FanDuel NBA Breakdown: Friday, 2/1 – Can the Rockets Fly in Mile High?

FanDuel NBA Breakdown: Friday, 2/1

Welcome back to the Wednesday edition of the FanDuel NBA Breakdown! I’m “Thunder Dan” and I love playing and writing about FanDuel NBA DFS. I’m ready to help you get your research started for tonight’s NBA DFS slate on FanDuel.

"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."

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.

This is where I remind you that in order to win in NBA DFS you have to be flexible with your roster construction and sometimes take things down to the wire before lock with late-breaking injury information. At the same time, I always warn against totally scrapping your original first look build, as sometimes the plays that you were on the night before or that morning end up still being the best plays on the slate.

As always, let’s take a quick look at our injury situation and Vegas data to get us moving in the right direction.

FanDuel NBA Breakdown: First Look

INJURY REPORT

OUT: Jamal Murray, Emmanuel Mudiay, Frank Nkilitina, Raul Neto, Dante Exum, Garrett Temple, Omri Casspi, Thabo Sefolosha, Omri Casspi, Clint Capela, Miles Plumlee

DOUBTFUL: NONE

QUESTIONABLE: Mike Conley, Chris Paul, Gary Harris, Jaren Jackson Jr., Steven Adams

PROBABLE: Terrance Ferguson, Luke Kornet

The big names I’m monitoring here are Conley (I think he probably plays), CP3 (wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t play) and Adams (be ready to get some Nerlens Noel just in case).

***The other situation to monitor is the status of players who were traded from Dallas to New York in yesterday’s Porzingis deal. I’m assuming that Smith, Matthews, and Jordan won’t be in uniform tonight which is going to leave the Knicks with 9-10 healthy players on the roster.

VEGAS INFO

None of the 10 teams on tonight’s slate played last night, but Atlanta, Utah, Denver, Houston, and Miami are all playing the front half of back-to-backs.

We only have lines and spreads for 3 of the 5 games tonight, but the Rockets-Nuggets and Jazz-Hawks games bot carry 227 totals which is the highest so far on the slate. The spread in the Houston-Denver game is only 4.5 points, however, while the Jazz are 11 point favorites at home to the Hawks.

FanDuel NBA Breakdown: Cash Game Core

Welcome to the cash game core plays section of the Breakdown!  I’ve been giving you a GPP core in the past, so instead, I wanted to provide you with a solid trio of players to start building your cash game lineups with tonight. I highly recommend playing cash games on a nightly basis to help build that bankroll.

Ricky Rubio (6300)

Rubio is an easy play tonight. He’s relatively cheap and has the best matchup of any point guard on the slate against Trae Young and Atlanta. The Jazz are being paced up by the Hawks tonight and have the highest implied team total. You’re going to want some Utah exposure in cash games.

Marcus Morris (5500)

Power forward has very few attractive options tonight and the, therefore, Morris is a priority for me as his production has been pretty steady most of the season. With Kyrie back, I don’t expect Morris to have too much of a ceiling, but he does offer us a pretty reliable 25-30 point floor on most nights and the matchup is appealing against the team formerly known as the New York Knicks.

James Harden (13600)

James Harden continues to get it done even with Chris Paul back in the lineup (69 FD points in each of his last two games) and there’s a chance that Paul won’t suit up tonight, making Harden an absolute must play in that scenario. I’m simply not interested in fading those raw points in cash games and with all the value that we have available, it’s going to be easy to shoehorn Harden into lineups tonight.

FanDuel NBA Breakdown: GPP Plays

For tournament plays, I’m looking for more than just 5x. I’m looking for 6-7x or more and we really want to chase those players with high ceilings, not just floors. We also want to take some risks on players that we think we can get at lower ownership than the chalkier cash game plays.

Nikola Jokic (11500)

I’m all in on the Joker tonight! He’s been absolutely on fire lately and gets one of the best matchups in the league right now against Houston, who’s playing 6’8″ Kenneth Faried at center and the corpse of Nene behind him. The offense runs through the big man and he’s a walking triple-double just about every night these days.

Paul Millsap (5400)

Millsap’s game log has been all over the place with everything from 7 to 40 FD points over his last 5 games. That makes him a GPP-only play for me, but it has also kept his price down which makes him an elite tournament play because we know he can still fill up the stat sheet when his team needs him to get more involved. Tonight feels like one of those nights where the Nuggets will need contributions from Jokic, Millsap and their guards to beat Harden and the Rockets.

