FanDuel NBA Breakdown: Saturday, 1/26 – Point Guard Paradise

FanDuel NBA Breakdown: Saturday, 1/26

Welcome back to a special Saturday edition of the FanDuel NBA Breakdown! I’m “Thunder Dan” and I love playing and writing about FanDuel NBA DFS. I also like long walks on the beach at sunset, drinking pina coladas, and getting caught in the rain (that last part was just to see if anyone still reads the introductory paragraph). Editors note – this was terrible.

My goal when I revamped the Breakdown was to create an all-inclusive article that gives you a place to start your research for FanDuel NBA cash games and GPPs.  When making my cash and GPP picks I always take into account salary, Vegas trends, ownership, and match-up and I always do my best to give you a clear rationale for why I believe each player makes a great GPP or cash target.

Tonight we have a tight little 4-game slate that has “GPP slate” written all over it. I usually don’t recommend playing cash games on slates that are 4 games or less, but obviously, it’s your money so go ahead and do whatever the heck you want with it. Because we have such a small slate, I will be going game-by-game today instead of following my usual format for the Breakdown.

"The FanDuel NBA Breakdown is a first look article that is intended to be a starting point for your cash game or GPP research for FanDuel NBA DFS."

There will be information that comes out during the day that will likely push us onto certain plays or off others.  Sometimes there are players mentioned in this first look article who get ruled out during the day, or other players emerge as good plays when surprise injury news emerges.

My best advice is to never settle on a lineup too early in the day and be willing to be flexible enough to incorporate the new information that becomes available throughout the day. At the same time, don’t abandon your core plays unless the slate absolutely demands it!

FanDuel NBA Breakdown: 4-Game Main Slate

Injury Report

OUT: Victor Oladipo, Joel Embiid, Wilson Chandler. Kent Bazemore, Kyle Anderson

Doubtful: Jimmy Butler

Questionable: Kevin Huerter, Garrett Temple, Miles Plumlee, Nick Stauskas

Probable: NONE

Wow! By far the smallest injury report we’ve had all week, but to be fair it’s also only a four-game slate. Three of these injuries are huge, however, in determining how we will build rosters today as Joel Embiid, Victor Oladipo, and Jimmy Butler‘s absences will have major DFS ramifications.

Vegas Data

I chose to include the spreads and the totals in each of the game by game capsules today, but I’ll just throw this out there now. I absolutely love the Boston-GSW game more than any of the others on this slate and it so happens to have the highest total, closest spread and is the featured national broadcast game on ABC in primetime.

FanDuel NBA Breakdown: Indiana (-3) @ Memphis (204 total)

This game will probably be so boring that I think I just fell asleep trying to type the first line of this game summary. But wait, we have a major injury here with Victor Oladipo going down for the season that puts the Pacers back in play and evens the playing field a good bit here for Memphis.

The numbers for Indiana without Oladipo point to Tyreke Evans (5100) being an obvious play with his 29% usage and increase in minutes. He’s not a sure thing, however, as he’s been very meh this year when filling in for Oladipo with averages of 10-3-3 with 2 steals in 25 minutes. He’s still a solid play tho and has been playing better lately than he did earlier in the season.

Myles Turner (7600) and Domantas Sabonis (6900) are the other two Pacers that interest me, although the matchup against the Grizzlies is far from ideal. The price on Sabonis is tempting and if you read this article enough you probably already know how I feel about him.

Memphis is one of the more annoying teams to have to figure out in DFS on a nightly basis. As you might know, I went out and recommended Mike Conley (8300) and Marc Gasol (8200) yesterday and did not think to look one day ahead to see if they played again today. So while Conley did okay, Gasol underperformed badly and played only 25 minutes. I don’t have a ton of interest in any Grizzlies today against this solid Indiana defense. This game has the lowest total for a reason, it will be hard-fought and competitive, but not one that we want to target on this slate.

FanDuel NBA Breakdown: Golden State (-2) @ Boston (229 total)

As an NBA fan, I’m pretty freaking pumped for this game. I’d have to imagine both teams will be anxious to show the national TV audience why they are the favorite in their conferences to go to the championship. Golden State now has a starting lineup of five all-stars, while the Celtics have a much more blue-collar feel with Kyrie being the lone star on the team. Both teams are deep and well-coached and this sets up to be a really great matchup.

You can make a case for pretty much any of the Warriors starting five here tonight and even a few bench guys like Andre Iguodala (4400) and Kevon Looney (4900).  My favorite Warriors tonight are going to be DeMarcus Cousins (6400), Steph Curry (9800) and Klay Thompson (7300). With only a 60-minute sample size to go off with Cousins on the floor, it appears the earlier winners have been Cousins and Thompson in terms of usage.

If we find out Boogie gets his minutes restriction lifted I’ll probably go all in on him as he should be able to feast on the weak interior defense of Al Horford (6600).  Steph has a great matchup here, too, and has a history of big games against Kyrie Irving (10500) that go back to Irving’s days with the Cavs and all those NBA finals. Thompson has a massive ceiling on almost every night and is the least talked about splash brother. Roster construction might lead many to pay down at shooting guard leaving him under-owned relative to his potential.

