Note that this article’s format changed when the playoffs started. Additionally, there won’t be a separate update article. Check back to this article throughout the day Friday and review the discussion in the comments below for updated information.
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Analysis
After two decisive victories for Miami at home, Charlotte completely shuffled the deck in game 3. With Batum absent, many (including me) figured that we'd see more Jeremy Lin. Instead, the Hornets went big, shuffling more minutes to Frank Kaminsky, Marvin Williams, and Cody Zeller. Their big-ball lineup yielded an incredible 3 turnovers for the whole game, and won in spite of generally lousy shooting. What will game 4 hold? It's anybody's guess, but I'd suspect that it will be a fairly close game where starters play their projected minutes.
The big piece of missing information here is what's shaking with Nic Batum. If he misses Monday's game we can count on a similar minutes distribution to what we got in game 3. If he returns, it's sort of anybody's guess. These picks will be written assuming he sits once again.
Top Value Plays
Opponent - MIA
FD Proj. Pts - 26.24 DK Proj. Pts - 27.99
Kaminsky was the big minutes winner in game 3, and put up a solid 15 and 7 in a sort of startling 35 minutes on the court. The Heat struggled to keep up with the Hornets 2-big lineups, and it's hard to imagine Charlotte not at least trying this again given their game 3 success. Frank is still priced very safely, so we could see 5-8 minutes shaved off his previous total and he could still pay these prices. Easy play in any format unless we hear that Batum is back.
Opponent - MIA
FD Proj. Pts - 28.58 DK Proj. Pts - 30.83
Marvin was finally Marvin again in game 3, going for 12 and 14 in 36 minutes. With his sea legs under him, he's all of a sudden looking very cheap. Again, he's a potential bust if Batum returns, and you can probably consider him rather volatile regardless, but I'm very interested.
Opponent - MIA
FD Proj. Pts - 38.55 DK Proj. Pts - 40.27
I figured Kemba would shoulder more of the load with Batum shelved for game 3, and while he wound up with a very solid line, he was very close to putting up a monster. If the game stays a little closer Walker would have played 42+ minutes and put up an easy 5x points per dollar. I suspect that that's the kind of performance we see in game 4, again, assuming Batum isn't out there.
Opponent - CHA
FD Proj. Pts - 40.69 DK Proj. Pts - 41.37
Whiteside's been workmanlike against Charlotte's offense-first big men, putting up a narrow range of 39-42 fantasy points per contest in the first 3 games of this year's playoffs. As Charlotte goes bigger it's going to mandate more Whiteside out there, and the interesting thing is, they really don't have anyone that can hang with him on the boards or as a rim runner. We could wind up seeing one huge game before this series is over, but I like the floor here plenty.
Consider Courtney Lee.
Analysis
Game 3 went as close to how I figured games in this series would go in terms of game script and overall minutes, even if some individual performances continue to perplex. The Thunder won semi-convincingly, but not enough so that their big guys lost minutes, and everyone this side of Kevin Durant got fed. The Mavs, meanwhile, are a complete minutes nightmare. Williams was announced as the late starter, only to exit the game after playing a single minute. Well, they've finally shut Williams down, and hopefully we can just go off last game's minutes to project this series the rest of the way. Here's what we've got.
Top Value Plays
Opponent - DAL
FD Proj. Pts - 53.85 DK Proj. Pts - 56.95
Opponent - DAL
FD Proj. Pts - 53.77 DK Proj. Pts - 55.73
Westbrook has been incredibly solid from a daily fantasy perspective, and Durant has laid perpetual stinkers. Still, on this slate, it's going to be tough to charge forward without both in there. Durant is now 14 for his last 53 from the field. Can that continue? The Thunder are playing one of the lousiest version of their offense that I can remember. Tom Haberstroh pointed out a terrific stat on a recent Lowe Post podcast, saying that the Thunder passed just 208 times in game 2 - their lowest of the season. Still, it's tough to imagine them combining for 80 minutes and now paying the same prices they kept all season long. I'll be rolling it back and expecting a huge Durant game one of these days.
Opponent - DAL
FD Proj. Pts - 25.18 DK Proj. Pts - 25.89
Kanter has put up back to back 7x points per dollar performances on these prices, so it's probably time to acknowledge that Dallas' back up bigs (looking at you, Mejri) simply can't keep up. Looks both safe and full of upside from where I'm sitting in that it's very tough to picture his minutes going the other way given how stale OKC has the potential to look on offense.
Opponent - DAL
FD Proj. Pts - 19.02 DK Proj. Pts - 20.18
Waiters has quietly been doing exactly what the Thunder were praying he'd do all season - stand there and make a shot or two. Back to back games with 20+ fantasy points, and a game-script proof 27 minutes. On a short slate with few super-cheap value plays he's a top consideration for me.
Opponent - OKC
FD Proj. Pts - 36.43 DK Proj. Pts - 38.54
Every team in the playoffs has a guy that they look at and say, "If we lose, it won't be because we didn't get this guy the ball." For the Mavs, that's Dirk. He played a season high 40 regulation minutes in game 3, and the 21 shots he took would have tied for his 4th highest total on the season. Deron Williams' absence leaves a huge hole in the offense, and Dirk is there to fill it. He has paid 5x+ points per dollar in each of his last 2 games, and is a phenomenal play today.
