FanDuel NBA GPP Breakdown: Monday, 11/19 – Thunder Up!

FanDuel NBA GPP Breakdown

Hello again and welcome back to the Monday edition of the FanDuel NBA GPP Breakdown. I’m “Thunder Dan” and I love FanDuel NBA DFS more than my wife loves Christmas (I’m typing this while wearing Christmas pajamas a full 5 weeks from Christmas if that’s any indication.)

All kidding aside, my goal every day is to give you my top targets every night for GPP contests for FanDuel NBA.  When making these picks I always take into account salary, ownership, and match-up and I always do my best to give you a clear rationale for why I believe each player makes an elite GPP target.

We have a pretty solid 9-game slate tonight for a Monday.  I’ll continue to go position by position instead of game-by-game, especially on these larger slates.  You really have to narrow your player pool, you can’t play everyone. I try to give 2-3 options at each position and some cheaper “value” options to consider as well. Finally, I always include my “Game Stack of Night” which is my favorite game to target with multiple players from both teams.

"For tournaments, we’re not satisfied with just 5x return on a player’s salary, we’re looking for players who can hit 6-7x value or greater."

Remember, this is a first look article that is intended to get you pointed in the right direction with your research. There will be value that opens up throughout the day and information that comes out that will likely push onto certain plays or off others.  Always make sure you monitoring Twitter for player updates or getting those push notifications to your phone.

Without any further ado, let’s get into the picks!

FanDuel NBA GPP Breakdown: Point Guards

Kemba Walker (9300)

It’s not chasing points to play Kemba Walker tonight. I’m not sure if I’m telling you that or telling myself. But seriously, I’ve been playing Kemba all season and I had some shares of him this weekend when he scored 60 real-life points on his way to 77 FD points. He’s been awesome this season and he’s embraced the “carry the team on my back” role admirably. He’s sporting a 32% usage rate and jacking up 22 shots a game, so it’s hard not to like him in this spot against Kyrie at the Celtics at home.

Kyrie Irving (8400)

If you’re playing Kemba, then running it back with Kyrie makes a ton of sense as I could them trading buckets all night long. After a slow start in his first five games, Kyrie has really darn good in his last nine games, averaging 28-5-6 with 2 steals per game and making his case for consideration as the best guard in the East. His usage over that stretch is over 29% and he’s sprinkled in a 50-burger, 60-burger, and a 70-point slate-breaker against Utah.  There’s no reason to think he can’t do something similar tonight against a Charlotte team that likes to push the pace and hasn’t been able to slow opposing offenses down this year.

Value: Jeremy Lin (4800), Patrick Beverley (4800), Corey Joseph (4100)

FanDuel NBA GPP Breakdown: Shooting Guards

Donovan Mitchell (8100)

D-Mitch is on a roll, going for 47 and 49 FD points in his last two outings. The Jazz travel to Indiana for tonight’s matchup with the Pacers who could be without their best perimeter defender in Victor Oladipo. No Oladipo could mean another big night for the dynamic young guard who’s not only scoring 29.5 points per game in his last two but also averaging 3.5 steals as well.  He feels underpriced here for the upside he brings to the table tonight.

Dennis Schroeder (7500)

With Russell Westbrook missing tonight’s game we can go back to Schroeder one more time in a really good spot against the Kings. Sacramento will pace up the Thunder tonight which great news for the “German Rondo” and PG13. Schroeder’s usage is sitting at 26% on the season and he’s shown an impressive ceiling lately with 43.2 FD points per game over his last three. I don’t mind using him in cash games and still getting some exposure to him in GPPs in case he has another massive night with assists and steals to compliment his scoring.

Value: Monte Morris (4800), David Nwaba (4000), Marco Belinelli (3600)

FanDuel NBA GPP Breakdown: Small Forwards

Paul George (10000)

No Westy? Sign me up for PG13 again tonight. His price went down somehow and now we have a guy with a 60+ ceiling for only 10k. He’s red-hot shooting the ball lately, scoring an average of 33 real-life points in his last three games, but he’s also able to get there with boards, assists, steals, and blocks. In fact, his 2.5 steals per game is the best in the league.  Outside of Giannis and Anthony Davis, there’s not another player tonight with a higher ceiling and more diverse fantasy game than Paul George.

Nikola Mirotic (8000)

Miro just keeps humming along, averaging 38 FD points a night and showing that his early season success was no fluke. If you can’t fit AD’s massive salary into your lineups today, then why not roster Mirotic, who has ten double-doubles this season and a 22-16 game against the Spurs earlier this season already under his belt. He’s likely to get passed over as many will opt to pay up for Paul George or Giannis or pay down to some of the attractive value options.

Value: Tyreke Evans (4700 – If Oladipo is out), Juan Hernangomez (5500) Dorian Finney-Smith (4000)

FanDuel NBA GPP Breakdown: Power Forwards

Anthony Davis (12800)

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Anthony Davis tonight. Sure, he costs a ton of salary cap, but no player on the slate has the 70-80 point slate-breaking upside that he has. Davis was held under 50 FD points in his first matchup with the Spurs but struggled shooting the ball going only 5-13 from the field. He’s been cruising lately, scoring 60+ FD points in four straight games and that kind of raw points just simply can’t be ignored. Fade him at your own risk.

