FanDuel daily picks: Fantasy basketball lineup — May 16 – 17
The NBA playoffs officially move on to the Conference Finals with Game 2 out West on Tuesday and Game 1 in the East on Wednesday. Get your DFS fantasy basketball team in the game with FanSided’s FanDuel daily picks.
The Western Conference Finals are off with a bang, as the Spurs dominated the favored Warriors until their best player went down with an injury, opening the door for one of the biggest second-half comebacks in NBA history. And finally, the East is ready to join them as the Celtics dispatched the Wizards in seven games to set up a meeting with the Cavaliers.
The Cavaliers are the defending champions and clear favorites to come out of the East despite the fact that the Celtics are the top seed and have home court advantage. The Cavs won the season series three games to one and seemingly have an advantage in the middle that the Celtics don’t have the size to counter. We’ve seen the Celtics perimeter players do some big things in these playoffs, though, and they’ve gotten surprisingly strong contributions from their bigs as well, so this could be a competitive series.
Out West , the Spurs will try to bounce back from the horrible feeling of having blown a 20-plus point lead and the chance to steal the first game on the road. Kawhi Leonard had to leave the game after re-injuring his ankle, and is listed as doubtful for Game 2, which tips at 9:00 p.m. ET on Tuesday. This leaves a big unknown as far as who may or may not be up for big minutes and/or big roles on Tuesday in the unpredictable Greg Popovich attack. It adds an element of risk, and also one of opportunity, for those that may guess correctly.
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.
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 FanDuel as well as one specifically designed for usage on DraftKings. In this post, all salary and “fantasy points” references are to FanDuel’s 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.