NBA Situational Projections: Monday, February 12th
When I first got into NBA DFS, the phrase I kept hearing was “minutes = money.” The concept is simple enough: A player averages a certain number of points per minute, and if he gets a certain number of minutes, we can expect him to be one of the best point per dollar scorers on the slate. Unfortunately, as we’ve all learned, not all projections are created equal. Every day, I build my own projection set for NBA. Some days, that’s easy. If a team has a neutral matchup and isn’t missing any bodies, a base set of projections works just fine. Other days though, especially as the NBA season rolls along, it gets a lot more complicated.
Monday, February 12th – Not All of Orlando is Magic
After trading away Elfrid Payton, the Magic are clearly in tank mode. They have the 5th worst record in the NBA and are just playing for ping pong balls at this point. Of course, you don’t want to tell that to the players. Sometimes, the worst teams can offer the best DFS value. With Payton traded away and Nikola Vucevic and Aaron Gordon out with injuries, there’s plenty of usage to go around, especially against a team that plays at a similarly fast pace like the Chicago Bulls.
I mentioned in a previous article that I don’t particularly care what other guys do when low usage guys are off the floor. This is not one of those situations, since Payton, Gordon, and Vucevic are the three highest usage players on the Magic. It’s an absolute given that some previously lower-usage guys are going to see a bump in usage and production. What’s nice about this from a DFS projections standpoint is that these players usually don’t have their new roles baked into their prices right away.
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