continues to produce around a fantasy point per minute with whatever playing time he receives. I don’t expect 20 minutes out of him again in this spot, but even his worst game of the series still found its way into the optimal (Game 2’s 13 minutes, 12.25 fantasy point performance). If his ownership stays low, I’ll happy to jump way over the field.

Final Thoughts for Your NBA Showdown Lineups

Figuring out which scrubs to be overweight on is essential, but so is figuring out which stud to be overweight on in the Captain spot. I expect Jamal Murray to garner the most ownership up top on the heels of his massive Game 3, so he’s the one I’ll be instinctually underweight on. While he may be the cheapest and gives your lineup enough salary to fit an extra mid-range play in, I’ll bet on some shooting regression for him in Game 4. Davis will be my ride-or-die up top, but an easy case can be made for Jokic or James.

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Author

Eric Lindquist

Eric Lindquist hails from Sioux Falls, South Dakota (yes, that’s the one with Mount Rushmore). A steady diet of three SportsCenters a day at an early age led to his obsession with sports, one that 30 years later is paying dividends for him as a successful DFS player and sports bettor. Despite over half a million dollars in net career earnings, he’s most passionate about helping others achieve their financial goals, an energy you can witness on the daily in his current role as a host and analyst at Stokastic. He’s a former Division I golfer at Iowa State, wishes he was a former Minnesota sports fan, and is a proud father to a 100-pound Bernese Mountain dog named Duke that wishes he could just eat people food instead of the crap he and his wife feed him on the daily.