In the midst of March Madness, the NBA is offering up a five-game DFS slate on Sunday, and this article will analyze Stokastic’s ownership projections to see how to best handle high-and low-owned players in order to gain leverage in DFS tournaments. Let’s get into the top NBA DFS leverage picks for today to help you build optimal NBA DFS lineups, including Jusuf Nurkic.
NBA DFS Value: Leverage Picks & Optimizer Plays
Despite it being a small main slate, there is no shortage of quality plays tonight on both DraftKings and FanDuel. Jusuf Nurkic is going under-owned, and he looks like one of the top leverage plays on the slate.
Nurkic is in a great spot against a Clippers team against which he has had a ton of success, and he is projected to be drastically under-owned on both sites. While he has not been great since returning from a calf injury, the masses are clearly scared off by his recent production, and this is a great time to buy in at depressed ownership. Nurkic is averaging 42.95 DraftKings points over his past four meetings with the Clippers, and with Portland pushing for a play-in spot, expect the best Nurkic has to offer tonight. He is projected to be only 10.3% owned on DraftKings at $5,700, so he is going severely under-owned relative to his optimal percentage.
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Nurkic is more expensive on FanDuel at $6,800, but he’s still going massively under-owned, with only 1.9% of lineups expected to roster him. As of this writing, Nurkic is currently projected to be optimal 22.2% of the time on DraftKings and 10.4% of the time on FanDuel.
Another player flying under the radar tonight is Houston forward Tari Eason. Eason has plenty of value at only $4,600 on DraftKings and $5,300 on FanDuel and is right there with Nurkic as far leverage goes across both sites.
Eason is projected to be in only 11.1% of lineups on DraftKings despite his cheap price tag, and he is not much higher on FanDuel (11.9%). With optimal percentages of 19.4% on DraftKings and 18.9% on FanDuel, Eason is clearly falling through the cracks a bit, as he looks like one of the top tournaments plays on the slate. He might not be the safest play tonight, but he offers surprisingly good leverage on both sites, and there’s a lot to like about him in GPP’s.
On the flip side, New Orleans forward Herbert Jones rates poorly from a leverage perspective on both DraftKings and FanDuel in Stokastic’s Boom/Bust Tool. At only $5,000 on DraftKings, Jones is projected to be in 20% of lineups, with an optimal percentage of just 9.5%.
While Jones is definitely in play at this price on DraftKings, other mid-range players like Eason and Nurkic are going under-owned, so it might be wise to avoid him in large-field GPP’s.
Situations to Monitor
As of this writing, there is very little to monitor from an injury perspective. That said, NBA injury news is always unpredictable, and it seems like every night there are unexpected scratches, sometimes at the last minute. That’s especially the case on weekends when beat reporters and staff are less aware of team situations. Tune into the Stokastic Live Before Lock show on YouTube at 5:00 p.m. ET for all of the up-to-date analysis as late NBA news breaks and changes to the best NBA DFS picks and plays.
