Contrarian Central: Wednesday, March 11th
In this column, I’ll detail a strategy for being contrarian in order to give your lineups upside in GPPs, while also giving some possible plays each Wednesday.
It’s important to note that being contrarian does not mean just picking a bunch of low-owned players. Often times, all you need is one or two low-owned players in order to set your roster apart from the pack. Additionally, there are a variety of methods for differentiating your lineups and gaining an advantage.
Stacking the Less Desirable Game
We focus a lot on the Vegas odds, and for good reason. They tend to be pretty on-point with their team scoring projections and point spreads. That said, they aren’t always right, and just because a game has a low total or a high point spread doesn’t mean the players in that game can’t win you a GPP. Those who picked players from last week’s OKC vs. PHI matchup know exactly what I mean.
Yesterday, the worst looking game of the day on paper was New York at Utah. However, there was plenty of fantasy goodness with players like Shved, Favors, and Gobert all going off, and others posting respectable lines. For tournaments, I never have a problem putting a 3 to 5-player game stack from a less than ideal matchup into a lineup. Even if the individual players aren’t very low-owned, it’s not likely that the specific combination you choose will be in many other lineups since many people shy away from stacking a game with a low total or high point spread. You never know, the game could still end up being a shootout.
Contrarian Plays for Tonight
For this section, I’ll cover some players who I expect to have relatively low ownership, but plenty of upside.
Damian Lillard vs. HOU (FanDuel: $8700, DraftKings: $8200)
Lillard happens to be priced right between the mid and upper tier point guards. With more attractive options like Westbrook, Paul, Curry, and Rubio priced near him, plus the Patrick Beverley defense, I expect Lillard to be low-owned. This game projects to be close and high-scoring, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see a Harden/Lillard shootout.
Ty Lawson vs. ATL (FD: $7500, DK: $6900)
Another player priced right around other good options, Lawson also draws a very tough matchup in Atlanta. However, the Nuggets have actually been competitive for the most part lately, and they’re at home. Lawson is the type of player who can keep his team in the game when he’s on, and he still has 50 fantasy point upside at a much lower cost than we’ve seen him all year.
Klay Thompson vs. DET (FD: $7100, DK: $7100)
Yes, this game looks like it will be a blowout, but when Thompson gets hot he can put up 40+ fantasy points in three quarters anyway. He’s at a fair price, and faces Detroit on the second game of a back-to-back. He should be firing up plenty of shots.
DeMarre Carroll @ DEN (FD: $5700, DK: $4900)
Since many DFS players are on both FanDuel and DraftKings, players with value discrepancies like this often go very low-owned on the site with the higher price. Carroll won’t be all that contrarian on DK, but he should be on FD, and he’s capable of filling up all different categories on the stat sheet.
Donatas Motiejunas @ POR (FD: $5100, DK: $5300)
I really haven’t been comfortable rostering Motiejunas in a while. He’s very up and down, and his minutes aren’t the most consistent. However, he does have big games, and his price has gotten pretty low. D-Mo is sort of competing with Josh Smith for minutes and Dwight Howard could be back in the near future. That means there’s not much time left for him to prove he deserves a good chunk of playing time. He’s got GPP-winning upside with roster-crushing downside. Now that his price has decreased, that downside isn’t quite as bad.
Bojan Bogdanovic @ MIA (FD: $3600, DK: $3000)
Assuming Gerald Green starts in place of Brandon Knight for Phoenix, he’ll likely be the heavily-owned punt play. With Bogdanovic at the same minimum price on DK and $100 more than Green on FD, he won’t likely be on everyone’s radar. Well, yesterday Markel Brown, Alan Anderson, and Sergei Karasev all went down with injuries and did not return. Even if just two out of three are out, Bojan should play upwards of 30 minutes and could easily exceed value.
Alex Len vs. MIN (FD: $4800, DK: $5300)
Len has burned a lot of people lately, so recency bias will probably keep him very low-owned. He’ll match up with Nikola Pekovic, who hasn’t looked healthy and may have trouble with Len’s athleticism. Len could be in for some offensive rebound put-backs and some easy dunks off of pick-and-rolls. A double-double with three blocked shots and 30+ fantasy points wouldn’t surprise me at all.