NBA Starting 5: Saturday, February 4th
The Starting 5 Series will provide Grinders with a quick look at the day’s top positional plays, analyzed through the lens of our Daily Research Tools.
Today, we’ll take a closer look at the Ceiling and Consistency tool. I’ll sort by the last four weeks to see what players are performing well in relation to their FanDuel salary.
The Ceiling and Consistency tool shows you how often each player has hit their value based on that day’s salary. The percentage columns (%3x, %4x, etc) show the percentage of the time that particular player has hit that value multiplier. For example, if a player has a salary of $5,000, the %3x column will show the percentage of games in which he has scored at least 15 fantasy points ($5,000 divided by 1000, then multiplied by 3).
Point Guard: Dennis Schroder
Schroder has been struggling with his shot lately, as shown by his 35 percent shooting percentage over the last five games. Tonight is a nice bounce back spot for him against the Magic, who rank 27th against the point guard position. Schroder has faired well in two previous matchups with the Magic this season, with averages of 18 points and 10 assists. Schroder makes for a great tournament play, as his ownership should be low based on the slate size and other quality options at point guard tonight.
Shooting Guard: Devin Booker
Booker’s confidence should be riding high after last nights game winner. Now he gets a juicy matchup versus the Bucks and their 27th ranked defense against shooting guards. Booker is going to be chalky tonight, but he’s going to be a tough fade for me. He hasn’t scored less than 20 points since January 2nd, and his lowest minute total since then has been 33 minutes. Booker is as safe as they come for cash games with the ability to put up GPP-winning scores.
Small Forward: Marcus Morris
Small forward is loaded tonight, so the ownership on Morris shouldn’t be too high coming off his career night. With that said, the game theory part of me says to fade Morris but his price is too good at $5,100. If you pull up his player card, you can see that this is the price range where he has shown the ability to go for 7x. This has especially been true since the new year as his shot totals have gone up by an average of four per game. Any time you show me a $5,100 player with the ability to put up 14-20 shots, I’m going to jump on it. Morris should be a profitable play for you for a few more games. Once he gets back over $5,500 range, you’ll want to start looking elsewhere.
Power Forward: Terrence Jones
Terrence Jones is certainly a tournament-only option, but the price and matchup are tempting. Washington ranks 27th against power forwards, and Jones started last game, so I would assume that he’ll get that starting nod again. You’ll probably get some boxscore watchers to stay off of him as well since he recently put up a dud against the Wizards. This could be a spot for a nice profit on Jones and his $5,500 price tag if he can get to near the 30-minute mark, which is likely, as he’s averaged 31 minutes per game as a starter.
Center: Tyson Chandler
The center position is loaded tonight, so Chandler will certainly be low-owned, but that’s not the only reason that I like him tonight. Chandler has shown the ability to go for over 40 FanDuel points on multiple occasions this season, and while the Bucks aren’t terrible against the center position, they do have a slightly negative rebounding differential, which we all know is Chandler’s strength. Chandler is an even better play if you end up playing his teammate, Devin Booker. Devin Booker. If you take a look at our Court IQ tool and run a query on lineups with Chandler and Booker, you will see that they both have positive usage and fantasy point differentials. This means that they correlate well when on the court together.
Starting your FanDuel lineup with these five guys will leave you with an average of $7,725 left per player.
Hopefully this information helps you with your roster construction today and leads you to a nice score. As always, feel free to leave a comment or reach out to me on Twitter, @Socky21.