Mike Conley (8500)

As long as Conley gives it a go tonight, I’m going to get him in some lineups. He’s playing at a high level right now, scoring 40+ FD points in 5 of his last 6 games including 49 on Wednesday against Minnesota. The matchup is solid against Charlotte, who ranks 24th against point guards on the season. I think Conley goes overlooked here today in this price range with many focusing on jamming in studs and value plays.

FanDuel NBA Breakdown: Value Plays

For our purposes here at the Breakdown, we classify players priced at 5000 or less as “value plays.” Identifying value has been crucial this year on FanDuel as the new “drop score” rule has forced us into playing a lot of “stars and scrubs” rosters in both cash and GPP formats.

Kadeem Allen (3500)

Allen had just recently cracked the rotation, playing 17 and 18 minutes in the Knicks last two games and now he could be the starter tonight or at least forced into heavy minutes even if he’s coming off the bench. At min-price I expect him to be popular and I’d slot him in as one of my punts for cash and GPP contests.

Alonzo Trier (4000)

Trier is the second of the Knicks trio of cheap guards tonight who should be on your radar. He’s been getting around 20 minutes a game lately but should have to play a lot more than that tonight and he’s had some big performances this season at times.

Damyean Dotson (3600)

Dotson, like Trier, is also a shooting guard punt that I’m interested in based on how many minutes he may have to absorb from Burke and Hardaway being gone and Mudiay and Nkilitina being out.

Monte Morris and Malik Beasley (4500 each)

There are so many shooting guard punts! Morris started last game for the Nuggets and playing tremendously, scoring 44 FD points in 39 minutes against the Pelicans. Beasley came off the bench but also played really well with 22 actual points and 29 FD points.

Bruno Caboclo (3900)

The former first-round pick of the Raptors has resurfaced now with the Grizzlies and is getting a chance to play some sizable minutes for them. He’s in his fifth NBA season but is still only 23 years old and had some impressive defensive stats in the G-League this season, averaging over one steal and three blocks per game in 28 minutes. He flashed that upside in his last game against Minnesota with 7 combined blocks/steals in 31 minutes.

FanDuel NBA Breakdown: Game Stack of the Night

Houston (+4.5) @ Denver (227 total)

As I mentioned earlier, James Harden and Nikola Jokic are the top two plays of the slate for me and they’re obviously the first two players to click into your lineups when stacking this game.

Paul Millsap, Monte Morris, and Malik Beasley are all cheap enough to fit into game stacks for Denver, too. I’ll probably build some stack with Harden-Morris and others with Harden-Beasley at my shooting guard spots. Will Barton (6500) burned me on Wednesday, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if he went out and had a big game tonight.

For Houston, I’m probably not paying up for Kenneth Faried (7900), who’s now the most expensive player at the PF position after being only 3500 a few weeks ago. Eric Gordon (5300) would only be in play for me if CP were to sit out and even then he’s more expensive than four other cheap shooting guards that I like that have similar upside.

When you have a guy like Harden who takes as many shots and handles the ball as much as he does on every possession, I have no problem playing him naked and not stacking him with other teammates. Naked Harden with 2-3 Nuggets feels like the build that I’m leaning towards using.

FanDuel NBA Breakdown: Sample Lineup and Overview

If you’re not familiar with how I wrap up the Breakdown, this is where I give you my thoughts on roster construction and briefly discuss my strategy for how I want to attack the slate.

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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.

Today’s sample lineup is a GPP lineup. It’s going to be a pretty extreme “stars and scrubs” build considering my top two plays are also the most expensive plays on the slate in Harden and Jokic and we have a ton of potential value with the Knicks being so shorthanded.

Remember, the sample lineup is for illustrative purposes and is not necessarily a “plug-and-play” lineup. This time of year so much can change in the course of 10-12 hours from when you begin to research a slate to when it actually locks.

PG: Kadeem Allen (3500)
PG: Ricky Rubio (6300)
SG: James Harden (13600)
SG: Monte Morris (4500)
SF: Bruno Caboclo (3900)
SF: Joe Ingles (5800)
PF: Marcus Morris (5500)
PF: Paul Millsap (5400)
C: Nikola Jokic (11500)

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!