FanDuel NBA Breakdown: Friday, 3/22 – Play the Backup Point Guards

FanDuel NBA Breakdown: Friday, 3/22

Welcome back to the Friday edition of the FanDuel NBA Breakdown! I’m “Thunder Dan” and I love playing and writing about FanDuel NBA DFS. As always, my goal is to help you get your research started for tonight’s NBA DFS slate on FanDuel.

My goal when I created the Breakdown was to make this 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.

"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."

I played heavier last night than I usually do and had some decent success. This time of year we are seeing some major chalk emerge with the number of cheap players who are now playing big minutes and it’s forcing players into extreme stars and scrubs lineup construction. While I’m not saying you need to eat all the chalk, I am finding that it’s pretty risky to be entirely contrarian on these slates. It’s really a matter of finding the good chalk that you want to eat and mixing in a few plays that are lower owned.

As the NBA season winds down, I would encourage you to really take these first look articles with a grain of salt.  I do my best to try to anticipate what injuries and rest situations we might encounter each night, but in the final month of the season we are going to see a lot of players sit out and we aren’t always going to know who it will be until later in the evening.

Tonight we have 7-game main slate on FanDuel. As I’ve said before, I really love 6-8 game slates for NBA and I think we have a really compelling one tonight. We aren’t going to have to have all our Vegas data and injury info this early for the rest of the season, so let’s jump right into the cash core again today.

FanDuel NBA Breakdown: Cash Game Core

Welcome to the cash game core 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.

Delon Wright (5100)

With Mike Conley doubtful for tonight’s matchup with Orlando, Wright becomes an easy plug and play tomorrow. He should right into the starting point guard position and log heavy minutes in a decent matchup. I love that we get to roster a starting point guard at the shooting guard position, too.

Fred Van Vleet (5600)

With Kyle Lowry already ruled out, then we are going to follow the same formula here with FVV. He started against the Thunder on Wednesday and scored 35 FD points in 40 minutes. He should again be relied on to score and run the offense for the Raptors, who have a healthy 115 point team total in a game that again projects to be close (it went to OT on Wednesday night).

Kawhi Leonard (9900)

No Lowry means there’s really no reason not to fire up Kawhi Leonard again, too. He poured in 22-10-6 on Wednesday night and will again have to shoulder the load on offense and likely be asked to guard Westbrook or PG13 on defense. With LeBron and Giannis’s status up in the air, it makes a lot of sense to drop down to Kawhi in cash games and save some cap space on him. He’s an ultra-safe play 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.

Pascal Siakam (8200)

Siakam exploded for 61 FD points in the Raptors OT win against the Thunder on Wednesday. This might feel like chasing points, and I realized he is priced up quite a bit now, but I just love the way this kid plays and I think he has incredible potential to become a star in this league. He may not get 61 again tonight, but I think he has 40-50 FD point potential easily.

Jonas Valanciunas (7700)

Jonas finally saw big minutes for the Grizzlies in their last game as he played 36 minutes against Houston and had a huge 33-15 performance.

With Conley out of the lineup tonight, I expect the Grizzlies to try to establish Jo-Val early and often in the post and he has a match-up against Nikola Vucevic that he can exploit. He posted 40 FD points in only 24 minutes against the Magic just two weeks ago and I think he can replicate that performance tonight.

Russell Westbrook (11700)

Westy needed OT on Wednesday night to get to 58 FD points, but he shot poorly in the first half and turned the ball over 8 times in that game. He still ended up scoring 42 actual points and having a solid performance. I think he’s likely to be one of the top two scorers on the slate tonight (with Harden being the other) and I love the idea of stacking him up with some Raptors tonight in a game stack.

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.

Chandler Parsons (4100) and Bruno Caboclo (4000)

Memphis is definitely a source of value tonight that we can’t ignore. Parsons has been effective in 22-25 minutes in his last two games and has always been a solid fantasy player when healthy (he just hasn’t been healthy in years).

Caboclo came out of nowhere to log 40 minutes on Wednesday night so I’m a little unsure of what his role will be tonight, but he certainly has some upside with his rebounding and defensive prowess.

Pat Connaughton (4900) and Ersan Ilyasova (4000)

The Bucks have been banged up lately. Giannis is supposed to return tonight, but they lost Nikola Mirotic for 2-4 weeks and several other backup guards are out (DiVincenzo and Brown). I think Connaughton’s bench role of 25 minutes is pretty safe and Ilyasova should slot into Mirotic’s 20-22 minutes off the bench.

Mason Plumlee (4500)

I hate trying to predict blowouts, but it certainly feels like the Nuggets should handle the Knicks tonight with ease. The spread is 11 points but mainly because Denver played last night and the game is in New York.

If I know Mike Malone, I bet he spreads the minutes around again tonight because he knows he doesn’t need to run his starters that much to beat the lowly Knicks, making Plumlee a nice value if he sees 25 minutes.

FanDuel NBA Breakdown: Position Rankings

What some players find really helpful are position rankings. I will rank my favorite players at each position based on their upside and point-per-dollar viability for cash and GPP.  Think of this a type of “cheat sheet” but it’s not an exhaustive list of my player pool by any means.

Point Guard

1. Russell Westbrook
2. Fred VanVleet
3. Chris Paul

Shooting Guard

1. Delon Wright
2. James Harden
3. D;Angelo Russell

Small Forward

1. Kawhi Leonard
2. Rudy Gay
3. Gary Harris

Power Forward

1. Pascal Siakam
2. LaMarcus Aldridge
3. Jerami Grant

Center

1. JaVale McGee
2. Jonas Valanciunas
3. Mason Plumlee

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 CASH lineup. This lineup is pretty heavy on the OKC-Toronto game, but it’s hard to ignore the upside that using the FVV-Siakam-Leonard trio presents and Westy-Schroder and on the other side are solid plays as well.

Nikola Mirotic is going to be out for a while so I’m eyeing Ersan Ilyasova or D.J. Wilson to soak up those minutes and JaVale McGee is in too good of a match-up to pass up at that price.

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. I rarely end up playing this lineup as there are always pivots that need to be made as the slate unfolds during the day!

PG: Russell Westbrook (11700)

PG: Fred VanVleet (5600)

SG: Delon Wright (5100)

SG: Dennis Schroder (5500)

SF: Chandler Parsons (4100)

SF: Kawhi Leonard (9900)

PF: Ersan Ilyasova (4000)

PF: Pascal Siakam (8400)

C: JaVale McGee (5600)

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 with your contests