LaMarcus Aldridge (8100)

Staying in the same game, I love using LMA tonight in this spot. He put up a healthy 44 FD points on a 22-16-4 line in their earlier matchup this season and the Pelicans lack of defense and fast style of play should mean ample scoring and rebounding opportunities for him tonight. He played 40 minutes last night and led the Spurs to a win over Golden State while racking up 54 FD points. Normally I would worry about Pop resting his star big man, but he’s simply too important to the Spurs offense and he’s shown so far this year that’s willing to play him big minutes on back to backs.

Value: Jerami Grant (5400)

FanDuel NBA GPP Breakdown: Centers

Steven Adams (7700)

You can round out your OKC stacks by adding the never flashy, always angry-looking, bearded beast that is Steven Adams.  Centers have absolutely been destroying Sacramento inside with the most recent example being Clint Capela‘s 23-16 game on Saturday. Adams never seems to carry much ownership and I think people are more likely to pay all the way up at center more often than not.

While Adams has only topped 40 FD points 4 times this season, he’s also only been under 30 FD points twice. His 2.6 blocks/steals per game is elite so appealing on FanDuel as that’s 7.5 FD points built in to go along with his scoring and rebounding. Maybe Adams keeps the trend going and goes for a season-high tonight against the Kings.

Myles Turner (5800)

Don’t look now but Myles Turner is coming alive.  After being a disappointment for much of the season, and seeing his salary drop as low at 5400 this weekend, we’ve seen two solid performances from him now in back-to-back games with 36 and 32 FD points.

Most people will see a matchup with Utah and immediately move on, but using centers with shooting range against the “Stifle Tower” can be a profitable endeavor. Gobert struggles guarding big men who pull him away from the basket and Turner has the ability to knock down outside shots. The fact that Oladipo might miss tonight’s game means that Turner could be asked to score more on offense, which would do a lot to boost his fantasy output that is already solid due to his 2.5 blocks per game.  A few extra minutes would go a long way to help Turner make tournament value, as well, and perhaps Indiana keeps out him out there longer to help deal with Utah’s size.

Value: Mike Muscala (3900), Marcin Gortat (3700)

FanDuel NBA GPP Breakdown: Game Stack of the Night

I’m going to throw you a curveball here because there isn’t a game I truly want to full-on game stack tonight. In a full game stack, I’m usually looking to use four or even five players to lock in the majority of the fantasy production from the game that we think may have the most fantasy goodness on the slate.

Instead of stacking one game completely, I’m looking at a couple of different strategies that still allow us to use some correlated plays.

Mini-game stacks

Kemba-Kyrie, TJ Warren-Ben Simmons, and Aldridge-Davis are all example of some 1 to 1 mini stacks in which we are trying to locate the highest scoring player on each team of a game that we think will stay close and be high scoring. This really works well in the Kyrie-Kemba scenario because both players dominate so much of their team’s usage that it’s fair to assume that if it’s a competitive game that both guys are carrying their team’s offense.

Single-team saturation

This is sometimes more commonly known as an “onslaught” or running one team in a “naked stack.” In a normal game-stack scenario we try to use one or more players from both teams, but in this type of stack we are simply using 2 or 3 players from the same team and trying to lock in a large chunk of that team’s production. Maybe the opposing team’s production is too spread out, or their rotations are too deep and it’s hard to pinpoint a target from that team to use in our stack.

Tonight my saturation stack will be Dennis Schroeder-Paul George-Steven Adams. This 3-player stack costs 25.2k in salary and leaves us with 5.8k per player for our remaining 6 roster spots.  When Westy is out and these three are on the floor together they combine for an 81% usage rate. The Thunder without Westy is a great example of a situation we can capitalize by locking in the remaining “big three” and getting the vast majority of OKC’s fantasy production.

FanDuel NBA GPP Breakdown: Sample Lineup and Slate Overview

To recap, I am not full-game stacking tonight but looking for some strong individual plays or mini-stacks in order to get some correlation.

It’s a fairly large slate so there are some good plays that I didn’t have a chance to analyze here and obviously things can change throughout the day if players are rested or ruled out. The big news I am paying attention to is Victor Oladipo‘s status.

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Here’s where I am at this morning. I try to include as many of the players that I write up in my lineups but at some point, you have to find value plays at certain positions to make everything fit. Keep in mind these sample lineups are for illustrative purposes are not intended to be plug-and-play lineups. There’s still a lot that could happen that could change roster construction during the course of the day.

PG: Kyrie Irving (8400)

PG: Kemba Walker (9300)

SG: Donovan Mitchell (8100)

SG: David Nwaba (4000)

SF: Nikola Mirotic (8000)

SF: Tyreke Evans (4700)

PF: Jerami Grant (5400)

PF: LaMarcus Aldridge (8100)

C: Mike Muscala (3900)

That’s all I got today, folks! I hope you enjoyed my slate breakdown and I appreciate you taking the time to read my article. Be sure to share it with friends and fellow DFS players, leave comments or hit me with other feedback or questions on Twitter.  Good luck in your contests!