10 Definitely Interesting, Possibly Helpful NBA Notes for Thursday, January 19th
This NBA season, I’ll work to uncover some interesting bits of information that might shed some light on players from that day’s slate of NBA games. This is not a picks column, nor is it a “fun facts” article – it’s something in between.
I hope you enjoy it, and I hope it helps you think about today’s NBA plays in a new way as you build your DFS lineups. Here are 10 NBA notes for Thursday, January 19th, 2017.
1. John Wall has had 15 games on back end of road back-to-backs in the last two years; in those games, he’s scored 51 or more FanDuel points (the number he needs to reach 5x value on his $10,200 price tag) on just one occasion. He’s been held below 40 FanDuel points in more than half of those games, as well. His matchup with the Knicks is less than favorable from a DvP perspective, as well, as they rank 10th in DvP against the position. On a day where there isn’t a lot to spend up for, it’s certainly defensible to play Wall; it’s just not an ideal scenario.
2. Only two players this month have five games of three three-pointers. One is obvious; it’s Isaiah Thomas. The other isn’t Stephen Curry, or James Harden, or Klay Thompson. Surprisingly, it’s Wall’s teammate, Otto Porter, who last night hit a career-high six three-pointers in a tough matchup with the Grizzlies. His FanDuel price tag never seems to stray too far from the $6,000 mark, and that’s exactly where he’s priced on Thursday against a Knicks team that is mediocre in terms of fantasy production allowed to small forwards (ranked 17th in DvP).
3. Nikola Jokic averages 33.3 FanDuel points in five career games against the Spurs; that’s his second-highest fantasy output of any opponent he’s faced at least four times, despite the fact that he has a 12.4-minute, 5.4-FanDuel-point dud in there (in the other four games, he scored 47.4, 38.9, 36.0, and 38.7 FanDuel points). In fact, he’s one of only four players in the NBA with four games of 36+ FanDuel points against San Antonio since last year. The other three players are pretty good; they’re DeMarcus Cousins, James Harden, and Chris Paul. Unfortunately, FanDuel is wise to the fact that the DFS world has been stricken with Jokic fever and they’ve jacked up his price to $9,400 (he was $7,100 just four games ago), which is brutal considering the matchup against the Spurs – despite Jokic’s past success against San Antonio, they still rank first in DvP against centers and second in DvP against power forwards.
4. One area where the Spurs have shown some vulnerability is against the shooting guard position. Consider this: shooting guards have scored 25+ points against the Spurs on 11 occasions this year; only the Lakers, with 12 such games, have allowed more. Gary Harris has already been ruled out, which could result in a start for Will Barton, whose price ($5,300) is still reasonable at FanDuel.
5. In 324 career games prior to this season, Kawhi Leonard scored 30 points or more four times. In 39 games this season, he’s scored 30 points or more 12 times. From a DvP standpoint, Kawhi’s matchup with the Nuggets is deceptively poor (Denver ranks fifth in the NBA against the position despite being a terrible defense according to basically any metric you can find). And Leonard, like Jokic (and seemingly everyone else on FanDuel) has seen a salary bump. His $9,400 price tag is high enough that he’s far from an auto-play, even on a short slate.
6. Over the past two seasons, Tony Parker has faced the Nuggets on four occasions, and in those four games, he has an absurd 70.5 field goal percentage; that’s the highest among any player in the NBA (min. 40 attempts), and to find the next guard on the list, you have to go all the way down to DeMar DeRozan at 52.3 percent. Parker’s 31.1 FanDuel points per game in this matchup is more than he’s averaged against any opponent (min. 4 games) during that span, and given that San Antonio has the day off on Friday, he could be locked into big (well, big for Tony Parker) minutes at a reasonable $4,900 price.
7. The last time Pau Gasol played the Nuggets and didn’t score 35+ FD points was January 6th, 2013 – that’s a span of seven games and three teams (Lakers, Bulls, Spurs) for Gasol. Good luck trying to predict Pau’s minutes, though.
8. The NBA leader among guards in minutes per game since January 1st isn’t James Harden, or Kyle Lowry, or Russell Westbrook; it’s Devin Booker, who has exceeded 20 points in six of his seven games during that stretch. The problem, of course, is the peripherals, or lack thereof. Among the 17 guards who average 34+ minutes per game this season, Booker is tied for 16th in combined assists, rebounds, steals, and blocks per game with just seven per contest (he’s tied with Klay Thompson and just a tick better than Wesley Matthews, who averages 6.8). For context – that’s less than one-third of the peripherals per game put up by Russell Westbrook (22.7) and James Harden (21.8). On Friday, he faces the Cavs (26th in DvP against shooting guards) in a matchup he just recently exploited, when he put up 42 FanDuel points against Cleveland on January 8th.
9. Andrew Wiggins has played 35 minutes or more in 11 straight games; that’s the longest active streak in the NBA. His teammate, Karl-Anthony Towns, has the next-longest streak of games with 35+ minutes, with eight such games in a row.
10. Derrick Rose has faced John Wall 10 times in his career; he’s exceeded 20 points in eight of those games (not to mention a 19-point outing). Rose posted a bizarre 30-point, 10-rebound performance on Wednesday (it was the first time he’d recorded double-digit boards since 2011) in a game in which he played nearly 33 minutes. But weirdly, despite his age, Rose averages almost five more FanDuel points per game on second halves of back-to-backs this year (32.7, compared to 28.2 for all other games). With the lower-priced Clippers (Austin Rivers, Raymond Felton) occupying two guard slots, Rose should go overlooked in a matchup in which he’s had success in the past.
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Thanks for reading! Stats from this article were pulled from RotoGrinders’ Daily Research Console, StatMuse, Basketball Reference, and NBA.com.
Check back for more “10 Notes” NBA articles throughout the year, and feel free to drop a comment below if you want to talk about today’s NBA slates.