Opponent - OKC
FD Proj. Pts - 27.92 DK Proj. Pts - 29.73
With Williams done and Barea not himself, it falls on Ray Felton to be the main creator on the offensive side of the ball for the Mavs. Right, that's not a joke. Still, Felton has been largely up to the task this season, and has been nothing short of great on these prices in each of the games in this series. For all of his defensive flair, Russell Westbrook is very overrated when it comes to every-possession defense. The Thunder rank the worst of any team in the playoffs when it comes to allowing fantasy points to opposing point guards. Love Felton today.
Also considered: Wes Matthews, though he's more hit or miss than the above guys.
Analysis
Little brother got a punch in in game 3, and we blessedly got a peek at what each team intends to do if the game stays close. It's pretty much what we expected (even if it took a while for us to get here) - lots of stars, not so many scrubs, and a lot of balls in the air from Portland's dynamic back-court duo. Let's break down game 4.
Top Value Plays
Opponent - POR
FD Proj. Pts - 48.64 DK Proj. Pts - 50.72
A day in, day out play as far as our lineup optimizer is concerned. Paul finally got his full run of minutes in game 3, and paid off nearly exactly what we're projecting him for here - a well rounded 26/3/9/3 line that could have been a lot sweeter if the rest of his team could hit a shot. Paul put 21 shots in the air, and it was totally obvious that he's the guy the Clippers are going to win or lose this series behind. More to come in game 4.
Opponent - POR
FD Proj. Pts - 22.1 DK Proj. Pts - 24.16
A bigger surprise, to me, is how much Jamal Crawford has been involved. He paid nearly 6x points per dollar on a fairly astounding 18 field goal attempts in game 3, and while some of that was on account of the Clips trailing, he had a much easier time creating shots for himself than Blake, DeAndre, or JJ. He's cheap, and the minutes are headed in the right direction. Not sure if I totally trust it.
Opponent - LAC
FD Proj. Pts - 33.15 DK Proj. Pts - 33.64
I have two regrets from this postseason, and both involve not keeping a steady hand in light of a small sample size contrary to what our projection system was seeing. One of those was Paul Millsap going into game 4 (big woops), and the other was Plumlee going into game 2. Thankfully we righted the ship fairly quickly, but man - it's been great to see Plumlee translating increased opportunity into linearly more fantasy production. He's shredded the Clips fairly lazy bigs down low, and outhustled them to 31 total rebounds in the last 2 games. These offensive boards have turned into assists and greater trust from his teammates, and he's been a real bright spot in a tough round 1 battle. It's impossible for me to envision the Trail Blazers going away from him for anything short of foul trouble, so I'm riding him once again.
Opponent - LAC
FD Proj. Pts - 41.94 DK Proj. Pts - 45.11
Opponent - LAC
FD Proj. Pts - 35.76 DK Proj. Pts - 37.78
Both of these guys got off the fantasy schneid in game 3, but I'm not totally sure I trust either fully for game 4. The thing you love, of course, is the volume - they shot a combined 42 times in game 3, and the Trail Blazers won, so it stands to reason that they'll be back at it in game 4. The troubling thing for me is the bizarre assist totals. Mason Plumlee's 9 assists accounted for more than the rest of the team combined. Not promising for the Blazers in general or for the fantasy total of these two, but I'm remaining cautiously optimistic.
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View Comments
Nice work again guys. Optimal cashed in 50/50 and tourney. Would've been huge if Houston showed up in the second half. Still a good night
Missed our on all my double ups and 50/50 by 3-4 pts in every one. Patrick beverly.ugh. joys of dfs.
You guys think waiters has got one more in him? Having a hard time trusting that guy even with 2 decent games. Don't have shot numbers and averages for season handy but are durants struggles playing part of his success or is the KD/waiters shot distribution about the same as its been all year?
I've been playing dfs for close to a year now. I just signed up for this today and will be using the optimizer for the first time tomorrow. I've done fairly well on my own, but I'm hoping this will improve my earnings. Interested to know how it has played out for everyone using this tool....
Same here Michael. We will see. The trickiest part is being glued to the optimizer right before tip off because of last minute scratches. Let's see how we do!
Opti was money towards the end of the regular season. It started out rough in the playoffs but the last two days have been gold...there might have been another day that it cashed too. For the most part it's good baseline but by no means meant to be a drag and drop?
I couldnt have said it any better Zach....I actually gave up on the Opt for FD
Opti has come around and doing well. At least I dont have to second guess myself. MLB is still a bit hit and miss as it will be, but I hope it comes around too.
Would it be smart to start both kd and Russ? Or start just one? Thanks
They have such incredibly high usage rates that I wouldn't be worried about pairing them together. They sometimes have games where they combine for 70+ points.
I am kicking out the following LU in the FD Bud Light free roll just for kicks:
Westy
Felton
McCollum
Crawford
Durant
Anderson
Dirk
Ibaka
Kanter
Good luck! It's hard to win at!
mine is a little different but goes as follows
lillard
paul
waiters
lin
durant
harkless
deng
iblacka lol ibaka
plumlee
i think kanter usage will be through the roof tonight for some reason higher than 40%
I think starting both KD and West would take a big hit on the cap and restrict you from spending money elsewhere. There is more than enough solid options to fade west tonight. SF is terrible tonight so you have to start KD at one of those spots on FD.
i think you almost have to deploy both....especially with the value plays that are available at the moment not a bad idea to stack them
Batum out, Kaminsky in. Glad we got that early!