NBA Starting 5: Thursday, March 2nd
Hello everyone, and welcome to the most exciting three-game slate that we’ve seen in quite a while. Normally, three-game slates are similar to cleaning your room. They’re played out of necessity or out of boredom, but today is a whole different situation. Normally if you really want to profit on a small slate, you have to go contrarian, but I’m really not too certain if there is going to be too much chalk today. You can really make more realistic lineups today than you can make different combinations at Chipotle (as I wrote this there are 655,360 combinations listed for Chipotle, but now I’m starting to think that they’re lying to me).
Today, I’m going to go through my top plays at each position regardless of price. We are going to use some of RG’s wonderful tools to look and find some great spots at just a glance. Mostly what we are going to be looking at is Defense v. Position and Advanced Player Stats. Fade these plays at your own risk.
Point Guard: Damian Lillard, Portland Trail Blazers, $8,800
So, at the point guard position there are about five great plays. Westbrook draws a great matchup, Curry gets a bump with Durant out, and Kemba gets one of the highest paced matchups, but I’m really liking Lillard way more. First of all, Lillard has the second highest usage of on the slate at over 30% and draws the 25th rank DvP at the PG position, but what really gets me antsy in my pantsy is looking at his last eight games. When I draft someone for cash or GPPs you don’t just want a high floor or a high ceiling, you want both. Lillard in the last six games has over 40 points six times and has a high of over 60. If you look at the two games where he did not go over 40, he shot 3-for-19 and 6-for-21 from the field, which you aren’t going to see too often. Tonight, he is more of a lock for 40 points than I am a lock to end a night of drunk begging my Uber driver to take me through Taco Bell. You can go with any of the other PGs tonight as well, but I think Lillard will be the most overlooked.
Shooting Guard: Klay Thompson, Golden State Warriors, $7,200
This one may be fairly obvious, but it should be very obvious. With Durant off the floor we see two pretty massive usage bumps. One is Curry and the other one is Klay, and these increases are MASSIVE. Without Durant on the floor, Klay has a 33.9% usage rate which is 6.7% higher than with him on the floor. He averages over 20% more points per minute without him on the floor. There are a few other good plays on the board at the position, but this is far and away the best pick. You can fade him if you like, but if you fade both him and Curry tonight, chances are you may end the night sadder than whoever Steve Harvey’d the Oscars (who was actually my old boss if you wanted to know where my incompetence comes from).
Small Forward: Maurice Harkless, Portland Trail Blazers, $4,800
I said this last week and I’ll say it again; Harkless is one of the best plays on the board tonight. He’s the package wrapped in toilet paper at your yearly white elephant gift exchange. Everyone thinks it’s crap, but you look inside and there’s a $100 gift certificate to Taco Bell because someone forgot to buy his gift until he was at the drive through on the way there. Since Evan Turner has been out, Harkless has only failed to go 5x twice. One was the first game after the injury and the second was against Utah. He is averaging well over 30 minutes per game in that span and realistically has 8x upside (see his game at ATL) if he actually has the balls to put up 15 shots. He’s essentially a seatbelt. He has almost no chance to hurt you and can really save you. Fade him if you like, but on a three-game slate I can’t find a reason to.
Power Forward: T.J. Warren, Pheonix Suns, $5,500
Want to hear something sad? At the PF position, the player with the highest usage tonight is Marquese Chriss at 20%. Really, at PF I’m probably going to be playing a Sun regardless. Charlotte is mediocre against forwards and ranks in the bottom half of the league against both the SF and PF. Chriss and Warren both rank at around 19% usage in the offense, so I was having trouble trying to figure out whether to put Warren or Chriss here, but decided to go with Warren just because of safety.
Since the P.J. Tucker trade, Warren has been within two or three points of 30 every single game (that’s over 5x for you guys who are either too hungover to do it in your head or can’t find the calculator app on your phone). Chriss offers 40-point upside at a lower price, but has the chance to get in foul trouble early and spend the night picking his nose on the bench. Warren is the guy in college that you never hang out with until you need someone to help you move. He’s likely to put up between 25-35 with upside for more.
Center: Frank Kaminsky, Charlotte Hornets, $7,200
As of late, Kaminsky has pretty much been me trying to go to the bathroom late at night without turning on the lights. Very hit or miss. Over his last 10 he has four under 28 DK points games and four over 42 DK points. At his current price, you can expect him to go anywhere from 4x to 8x, which makes him an incredible GPP play tonight. Most of his big games have come in up paced matchups, and he draws an up-paced matchup (which is great for his style of play) against the Suns, who also rank 22nd in terms of DvP vs the C. Kaminsky only has the fourth highest usage on the slate at center tonight at 20.87%, but a lot of that has to do with how he was used earlier on in the season, as it’s closer 25% since his role has changed. With the other good center options being Nurkic (who could easily get in foul trouble), Adams (whose role diminishes with Kanter in the lineup) and Kanter (who’s harder to predict than the mind of a 20-year-old college girl), I’m going to roll the dice with Kaminsky, who offers the biggest upside of any C on the board.