NBA DFS Picks Tonight: DraftKings & FanDuel Top Plays, Sleeper Picks for November 3
Happy Friday! We’ve got a surprisingly reasonable 7-game slate on tap to finish the work week, which is refreshing. We haven’t seen many of these early in the year, and I think 6-8 games is right in the sweet spot as far as NBA DFS is concerned.
The NBA In-Season Tournament starts tonight, but it shouldn’t mean much of anything from a DFS standpoint. These early-round games are technically a part of the NBA’s new FA Cup-style competition, but they’ll also count toward the regular-season standings. So, it would be a surprise if anyone suddenly benched a bunch of starters or dramatically altered rotations.
So, how should we approach tonight’s 7-gamer on DraftKings and FanDuel?
News, News, and More News
Based on early injury reports, it sure looks like we could have another busy night of late swapping ahead. Kyrie Irving, Darius Garland, Tyrese Haliburton, Spencer Dinwiddie, RJ Barrett, and Jarrett Allen are just a few of the names listed questionable as of Friday morning.
We’ve also got several big-name players missing from lineups. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Scoot Henderson will miss games for the first time this season, while guys like Ja Morant, Anfernee Simons, Nic Claxton, and Cam Johnson remain out. The SGA and Scoot news items are particularly important, and both OKC and Portland will be thin in the backcourt as a result.
This is still the NBA, so there’s always a chance for chaos to erupt later in the day. The Zion Williamson and Markelle Fultz absences came out of nowhere yesterday, for example, so there’s no telling what unexpected news we’ll get later on.
Roster flexibility is important if some of these injury situations don’t get resolved before the first games lock. Cavs-Pacers is the only game locking right at 7 ET, so we’ll have updates on Garland, Allen, and Haliburton in time. Babysitting your lineups all night long isn’t the most fun part of NBA DFS, but making +EV late swaps is one of the best ways to get a huge edge on most of the field in GPPs.
Top NBA DFS DraftKings Optimizer Value
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PG/SG Malcolm Brogdon ($6,500)
$6,500 isn’t necessarily cheap, but Malcolm Brogdon looks like a no-brainer play tonight with Henderson and Simons both missing from the Blazers’ backcourt. Through 79 minutes this season with the starting guards on the bench, Brogdon is averaging a robust 1.27 DK FP/min on massive 30.5% usage from the field. He’s not sharing the ball with Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown anymore, and we’ve seen a very aggressive version of Brogdon through his first few games in Portland.
We have Brogdon projected to start for the first time all year. We’re also projecting him for 32 minutes, though there is room for upside there depending on how the game goes. Portland is a 3-point home underdog tonight against the Grizzlies, but this hasn’t been the same defensive stalwart we saw a season ago. Memphis is off to an 0-5 start, and they’ve slumped to 22nd in defensive efficiency thus far.
Brogdon certainly won’t fly under the radar, as he’s projected to be owned by nearly half of the field on DraftKings tonight.
Top NBA DFS FanDuel Optimizer Value
PG Isaiah Joe ($3,900)
SGA’s absence opens up just about everything offensively for the Thunder. Since the beginning of last year, Jalen Williams (+4.4%) and Lu Dort (+4.3%) have benefited the most from a usage standpoint with Gilgeous-Alexander on the bench, while Isaiah Joe (+3%) gets a nice bump of his own.
Joe is known primarily as a sharpshooter, but he’s also averaged a healthy 0.91 FD FP/min with SGA off the floor over the past year-plus. He’s been averaging around 20 minutes off the bench through the first few games of this season, but we’re expecting him to jump into the starting group and get up to 27 minutes tonight.
There is risk here, however. Mark Daigneault hasn’t necessarily been predictable with his lineup decisions or rotations over the past few years, so make sure Joe is starting before you jam him into your lineups. Since he’s projecting so well so early in the day, he’ll likely garner some ownership no matter what. If he’s coming off the bench, I’ll be less inclined to eat this chalk.
Still, we won’t find many viable sub-$4,000 options on FanDuel these days. That alone is enough to keep Joe in play as a punt in all formats.
NBA DFS Sleepers
PF/C Draymond Green ($6,200 DK, $6,500 FD)
Joe isn’t the only viable Thunderman tonight. Jalen Williams is another standout, while I wouldn’t be shocked to see Josh Giddey gain some steam, either. If we’re rostering a bunch of players from OKC, shouldn’t we get some exposure to the other side of this game in tournaments? Yes, we probably should.
The Warriors are 5.5-point favorites on the road over the shorthanded Thunder tonight, so Vegas is still expecting a close enough game. Steph Curry is your sexiest runback from the Golden State side, but I like the idea of getting to Draymond Green in the midrange. He’s only played 3 games since returning from an ankle injury, but his minutes are trending in the right direction. Dray logged 28 minutes the other night against Sacramento, just a couple of days after playing both ends of a back-to-back.
So, he seems healthy enough. He’s up to his usual tricks from a per-minute production standpoint (0.98), and the expected pace of this game favors his style of play. OKC is currently seventh in the league in pace after finishing fifth a season ago.
As of this morning, we have Green projected for about 13% ownership on DK, while he’s coming in around 9% over on FanDuel.
SG/SF Desmond Bane ($8,800 DK, $8,100 FD)
The Grizz have been getting crushed by injuries already this season, and there’s a new name on the injury report. Derrick Rose is expected to miss the next few games with a sore knee, which is actually noteworthy. Yes, Derrick Rose is on the Grizzlies now. He’s been playing 15-20 minutes off the bench early in the season, so Taylor Jenkins’ backcourt will be even thinner tonight with Ja Morant still suspended.
Marcus Smart is really the only point guard left, which leaves Desmond Bane as one of the few alternatives capable of initiating offense. Bane’s usage is already up over 29% as the default No. 1 option without Morant, and his current 1.2 FP/min average is the highest on the team. There’s admittedly some sticker shock now that he’s north of $8,000 around the industry, but the role is clear. He’s hoisted at least 17 shots in each game, and the Portland team he’ll face tonight is among the worst defensive squads in the sport these days.
I’ll make the same runback option that I made for Green. The Blazers figure to be a prominent source of value tonight, yet Smart is really the only Memphis player currently projecting for much ownership on DK. Bane is only coming in around 15% over there, so he makes for a logical way to spend some of the salary we’re saving with the Portland value on the other side of the same game.