Hey, everyone, Lindy here. In this piece, I’ll walk you through the essential elements of the NBA DFS main slate for Thursday, Jan. 25. Bear in mind that breaking news could impact the landscape, so view this as a helpful guide rather than an absolute authority. I’ll point out crucial decision points for the slate to help you anticipate developments and fine-tune your lineups. Let’s dive into the NBA DFS lineup advice for today! For more NBA DFS guidance, be sure to check out our cutting-edge NBA DFS lineup generator and industry-leading NBA DFS simulation tools.
NBA DFS Lineup Questions: Key Decisions for Today
NBA DFS Lineup Advice: To Embiid? Or Not to Embiid?
We haven’t seen a tear like the one Joel Embiid is on in quite some time. And by quite some time, I mean since Wilt Chamberlain, which puts Embiid in a stratosphere of his own on tonight’s NBA DFS.
Now, I don’t know what Wilt’s percentages would’ve been in Stokastic’s Boom/Bust tool on a nightly basis, but I’d have to imagine it’d look something like this:
What am I even looking at??? I’ve been a NBA DFS player for eight-plus years, and there are only two times can I recall seeing nearly 67-fantasy point projections and 65% boom rates in the regular season: James Harden whenever Chris Paul would sit when they played together in Houston and Russell Westbrook at the tail end of his respective Thunder and Wizards tenures. The only thing is we had brief periods of Harden and Westbrook listed in the $12,000 range, and Embiid carries a tag of “just” $11,600 on DraftKings tonight.
So yes, he’s the most expensive player on the slate, but his season numbers would actually justify another $1,000 or so to his tag: 38.8% usage, 65.1% true shooting, 32.1% assist rate, 18.6% total rebound percentage and a 4.6% block rate. Add in that he’s playing 37 to 39 minutes a night in competitive spots and averaging a hair north of 34 on average this season, he’s as sure of a thing to smash on a nightly basis as we’ve had in the NBA in quite some time.
Still, I do have one concern: As incredible as Stokastic’s ownership projections are, it is very hard to account for the natural boosting the field will be giving Embiid. And as insane as his rates are, he’s actually failed to exceed even 60 fantasy points in half of his past six outings due to extreme blowouts, so the path to failure is certainly there.
So how do I plan to utilize Embiid as someone who plays around 40 to 50 lineups on a nightly basis? You’re going to hate this, but it completely depends. There’s a huge domino to fall with LeBron James in the late-night hammer, as he did miss out in their last game against the Clippers and enters tonight questionable as well. Should he miss and Anthony Davis becomes a fantasy funnel against Nikola Vucevic, it’ll be hard for me not to take those 38-ish minutes and massive ownership discount in the $10,000 range. Also, there doesn’t appear to be any value on tonight’s slate as of yet besides a smattering of Jazz players in their solid spot against the Wizards.
So for me, the timing of tonight’s news is just as important as the news itself since Embiid tips off right at lock, the Jazz tip off at lock as well and the Lakers don’t hit the floor until 10:30 p.m. ET. Tune in for NBA Live Before Lock on the Stokastic YouTube channel at 6pm ET, where Greg Ehrenberg and I will break down all the nuances of the Embiid play and all of the evening’s relative news, and we can hopefully help you take down some big money like we both have already this week!
NBA DFS Lineup Advice: Nuke of the Night
I briefly stated that I love getting to as much Davis as possible should James sit tonight, but I also like the idea of getting to that game in general with the potential late news edge surrounding it. And while D’Angelo Russell and Austin Reaves certainly don’t project out well at the moment, both become excellent plays should James sit for a second straight outing.
But in order to up my exposure to that game, I’ll actually be playing more of the Bulls side with DeMar DeRozan, Vucevic and tonight’s Nuke of the Night Coby White to up my versatility to the evening window. White has been on a tear of late, throwing up 59 DraftKings points last time out against Phoenix despite just a 17% usage rate. He’s playing high-30s/low-40s minutes every night now sans Zach LaVine, he’s filling up the box score with an average of nearly five rebounds and five assists per game, and shooting slightly north of 40% from deep on the year.
White has multiple ways to achieve upside now, and at $7,600 on DraftKings, there is still some meat left on the bone. Plus, upping my exposure gets me more swapability to react to the LeBron news and land on more Russell/Reaves if desired. So while tonight’s Nuke of the Night is part game theory, I’d hardly feel stuck rostering White come the end of the evening.
