NBA Starting 5 (GPP): Monday, November 20th

The Starting 5 Series will provide Grinders a quick look at the day’s top positional plays, as analyzed by one of our daily fantasy sports experts.

Monday, November 20th

Welcome back to the Starting Five. I love writing this article on Mondays, as there are typically different slate sizes, which allows me to talk about how the number of games affects your strategy in DFS.

On a big slate with a few potential big injury spots, paying attention to the late news will be crucial. I’m going to write up a guy at each position who is primed to get a big usage bump if the related questionable player sits.

Point Guard: Mario Chalmers – $4,700 – Memphis Grizzlies

Chalmers is making his third consecutive start in place of the injured Mike Conley, and his price has yet to rise to the levels it should. At $4,700, I’m looking for 30-31 DK points in GPPs to be happy, and he’s basically hit that number in two of three games without shooting the ball well. Portland isn’t very good at guarding guards, which should make this spot more favorable than normal. Using CourtIQ, we can see with Conley off the floor and Chalmers on that Chalmers has a very respectable 20.9% usage rate along with a .84 DK point per minute clip. In harder matchups I might suggest fading Chalmers here, but right now he’s my favorite option.

Note: If John Wall sits, Tim Frazier becomes another viable punt option.

Shooting Guard: Bradley Beal – $8,000 – Washington Wizards

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Paying $8,000 for Bradley Beal at first glance looks like a no-way-in-hell type play, but when you use CourtIQ you see that Beal actually could be more expensive if John Wall isn’t on the floor. This year with Wall off and Beal on, Beal has an absurd 38.1% usage rate and is averaging 1.25 DK points per minute. Beal basically turns into 2016 Russell Westbrook (or 2017 LeBron) in these types of situations, yet he’s only $8K. Now if Wall was to play, you couldn’t even consider Beal, but this is one of those classic spots in which a player sits and the biggest beneficiary isn’t his replacement but another starter already on the floor.

Small Forward: Bogdan Bogdanovic – $3,500 – Sacramento Kings

With Buddy Hield already ruled out, it should open up some extra minutes for Bogdan tonight. He was already playing solid sixth man minutes in the 25-28 range and now has upside for low 30s if he plays well. He doesn’t get a massive usage bump, but in this situation the extra 3-5 minutes could take him from a good play to a great play at this $3,500 tag.

Note: Justin Jackson is another player who could benefit from Hield being out.

Power Forward: Kevin Love – $7,400 – Cleveland Cavaliers

With Paul Millsap ruled out and his value replacement Wilson Chandler being questionable with a back injury, I’m going to go away from that game entirely and talk about Kevin Love. He will (try) to be guarded by Drummond, which will mean lots of open threes for Love (now Drummond will abuse him on other end, so foul trouble is an issue). If he shoots well, he could be in the 30 real life point range, and that obviously would put Love in great position to smash value at this price.

Center: Nikola Jokic – $9,100 – Denver Nuggets

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With Millsap out, Jokic is in an even better situation than normal. As mentioned above he got ejected in the first half last night, so I’m not worried about him having to deal with the back-to-back effect because he didn’t play much. With Millsap off the floor, Jokic has had a 25.1% usage rate (up from 22.2%) and averages a whopping 1.44 DK points per minute. This matchup against the Kings is better than neutral as well for Jokic, so this could be a 1.5 to 1.6 DK point per minute spot in a game in which they will probably need 30-34 minutes from him. He’s my favorite GPP play now that Millsap will miss the game tonight.

As always, leave any comments or questions in the comment section. See you guys next week!

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