Wednesday, Dec. 18 delivers a nine-game main slate for all the big daily fantasy sites. Before you lock in your NBA DFS lineups and NBA DFS picks on DraftKings, FanDuel, Yahoo and FantasyDraft, make sure to check out check out Awesemo’s NBA DFS rankings and projections. Let’s dig into some NBA DFS Picks, including Bradley Beal, Davis Bertans, Troy Brown and more.
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Check out Chris Spags’ Switch and Hedge for more NBA DFS picks and analysis HERE.
Don’t forget to check out the NBA Strategy Show featuring Josh Engleman and Sal Vetri as they break down the NBA DFS slate and give out their thoughts on Andre Drummond, Jimmy Butler, injury news and analysis.
Here are all the links you need
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NBA DFS Picks: Prime Time Players
Karl Anthony Towns: Minnesota Timberwolves vs. New Orleans Pelicans
DraftKings $10,700, FanDuel $10,800, Yahoo $48 Ownership Rating (preliminary run): DraftKings TBA%, FanDuel TBA% Yahoo Fantasy TBA%
Keep an eye on the news as Karl Anthony Towns has been dealing with a sore knee. On the positive side of things, the Timberwolves last played on Friday and they are at home. This Friday is the start of a four-game west coast swing that has them playing again at Denver, Saturday at Portland, Monday in Golden State and wrapping things up against Sacramento next Thursday.
In his last half dozen games against the Pelicans, some with and some without Anthony Davis, the lowest fantasy total for Towns was 48 with an average of 59..1 or 1.68 fantasy points per minute. His season average is not much lower at 1.57 fantasy points per minute. As long as there are no concerning knee announcements, roll him out with no restraint.
NBA DFS Picks: Wizards in Winter
Washington Wizards vs. Chicago Bulls
The Wizards will be our best source of value today as they are now without Rui Hachimura, Thomas Bryant, Moritz Wagner, Jordan McRae, C.J. Miles and of course, John Wall.
The masses will be heavy on these plays, so popularity along with price and projected production for each player is going to vary by site. Let’s look at the key moving parts in a site agnostic manner.
Bradley Beal
DraftKings $9,500, FanDuel $9,800, Yahoo $44 Ownership Rating (preliminary run): DraftKings TBA%, FanDuel TBA% Yahoo Fantasy TBA%
This is the easiest analysis. Bradley Beal is rolling with a career-high 31.4% usage rate, up from his 25.9% career figure along with highs in points, assists, field goal and free throw attempts. It would not be a surprise at all if he flirts with a triple-double in this game with at least 25 shot attempts. His best pricing is on DraftKings, FantasyDraft and Yahoo.
Isaiah Thomas
DraftKings $5,100, FanDuel $4,900, Yahoo $18 Ownership Rating (preliminary run): DraftKings TBA%, FanDuel TBA% Yahoo Fantasy TBA%
The former University of Washington stalwart returned on Monday after missing five games with a calf injury. He played 25.5 minutes right off the bat, so that should be a reasonable expectation for tonight with a chance for something in the upper-20s. He has about a 25% usage rate this season and will need to help carry the offensive load. If his shot is falling, Thomas could prove to be the best value play from the Wizards tonight. He is equally appealing on DraftKings, FantasyDraft and FanDuel tonight.
Davis Bertans
DraftKings $6,500, FanDuel $5,800, Yahoo $24 Ownership Rating (preliminary run): DraftKings TBA%, FanDuel TBA% Yahoo Fantasy TBA%
It will be hard to avoid him on FanDuel where he is just $5,800. In eight December games, Bertans is averaging 21.0 points and 4.8 rebounds with a whopping 10.4 three-point attempts that he is nailing at a 48.2% clip. With Rui Hachimura out, he will be the nominal center when Ian Mahinmi is not on the court, which should have him playing 35-38 minutes. Projecting his December 1.2 fantasy points per minute gives about a 35-fantasy-point floor with upside to 50-plus in this matchup.
Troy Brown Jr.
DraftKings $5,000, FanDuel $4,600, Yahoo $14 Ownership Rating (preliminary run): DraftKings TBA%, FanDuel TBA% Yahoo Fantasy TBA%
It is going to be hard to avoid Brown tonight regardless of which DFS site you prefer. Across his eight December appearances, Brown is averaging just shy of one fantasy point per minute. He can play three positions for the Wizards and they are going to need at least 30 minutes from him tonight.
Ian Mahinmi
DraftKings $5,000, FanDuel $4,600, Yahoo $14 Ownership Rating (preliminary run): DraftKings TBA%, FanDuel TBA% Yahoo Fantasy TBA%
I must admit, I was actually intrigued when the Wizards signed Mahinmi after his final season with the Pacers. Sadly, that was his age 29 season and it has been a disaster over the last four years for the now 33-yea-old pivot. To me, this is a fool’s gold spot, particularly after I talked myself into playing Mahinmi in my main lineup on Saturday when he cobbled together only 10.8 fantasy points in 17.4 minutes against the Grizzlies in Memphis. That is a hard pass for me. The same goes for Isaac Bonga and his career 0.69 fantasy points per minute, outside of any MME game stacks.
FantasyCruncher Tip of the Day
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With the incredibly user-friendly and flexible rules creation feature on FantasyCruncher, we can take our lineup construction to the next level.
Today we will look at how to use the group feature within FantasyCruncher to facilitate a game stack.
For this example, we will be focusing on the 231.0 total of the Chicago Bulls at Washington Wizards game.
Going to the Advanced Options >>> Groups will allow us to set up the players we want to include. For this example, I have named my group “CHI at WAS” and requested that at least five players from this group are used in every lineup. The reason I named this group is to easily find it because I do not want to make all of my lineups focused on this game, we can use the “enable/disable” function to turn this rule on and off.
When creating a group in this manner, we will want to do a few runs to see what type of lineups are created. Our individual player exposure percentages will be applied and then FantasyCruncher will choose the best five on a point-per-dollar basis. In this case, that is bringing in more of the Washington Wizards players than I would like to see. So I am using the General setting tab to set a minimum number of players from each team. In this instance, I am using a minimum of two from each team for some balance.
Final Thoughts
Tune in to the Deeper Dive/Live Before Lock shows on Twitch and Periscope beginning at 5 p.m. EST tonight for all of the up-to-date information.
As always, you can reach out to me in Awesemo.com Premium Slack or on Twitter @EMacDFS if you have any NBA DFS questions about DraftKings, FanDuel, Yahoo or FantasyDraft.
Good Luck NBA DFS Gamers! ~ EMac
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