Hey all, it’s Lindy! In this series of articles, I’ll walk you through the essential elements of the main NBA DFS slate every night. Remember, unforeseen events might impact the slate, so consider this information more as guidance than absolute gospel. I’ll spotlight some key decision-making moments for the current slate, aiding you in anticipating changes and fine-tuning your lineups accordingly. Let’s get into today’s NBA DFS lineup advice! For additional NBA DFS lineup suggestions, check out our NBA DFS lineup generator or our industry-leading NBA DFS simulation tools.
NBA DFS Lineup Questions: Key Decisions for Today
NBA DFS Lineup Advice: Assessing Field Size With the Sims!
With NFL now behind us, both DraftKings and FanDuel decided to beef up the contest sizing to an unbelievable degree. FanDuel’s main contest offering, the $5 entry/$300k prize pool/$50k-to-first, has just over 71,000 entries, which is certainly a high point for a run-of-the-mill Monday night. But that sizing pales in comparison to DraftKings and their flagship $4 entry/$400k prize pool/$100k-to-first GPP that will have just short of a whopping 119,000 entries!
Now, back in the optimizer-only days, I’d make some “tactical” moves to address what I thought were requirements to win these outlier tournaments with massive field sizes. Stuff like “minimum two plays sub-10%,” “two players max from a team” or “50% standard randomness” were standard hat-type things that I did to try to be sharp, and I’m sure many of you did the same. Heck, a lot of those things worked from time to time, but that was in an era where the tournaments were softer and being able to simply identify the best plays was enough at times.
But the Stokastic Sims Tool does much better job of incorporating those rules and parameters by default than I ever could have imagined. For one, you’re getting 10,000 simulations of the contest, which takes the guesswork of “how many low-owned plays should I have” or “is this good chalk or not” and coming to data-driven conclusions based on that specific slate.
But also — for all you control freaks out there like me who desperately need to have some sort of say in the process — there’s an opportunity to plug the right types of lineups for the contest you’re playing on the Contest Generator home page. And for today’s $4 on DraftKings, here’s how I’m opting to do that:
Five thousand lineups. Straddling the difference between low stakes and marquee lineups to account for the increase in field size. And that’s it. That’s how I’m going to be building my pool to simulate the $4 on DraftKings as best as I can leading up to lock, and it’s the best possible starting point for anyone else utilizing the Sims for tonight’s contest.
NBA DFS Lineup Advice: Nuke of the Night
Wanted to give you two plays on the way out the door I’m considering as potential nukes, and they’re ironically separated by just $100 on DraftKings: Victor Wembanyama ($8,900) and Kyrie Irving ($8,800).
Wembanyama at a sub-$9,000 salary is always going to grab my attention, as the minutes are simply down of late due to a nauseating number of blowouts the Spurs have been in. Toronto has somehow been dead last in defense rating over the last month, and in nearly that same timespan Wembanyama has been one of the best fantasy producers in the game, averaging 1.73 DraftKings points per minute since Jan. 1.
As for Irving, I expect a ton of attention to go towards Luka Doncic ($12,000) as more and more value gets added to this slate. But one of the paths in large-field tournaments to get leverage here is simply say it’s Irving’s day to shine instead. In his four games and 144 minutes so far this month, Irving is averaging 1.24 DraftKings points per minute, and that’s with just a 25.8% usage rate at that. If he can eclipse 30% usage tonight against the Wizards, who play at the fastest pace in the league, I like his chances to smash at just 13.1% current ownership.
