The Slate Starter: NBA Finals Game 1 | NBA DFS Picks for DraftKings + FanDuel

Welcome to the NBA Slate Starter: Finals Edition! While I’m bummed we’re on to our last series of the hoops season, there’s nothing to be bummed about with the size of today’s GPP’s with a Milly Maker on DraftKings and $500,000 to first on FanDuel. That’s a whole lot of cash up for grabs, so let’s get right to work breaking down Game 1 between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Miami Heat.

The NBA DFS Slate Starter: NBA Finals Game 1 Lakers vs. Heat

Setting the Table

The 2019-20 Miami Heat are one of the biggest NBA Finals surprises of the 21st century. The closest thing they’ve got to a superstar is Jimmy Butler, an All-Star who was regurgitated by multiple organizations before arriving on Erik Spoelstra’s team this year. He’s an exceptional two-way player who is happy to step to the side if teammates are in a rhythm offensively, a rarity in the modern game. The next-best player is emerging talent Bam Adebayo, a 22-year-old big man who made a gigantic leap in minutes and production this season due in large part to Hassan Whiteside‘s departure to Portland.

While Butler and Adebayo are certainly special, the Lebron James/Anthony Davis duo that led the Los Angeles Lakers to the Finals is an all-time great pairing. Many expected this team to steamroll through the Western Conference, and they did not disappoint, winning every series in five games. Los Angeles will keep their Goliath status in this matchup as heavy -375 favorites to hoist the Larry O’Brien trophy.

All of that aside, I find it interesting that Vegas has Game 1 listed as only a -4.5 spread in favor of the Lakers. That feels low for my taste, but it makes me cautiously optimistic the Heat could be competitive in this series.

Enticing Pricing

To my surprise, I’d say DraftKings did an admirable job with pricing. It’s not that FanDuel is that egregious, but James and Davis are only $15,500 and $14,500, respectively, allowing you to play anyone and everyone with relative ease. That means a lot of overlap in builds, so be ready to incur some serious risk in the MVP/All-Star/Pro slots if you’re aiming for a larger chunk of the top prize.

So let’s talk DraftKings. LeBron and Davis sit at the top, followed by six consecutive Heat players, followed by five consecutive Lakers. That means I could easily see a lot of stars-and-scrubs lineups that lean heavily on more Lakers. Ownership will dictate a lot of what I do with the Heat side of things, as nearly every starter (plus Tyler Herro) have demonstrated an upside in these playoffs. Rotating those mid-range Miami pieces in the Utility spots along with the two Lakers stars at Captain will certainly be popular, but in three-max and smaller-field tournaments, that’s certainly the path I’ll be taking.

On the cheap end, Andre Iguodala at $3,400 and Alex Caruso at $3,000 are going to be extremely popular, especially in builds with any of the top four studs at Captain. I wasn’t a fan of chalk Iguodala in the Boston series but feel like a steady dosage of mid-20s minutes could be in store for him in this series. He’s the one piece with Finals experience from the Heat, and he has a track record against LeBron better than most (including a 2015 NBA Finals MVP primarily for his defense against him) to make him viable. Caruso has only one game over 25 DraftKings points since Rajon Rondo‘s return, but even a total in the teens could sneak its way into the optimal.


Editors Note:

Alex Caruso might be a popular option in tonight’s Game 1 of the NBA Finals, which might lead people to have some interest in his NBA prop bet of over/under 5.5 points. The new Awesemo OddsShopper tool searches all the big betting sites and finds the best price for your bet. Click here to start shopping!

Alex Caruso Game 1 NBA Finals Prop Bet NBA DFS Picks


Get Weird in Game 1

I’ve been preaching strong lineup correlations and avoiding garbage builds that don’t tell a story throughout the Showdown season. But if there was ever a day to throw all of that out the window, it’s on a Game 1 NBA Finals slate with so many unknowns and so much money to first. And yes, there is a strong possibility the winning lineup will be duplicated many times over, but with all of my Milly Maker shots, I’m going to insist on the most uninhibited paths I can fathom. That means firing up some uncomfortable plays with uncomfortable amounts of salary left on the table.

For example: I don’t know much, but I know Kelly Olynyk makes a lot more sense in this series than he did against the undersized Celtics frontcourt. It wasn’t that long ago Olynyk was a must-have at the inception of the bubble, a capable 40% shooter from 3 who was filling it up nightly. Now the big man has been reduced to an after-thought, which means it’s time to take some speculative shots on him re-entering the rotation now instead of Game 2. Of course it’s risky and of course there’s a chance he will not see the floor, but the presence of Dwight Howard and Davis together might require more height than Jae Crowder has.

Final Thoughts for Your NBA DFS Lineups

I’m so excited that we don’t have to worry about the Celtics back-up center minutes or Kemba Walker‘s existence in these NBA Finals. That is not to say we won’t have our own problems to solve with this slate, as identifying which Heat starters and which Lakers punts go off from game-to-game will be a challenge. But compared to the headache of the Boston bench or Denver’s wing minutes, we have it pretty good in this series.

Lastly, be sure to check out the Live Before Lock show, as there’s still some major unknowns on this slate to sort through. For instance, I’m curious if Howard will continue to start for the Lakers, so tune in to sort through the implications of that news.


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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.

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