For the Celtics, Irving is the obvious play. FanDuel wisely priced him up here to spread the ownership out at point guard, but he’s still got a huge ceiling here even at 10.5k given his huge usage rate and how well he’s been playing. He’s had some great games against the Warriors and he tends to put the Celtics on his back in these types of big games. Marcus Morris (5300) feels too cheap for this game environment and I think we see him play a lot of minutes tonight to match up with the Warriors when they go small. His perimeter shooting really favors the type of pace that this game should have.

FanDuel NBA Breakdown: Philadelphia (+9) @ Denver (226 total)

The Sixers have to travel to Denver to play in the altitude without their best player (Joel Embiid) and likely their best defender (Jimmy Butler). To be fair, Philly is lucky this spread is only 9 points. Denver is playing for the second night in a row, but their starters should be well rested after they demolished the Suns last night easily with their best player (Nikola Jokic, 11000) in street clothes after being suspended for leaving the bench.

Denver is a really good team and not too many people realize just how good they’ve been. They’re only 1.5 games back of the Warriors for the best record in the West. Their depth is truly incredible as they now can go 10-11 players deep in their rotation without much of a drop-off. Last night they had 8 players score in double figures and no one played more than 26 minutes.  I think you get the point.

Nikola Jokic is the clear top play for Denver, but if they do end up putting it on the short-handed Sixers I don’t think he makes value at his elevated price. My favorite plays for Denver are Paul Millsap (5700), Mason Plumlee (4300), and Will Barton (5100). It’s a great pace-up spot for the Nuggets but I’d rather target these cheaper Denver guys with the hope they can hit value even if they don’t get their full allotment of minutes. Barton re-entered the starting lineup last night and is still badly mispriced, he’s a lock for me.

On the Sixers side of things, they’ll need a big night from Ben Simmons (10100) to keep things close. Simmons gets a nice usage bump with Embiid and Butler off the floor and should be a popular play tonight. The biggest usage differential for Philly is actually J.J. Redick (6100), who’s been quietly playing really well pretty much all season and could be a contrarian option here at small forward (FanDuel moved him a few games ago). My favorite Sixer value play will be Furkan Korkmaz (3500) who is priced at the minimum and could see a big chunk of playing time on the wing tonight.

FanDuel NBA Breakdown: Atlanta (+10) @ Portland (228 total)

This is the other game tonight that has a high total, but also a chance to get out of hand as Portland is a double-digit favorite at home to the rebuilding Hawks.

The pace bump for the Blazers is substantial as the Hawks play at one of the fastest clips of any team in the league. Damian Lillard (10000) is a nice GPP pivot off the chalkier Ben Simmons and has an excellent matchup against the Hawks’ rookie Trae Young (7100).  As the title of this article implies, point guard is absolutely loaded for such a small slate and I think paying up for two premium point guards is the way to go with your roster construction.

Jusuf Nurkic (9500) burned me the other night but has a chance to pay me back tonight if he can break the slate against the Hawks interior. He should be lower owned than Jokic and Boogie Cousins and has shown a really solid ceiling this season.

The Atlanta side of this game is really tough to figure out. They ran a 10-man rotation on Wednesday night and that was with Kevin Heurter (5500) out of the lineup. The only Hawk that has really flashed a huge ceiling is John Collins (8500) and he got priced up quite a bit tonight making him almost unplayable.

FanDuel NBA Breakdown: Sample Lineup and Slate Overview

I usually like punting one or two spots on FanDuel with this year’s new “drop score” rule. Playing a lineup of all 5-7k players just makes zero sense to me and you’ll find that the guys winning consistently on FanDuel are going “stars and scrubs” pretty frequently.

More from FanSided

• Thunder projected lineup and rotations heading into 2023-24 season
• NWSL Challenge Cup news: Courage ruthless against Washington, Racing remain perfect
• 2023 Women’s World Cup: Ary Borges and Brazil showed the entire world what they are about
• Trea Turner’s rough season goes from bad to worse
• Brewers attempt to troll Elly De La Cruz backfires 456 feet

Today’s sample lineup is a GPP lineup. It’s not a full game stack, but I do think game-stacking is an ideal GPP strategy on smaller slates like these. It’s not possible to full stack Boston-GSW because of the salary cap but getting a few pieces from that game is a priority for me.  The Nuggets and Sixers game is also a favorite of mine, but I worry about the Denver depth and the Sixers lack thereof leading to a lopsided result.

Remember, the sample lineup is for illustrative purposes and is not necessarily a “plug-and-play” lineup. There’s still a lot that could change on this slate before 8:00 tonight when lineups lock.

PG: Ben Simmons (10100)

PG: Steph Curry (9800)

SG: Furkan Korkmaz (3500)

SG: Andre Iguodala (4400)

SF: Tyreke Evans (5100)

SF: Will Barton (5100)

PF: Paul Millsap (5700)

PF: Draymond Green (6700)

C: Jusuf Nurkic (9500)

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.  And keep coming back to FantasyCPR for the best free content in the industry! Good luck in your contests!