FanDuel NBA Breakdown: 4/3 – Wild Wednesday

FanDuel NBA Breakdown: Wednesday, 4/3

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. 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."

Tonight we have massive 12-game main slate on FanDuel. The games are really concentrated heavily on Monday-Wednesday-Friday this week so that’s why there won’t be a Breakdown tomorrow again. Even to someone like myself who has been grinding NBA all season long, this slate appears very challenging. With so many games and so many potential players resting I would really recommend practicing some responsible bankroll management tonight and for much of the remainder of the season.

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. Many of these players will still be in my lineups, but obviously, I am going to pivot as we get news throughout the day and so should you.

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.

Nikola Vucevic (9500)

I am looking to lock in a few stud players who project well and Vuc is too cheap for his matchup with the Knicks. He hasn’t been hitting value lately, but as long as we think his minutes are still safe tonight then I will fire him up with confidence as he’s dominated New York this season every time out.

Elfrid Payton (7600)

Payton gets a matchup with Kemba defense and hopefully gets the playing time that we need for him to make value tonight. It’s really hard trying to predict how these rotations are going to go tonight for teams that don’t have anything to play for, but I like the price on Elf and the matchup. As long as he sees 30+ I think he’s a safe bet for 35-40 FD points.

Walter Lemon Jr. (4800)

It’s not often you’ll a min-priced guy as a core play, but Lemon is an absolute must in cash games. He was close to 90% owned on the last slate and he has an even better matchup today against the Wizards. As long as he’s playing 30 minutes a night, he’s going to be in play for DFS purposes.

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.

Ben Simmons (9800)

Simmons has an awesome matchup on paper against the Hawks tonight. If he plays his full complement of minutes he should have a big performance, but his minutes are trending down a bit since Philly probably wants to keep him fresh for the playoffs. Still, with no Embiid in the lineup, Simmons has the upside to go for 5x even in only 30 minutes and I’m going to fire him up tonight anyway.

Thomas Bryant (7500)

I love watching this dude play and if there’s one good thing about this season for the Wizards it’s that they have found their center of the future. Bryant is on an absolute tear lately, posting massive double-doubles in three straight games and hitting 49 and 50 FD points in two of those games. He should feast on Chicago inside and I think he has the best point-per-dollar upside of any center on the slate.

Bradley Beal (9600)

I’m going with Bryant’s teammate Beal for my final GPP pick. I’d rather not pay up at shooting guard for Harden on a back-to-back or Booker in a tough matchup. Beal has an awesome matchup against this D-league Chicago team and is still logging 36-38 minutes which is plenty of court time to put up 50 FD points tonight and we’ve seen him do it often in the second half of the season.

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.

Aaron Holiday (3700)

Most projection systems today are going to tell you to play Corey Joseph or Tyreke Evans, but I am going to swerve a little and recommend the young Holiday instead. He’s got a nice offensive game and has flashed some potential when he gets the opportunity. That opportunity should be there tonight as he played 25 minutes in the Pacers last game and you’d have to think he’d get some extended run again.

Justin Anderson (3600)

Anderson has emerged in Atlanta as the guy who they seem to want to develop down the stretch. With Prince out of the lineup, guys like Vince Carter, DeAndre Bembry, and Kent Bazemore are all in play. But Anderson is the guy I want here. He’s super cheap and has already had one monster game, a 47 FD point performance against Milwaukee, since entering the starting lineup. He’s a big rangy player with a ton of rebounding upside (21 boards his last two games) and he’s got revenge working on his side tonight as he used to play for Philadelphia! (I hope by now you know I’m kidding…)

Troy Brown Jr. (4300)

Three Washington players in one article! Why not? TBJ (he said it was cool and I can refer to him as that) is coming off a game in which he playing a whopping 42 minutes and the Wizards need him on the floor as he provides another offensive option next to Beal and a little bit (not too much) of perimeter defense. Ariza is out again so I don’t see any reason why they wouldn’t give TBJ all the run he can handle.

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. I’m going to give you my top 5 at each position since this is such a big slate.

Point Guard

1. Ben Simmons
2. Kemba Walker
3. Elfrid Payton
4. Emmanuel Mudiay
5. Michael Carter-Williams

Shooting Guard

1. Bradley Beal
2. Andrew Wiggins
3. Dwayne Wade
4. Walter Lemon Jr.
5. Justin Anderson

Small Forward

1. Danilo Gallinari
2. Jabari Parker
3. Jonathan Isaac
4. Troy Brown Jr.
5. DeMarre Carroll

Power Forward

1. Aaron Gordon
2. Tobias Harris
3. Christian Wood
4. Luke Kornet
5. Kenneth Faried

Center

1. Nikola Vucevic
2. Thomas Bryant
3. Myles Turner
4. Andre Drummond
5. Enes Kanter

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.

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.

In fact, Stars and Scrubs is likely going to be the chalky build for NBA DFS for every slate the rest of the season with the amount of value that we are going to have on a nightly basis.

Today’s sample lineup is a HYBRID lineup that I would play in cash games and some GPPs. My cash core is in there and then some of my favorite value plays and mid-tier plays mixed in as well. There are a lot of injury/rest situations that we don’t know about just yet so obviously make sure you are monitoring those throughout the day. My final lineup may end up nothing like one, I just want to warn you.

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! We don’t even have Vegas totals for most of these games!

PG: Ben Simmons (9800)
PG: Elfrid Payton (7600)
SG: Walter Lemon Jr. (4800)
SG: Justin Anderson (3600)
SF: Danilo Gallinari (7800)
SF: Troy Brown Jr. (4300)
PF: Tobias Harris (7500) 
PF: Aaron Gordon (7100)
C: Thomas Bryant (7500)

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