NBA GPP Leverage: December 8

Another week has passed in the Association, and it’s hard to believe we’re just about 25% of the way through the season already. The inaugural In-Season Tournament has had some fireworks with Tyrese Haliburton asserting himself firmly into the “one of the best players in the league” conversation. Seriously — he leads the NBA in offensive rating and holds three of the 17 instances in league history where a player scored 25+ points, had 15+ assists, and committed 0 turnovers in a game — and all three were in the last month (*shakes head at the Knicks*).

Lately, it seems like I’ve been writing about ways to fade highly-owned players, as that’s definitely a profitable venture. But after all, the NBA is one of the most projectable DFS sports there is — which means there’s bound to be “good chalk” on basically every slate. This week has been primarily two-game slates thanks to the In-Season Tournament, but we had an 11-game slate on Wednesday that highlighted some great examples of what I would consider “good chalk” — regardless of the individual ownership they carry. There was, of course, some questionable chalk as always, but for this edition, I want to focus on the positive (for once).

With that said, let’s review the winning lineups from Wednesday’s slate in the Fadeaway contest on DraftKings:

First, congrats to the two DFS pros taking first and second in the Fadeaway — I’m sure Discord member bpcologna would rather have come in first (who wouldn’t), but taking $35K home for second is still well done. To add some context here, there were both some big injury spots as well as “return from injury” spots. Bojan Bogdanovic ($5,100) has been a solid player his entire career, and he should really be on a contending team — not on the worst team in the league that doesn’t even know how or when to use all 37 of their players. Poor Bojan, but I digress. Charlotte was already missing LaMelo Ball, and then Mark Williams was ruled out right before lock. This opened up significant value with Nick Richards ($3,700) entering the starting lineup and more paths to minutes for backup power forward/center P.J. Washington ($5,400). In the late group of games, both Jerami Grant and DeAndre Ayton were ruled out, also before lock (thanks, Blazers), and as a result, significant attention was brought to Duop Reath ($3,200) and Jabari Walker ($4,400). The Blazers were also expecting Anfernee Simons ($5,500) back in the lineup after an extended absence for a thumb injury, but all signs pointed to Simons being available for a full role.