The NBA has a sparse slate of only five games in tonight’s DFS fantasy basketball competitions. Get your team in the game with FanSided’s FanDuel daily picks.
The NBA continues its up-and-down week of games played this week, from three (Sunday) to 11 to three to 12 to now five games on Thursday night. The action starts at 7:00 pm ET with the Rockets heading to Charlotte and the 76ers going to Orlando. At 8:00 the Cavaliers play in Oklahoma City, then a half-hour later the Jazz are in Dallas, followed by one late game with the Celtics at Portland.
I like five-game slates, as there are few enough games to be manageable, while still maintaining enough options that there will be line-up diversity. Plus, each match-up has its own storyline to watch. The Beard is facing a relatively weak defense in Charlotte, and there’s the outside chance that Kemba Walker gets hot and we have a backcourt shootout. The 76ers are without Joel Embiid again, which makes them less interesting, but also likely means positive offensive effect on the remaining players on each team. The rumor is that LeBron James is going to sit tonight, which robs us of a LeBron vs Russell Westbrook battle but could instead give us Westbrook vs Kyrie Irving. Rudy Gobert went 27 and 25 the last time he saw the Mavs, and with Isaiah Thomas facing Damian Lillard there IS a great chance for a shootout in the Rose Garden.
My favorite plays of the day can be found on the following slides in FanSided’s FanDuel daily picks. Each day in order to offer a variety of price points at each position, you can find two slides for each position–one for high-salary options and one for high-value options. Each pick is ranked on a scale of 1-5 stars to indicate the confidence in the pick. The final slide of this post has more detail on what each level means, but in short, more stars means more confidence in the selection on a points-per-dollar basis.
Important note, every day the goal of this post is not to give you a copy-and-paste lineup. Instead, each selection is given while highlighting the factors you need to consider when building a customized lineup for yourself. If you want to see an example lineup, you can find it on the final slide of the post, but I suggest you adjust your lineup to fit your personal taste.
If you find this info helpful, drop a bookmark on the fantasy basketball hub to find this kind of post about FanDuel every day along with a similar one for DraftKings. In this post, all references to fantasy points and salary post refer to FanDuel scoring and salaries. If you have any other questions or thoughts or are looking for any updates as the games get closer, follow @FanSidedFantasy on Twitter or you can follow my personal account @ProfessorDrz where I’ll be happy to answer any questions you have and help you get your lineup set.
About me: I’m the senior basketball writer at Rotowire.com, where I’ve covered fantasy basketball for more than 12 years. I’m the two-time Basketball Writer of the Year as chosen by the Fantasy Sports Writers Association, and I run an NBA-based blog called The Hoops Lab where all of my basketball takes, from fantasy to scouting to analytics, eventually resides. I’m also a regular contributor to Nylon Calculus, as well as TYTSports podcasts.
Now that those reminders are out of the way, it’s time to tip off tonight’s FanDuel daily picks with this look at the top point guards.