Starting 5 - Advanced Player Stats: Saturday, March 14th
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 Advanced Player Stats tool. This tool provides a quick and easy way to look at how a particular player contributes to his team. We want to find players with a high usage, assist, and rebounding rate, and use that information to make intelligent decisions when constructing our lineups. Today’s slate is brutal, and while I fully expect some news to come out that changes everything, let’s take a look at the players we should be targeting on DraftKings in the absence of any game-changing injuries or rest.
Point Guard: Alexey Shved, New York Knicks, $5500
Shved has been a high usage player all season, both with his time in Philadelphia, and now with the Knicks. He’s a good scorer, and his 25.4% usage rate is very solid, especially for a player at his price point. While his rebounding and assist rate numbers seem low, it’s always important to look at recent production as well. Since entering the starting lineup for New York, Shved has seen an uptick in both rebounds and assists. So, what we have is a high usage player at a very affordable price on a difficult slate. The Knicks are very likely to get run out of the building, but my guess is that Shved still sees a reasonable amount of minutes given that, at this point in the season, these games are all about getting guys experience and evaluating for the future.
Shooting Guard: Rodney Stuckey, Indiana Pacers, $6700
Stuckey has been amazing lately, and while I don’t expect him to keep giving us 40+ fantasy point performances, I do expect him to keep producing solid numbers. His usage rate isn’t quite as high as Shved’s, but he makes up for it with a solid assist rate. Shooting guard is a very thin position today, while Stuckey’s advanced metrics tell me that his involvement in Indiana’s offense make him a solid target tonight. You can try to go cheaper, but you’re just not going to find another shooting guard that offers the same level of involvement in his team’s offense.
Small Forward: Gordon Hayward, Utah Jazz, $7600
Hayward has exactly the type of numbers you’re looking for when using advanced metrics to dig for quality plays. He owns a high usage rate of 26.10%, an assist rate of 20%, and a rebounding rate of 10.82%. What that tells you is that Hayward is the type of player you can rely on not only to score, but to boost his fantasy totals with a healthy amount of assists and rebounds. On a day where lineup construction may prove to be difficult, building your lineup around a solid, high-floor and high-ceiling player like Hayward makes a lot of sense.
Power Forward: Nerlens Noel, Philadelphia 76ers, $6800
I really like Noel today. He’s a great example of a player that doesn’t need a high usage rate to be a quality daily fantasy play. He sports a rebounding rate of 16.54% that’s on the rise due to his recent play, but what is really exciting are his block and steal rates. Much of his fantasy value comes from his ability to pile up defensive stats. When you compare numbers like these with a very strong recent production trend, Noel becomes a very easy play against a weak Brooklyn frontcourt. Due to defensive stats being such a high percentage of Noel’s score, he has a comfortable floor even if he’s not making any shots. If he does happen to have a game where he hits a couple of extra shots or gets a couple more open looks, he turns into a high-upside play because those defensive stats are always going to be there.
Center: Brook Lopez, Brooklyn Nets, $6700
Brook Lopez is one of my favorite targets tonight. He’s still relatively cheap across the industry, and I think he’s a borderline must play for only $6700 on DraftKings. Only DeMarcus Cousins has a higher usage rate among centers. A high usage rate combined with a very favorable matchup with the Sixers already makes Lopez a very attractive play. Now consider his block rate, which is a very solid 32.57%. The only issue I have with Lopez is his very low rebounding rate for a center. However, he has double-digit rebounds in three of his last four games and nine in the other. I think he’s a near lock for a double-double tonight, and his upside is very high