DraftKings daily picks: Fantasy basketball lineup – April 9
The NBA has seven games on Sunday but three were early, leaving four games for the main DFS fantasy basketball contests. Get your team in the game with FanSided’s DraftKings daily picks.
DraftKings has an early game slate on Sunday, with the Cavaliers at the Hawks at 3:30 PM ET and the Thunder at the Nuggets at 5:00 PM. This article, though, will focus on the main DraftKings game slate that starts at 6:00 PM ET with three games tipping off: the Mavericks at the Suns, the Pistons at the Grizzlies and the Rockets at the Kings. The late game is at 9:30 PM ET, with the Timberwolves playing at the Lakers.
None of the eight teams playing on Sunday night are still vying for postseason positioning. The Mavs/Suns and Timberwolves/Lakers games both pit two lottery-bound teams against one another. But while the Suns, Timberwolves and Lakers all seem to be at peace with their lottery status and still have plenty of young players to throw out there for big minutes, the Mavs are a bit different. They were a heavily veteran-laden team, and since they’ve been eliminated from postseason contention they’ve been resting their older players either completely or playing them limited minutes that just make any of their veterans hard to trust.
In the other two games, one team has locked up their postseason slot (the Grizzlies, the Rockets) while the other is headed to the lottery. The star players on the playoff teams are risky, because their coach has no impetus to tire them out at this point to no gain. It has been reported that Rockets coach Mike D’Antoni won’t bench James Harden unless the player requests it, and Harden is in an MVP battle with Russell Westbrook, so Harden may get more run (still a risk, though). The Grizzlies all seem like good candidates to get rest, especially against a Pistons team that is limping to the finish line. The Kings don’t really have the talent to compete with Houston, but they’re another young team that may as well play their talent just to see what they have in them.
My favorite plays of the day can be found on the following slides in FanSided’s DraftKings 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.
To keep up with all of FanSided’s DFS NBA coverage head over to the fantasy basketball hub where each day you can find a post like this tailored for DraftKings as well as one specifically designed for usage on FanDuel. In this post, all salary and “fantasy points” references are to DraftKings scoring system and salaries. If you have any additional questions or thoughts or are looking for updates as we approach tipoff, follow @FanSidedFantasy on Twitter or you can follow my account @ProfessorDrz or find me on my home turf of The Hoops Lab.
Let’s take a look at your best options for both studs and value players at each position.