DFS NBA Top Plays: October 2

Last Updated: October 2nd at 8:27 pm ET

UPDATE: 8:27 pm ET: Meyers Leonard and Tyler Herro enter the starting lineup. This is not an ideal situation for playing this slate with ownership now clearly flocking to Leonard and the bench role should keep Nunn in check. We’ve updated projections which are reflected in the bottom table

UPDATE – 7:54PM ET: We likely won’t get the official starting lineups until 8:30 pm ET, but we’re expecting Meyers Leonard and Kendrick Nunn to start. A long-time beat writer had Nunn as “expected” to start earlier today and mentioned he’d be in there for Dragic’s minutes while none of the other beats have said anything to go against that. It’s not as clear on Leonard besides some circumstantial evidence. One Heat writer dropped a hint on Leonard starting, and for what it’s worth the announcer rehearsed Leonard in the starting lineup — also with Dragic, which is obviously wrong. Coach Erik Spoelstra also suggested that Leonard will have a role. “It’s not like we’ll be dusting guys off who haven’t played all season,” he said. “Meyers played 60+ games and had a great season before the bubble.”

Injuries

* Chris Silva (hip) – Questionable
* Gabe Vincent (knee) – Questionable
* Goran Dragic (foot) – Doubtful
* Bam Adebayo (neck) – Doubtful
* Anthony Davis (ankle) – Probable
* LeBron James (groin) – Probable
* Danny Green (finger) – Probable

 

Showdown Breakdown

For the purposes of this article, we’re going to focus on the game on DraftKings as the dynamic captain pricing is more sophisticated, less likely to get monstrous duplicates, and frankly a more compelling game. At the bottom of the article, we’ll provide projections/minutes of the players on the slate. The ranking list can be useful for FanDuel but the game itself on FanDuel will lead to heavy duplicates and it makes the game a bit more about creating unique lineups so when you do win, you win very big. The process requires losing often so it’s a tough sell, but if you want to play on FanDuel and use this content, we suggest deviating from grouping the top 5-6 plays together, especially in the same multiplier order. Those lineups will be massively duplicated.

Onto the more complex game. When I play NBA showdown DFS, my approach is through mass-multi entry. I believe my edge is through creating bulk lineup sets that are well crafted (careful rules), likely a bit more spread than the field on captain exposure, occasionally taking calculated risks, and of course strong projections. While my approach is geared towards mass-multi entry, it doesn’t mean you have to do the same. There are concepts here to utilize when hand-building lineups as well.

 

Creating Sensible Rules for Showdown 

Rules (or groups) aren’t unique to those who use an optimizer to help build lineups. They are ideas that hand-built lineups should put into practice as well. In showdown, the overwhelming majority of rules should focus on players that impact each other’s playing time.

Here are some players that their playing time impacts one another:

• Dwight Howard and Javale McGee
• Solomon Hill, Derrick Jones Jr., Kelly Olynyk, and Meyers Leonard
• Markieff Morris and Kyle Kuzma

It’s worth noting that when the players are cheap enough, they could be paired together in a winning lineup. With that in mind, we don’t recommend being particularly aggressive with rules on this slate. You may want to consider limiting these combinations via Captain rules.

 

Captain Selection

The majority of questions we get around showdown are focused on captain selection. We think the mentality comes from sports like NFL or MLB, where one player’s performance can deviate so heavily from expectations that the selection itself is a big differentiator on the slate. In NBA DFS, the production relative to expectation is typically tighter and thus the overall lineup construction is more important than the captain selection. As a result, I’ll often try to take more spread approaches at my captain exposure. The injuries to this slate are going to funnel a lot of captain ownership to Anthony Davis, LeBron James, and Jimmy Butler.  They’re the only three players that project over 35 DraftKings points. There is also a clear-cut top value with Kelly Olynyk expected to move into the starting lineup in the absence of Bam. Those four players should command the bulk of the captain ownership. We think Olynyk will likely be less owned in the captain spot than he should. The secondary pieces should all be low-owned contrarian captains. Guys like Danny Green, Alex Caruso, Tyler Herro, and Kendrick Nunn should all come with low single-digits ownership.

 

Approach to Slate

The injuries in the first game of the series make Game 2 particularly compelling for showdown. The Heat have a couple huge voids to fill in the absence of Goran Dragic and Bam Adeabyo and how they choose to fill those voids will largely shape the slate. LeBron James and Anthony Davis will likely push for ownership north of 75% and possibly into the mid-80s. Jimmy Butler should also eclipse 65-70 percent and perhaps approach into a similar range as LeBron and Anthony Davis. Any lineup that doesn’t have those three players will start to limit some dupes. Eliminate two of those players and you have a shot to be totally unique. This is a clear route to pursue unique lineups but also a path unlikely to cash given LeBron and Anthony Davis‘ consistency. With duplicates harder to avoid since we’re essentially playing a 3-4 man roster instead of a 5-6 man roster, the edges are a bit thinner. However, we do think the edge exists. The edge comes into evaluating the Heat’s rotation because we believe the rotation might change more than the public will assume.

Kendrick Nunn was a starter all season and the Heat may start him again tonight. Throw in a slate-winning performance in Game 1 and this sets up well for Nunn to come with ownership. We’re skeptical Nunn plays starter minutes. In Game 1, LeBron James relentlessly targeted Duncan Robinson and Tyler Herro in switches. A higher percentage of Nunn’s minutes came in garbage time but Nunn is a similarly challenged defender in the face of LeBron. The Heat probably can’t play Robinson-Herro-Nunn together and we imagine they’ll be hesitant to pair Nunn-Herro for heavy minutes. The Heat have shown all throughout the playoffs that Nunn is behind Herro-Robinson so if someone has to lose minutes from this trio, we think it’s Nunn. If the Heat are trying to slow down LeBron from hunting switches, we’d expect more Andre Iguodala and Jimmy Butler on the wings along with Jae Crowder at the four. If the Heat need to do that, there aren’t quite as many minutes to go around as we saw during the regular season for Nunn-Herro-Robinson. We think there’s a chance Nunn is overprojected around the industry and Iguodala is underprojected.

We also think the Heat getting out-rebounded heavily in Game 1 may force bigger lineups. We know Bam Adebayo‘s minutes need to be replaced and they’ll be replaced by Kelly Olynyk and Derrick Jones Jr. based on past rotations, but we think it’s likely Meyers Leonard also plays a role and it’s possible the Heat try to match up with double-big lineups to prevent LeBron from hunting those switches against the weaker defensive guards. If people are just scanning through past box scores, they may not project Leonard to have a role tonight, but we think it’s exceptionally likely. They may project Solomon Hill and Derrick Jones Jr. based on those past box scores, so we see an opportunity to play more Leonard and less Hill-Jones. Leonard shot over 40 percent from three in the regular season so he can still stretch the floor and he offers more rebounding potential than Hill or Jones. His switch-ability on the perimeter is weaker but his presence would possibly remove another weaker switch defender that’s a guard.

Finally, another way to play this slate is to expect a blowout. The challenge is as we saw in Game 1, it’s not that much different than normally projected minutes. LeBron and AD didn’t leave ’til the final two minutes despite the Lakers up 20 throughout the fourth. The Heat played a little more Olynyk-Nunn but Jimmy Butler got a 4Q rotation as well. IF the Heat were to play blowout minutes in the 4Q, we think Nunn (despite being a potential starter), Meyers Leonard, Solomon Hill, Tyler Herro, and Derrick Jones Jr. would likely be the “winners” of additional playing time from our current projections.