NBA Yahoo Cup Daily Fantasy Basketball Picks for Round 11

Welcome to the NBA Yahoo Cup Picks for Round 11! This is a free-to-enter, multi-round, single-entry contest with 24 rounds where the top 6,950 entries overall and top 540 entries per round share $50,000, with $10,000 to first overall and $100 to first per round. Scoring will be cumulative across all rounds. Your five lowest daily fantasy basketball scores will be dropped, and you can enter at any point, but enter today to give yourself the best chance to compete for the title. Click here to begin the chase!

The focus will be on three players — one guard, one forward, and one center — to be NBA DFS players for the Round 11 NBA Yahoo Cup contest.

Note: The landscape of the NBA is changing incredibly quickly with COVID issues throughout the league. Any player that requires an update will be made before the tip-off of this slate. 

NBA Yahoo Cup Fantasy Basketball Picks | Round 11

NBA DFS Guard: James Harden, Brooklyn Nets — $48

The Brooklyn Nets have been among the teams hit hardest by the surge of health and safety protocols forcing players to sit out games. They’ve had the past two games postponed because they could not field eight players but now they have James Harden out of protocols and Brooklyn has signed reinforcements. They will face the Los Angeles Lakers, who lead the league in pace this season. Brooklyn is eighth and taking Kevin Durant and LaMarcus Aldridge off the floor for the Nets leaves Harden with a 37.4% usage and 1.41 fantasy points per minute. 

For the Lakers, they will be without Anthony Davis and that has a big effect on them guarding the paint. Harden drives to the basket 15.2 times per game this year, which is the 12th-highest in the league. He also scores the most points in isolation on the year at 7.8 points per game, and that’s with sharing the floor with Durant. That number is sure to go up without him and the Lakers are allowing the sixth-most points scored in isolation this season. Harden will be among the highest rostered players in the NBA Yahoo Cup but that is a justifiable decision. 

NBA DFS Forward: Khris Middleton, Milwaukee Bucks — $28

With the expectation that Giannis Antetokounmpo and Bobby Portis will miss this game, Khris Middleton would be a glaring value as his salary is under $30 on Yahoo. With those two players off the floor this season, Middleton has a 34.5% usage rate and 1.24 fantasy points per minute to go along with a 28.6% assist rate. The usage is a jump of 7.7% and there simply aren’t very many players that can offer those metrics at this salary. Another positive sign is Middleton played a back-to-back set of games this week after missing some time with a knee injury. He was on the court for 28 minutes and then 31 the next night, so 34 minutes or so should be in play for this game. 

Middleton averaged over 70 touches for the past two games and the Boston Celtics are 10th in defensive rating but there is a catch. They sit at 107.3 on the season but when Al Horfordis off the floor, they fall to 110.6 and that would rank 23rd in the league. With a talented shooter in Middleton, any small factor can open the door for a monster game and he should be more closer to $35. 

Update –In the perfect illustration of NBA DFS in the past two weeks, two players in this article saw their situation change shortly after the article was published. The Bucks announced that Antetokounmpo and Portis have both cleared the health and safety protocols. If they are both active (Antetokounmpo is a game-time decision with reports he is likely to play), the path to a ceiling game for Middleton is much more difficult. With the upside needed in the NBA Yahoo Cup, it’s easy to go a different direction than Middleton. 

In an effort to fit Harden and LeBron James in the same lineup, the Golden State Warriors offer value in Otto Porter. They are missing three rotation players to health and safety protocols and Porter has played 30 minutes in each of the past two games. While his usage rate has only been 13.1% in those two games, he has also produced 1.02 fantasy points per minute. The salary is barely above the minimum and with a thin rotation behind him in a big game, Porter’s minutes should be secure again tonight. The Warriors and the Suns are both in the top 10 in pace this season and Power is shooting just under 40% from a 3-point distance this year. He has the points per dollar upside worth chasing to pair with two elite players in James and Harden. 

NBA DFS Center: Onyeka Okongwu, Atlanta Hawks — $14

The Atlanta Hawks facing the New York Knicks in a rematch of last year’s playoff series kicks off this slate and has one of the best values on the slate. Atlanta has a multitude of players in the protocols including Clint Capela.That has opened the door for Onyeka Okongwuand he started in the last game, logging 34 minutes and scoring 38.1 Yahoo fantasy points. What makes that more impressive is that came against Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers, one of the more difficult matchups for any center. Okongwu has been largely buried on the depth chart in his short NBA career and has dealt with significant injuries. However, the Hawks took him sixth overall in the 2020 NBA Draft and there is a high level of talent. Playing against the Knicks and their interior defense can allow him to flash enormous upside again. They are 23rd in points allowed in the paint and 14th in rebounds allowed and if Okongwu is given 30-plus minutes again, he could have the highest points per dollar upside for the NBA Yahoo Cup. 

Update – Okongwu is now in the health and safety protocols and Atlanta just gets thinner and thinner. Gorgui Dieng is going to be one of the most popular plays on the slate but he’s also the minimum salary. Paring Dieng, Porter, James, and Harden leaves over $20 on average for each of the other four slots in the lineup. With the caveat of an extremely short sample of 36 minutes, Dieng has 1.16 fantasy points per minute over these past two games and will now likely be asked to play at least 25 minutes, if not over 30. He’s walking into the same matchup outlined for Okongwu and is $4 less expensive, so it’s not hard to just go with the field and lock him in to afford other great players on the slate.

Update Part Two – In a surprise, Hawks center Clint Capela has cleared protocols and will be active today. This leaves two paths for the Yahoo Cup. The first is to stick with Dieng as Atlanta is still extremely short on big men. Dieng is going to be the primary backup for Capela, who averages 30 minutes per game. 

The second route to take is Nets center Blake Griffin is only $3 more expensive than Dieng. He’s been playing 30 minutes or more in the past three games for Brooklyn. In those games, Griffin has 1.07 fantasy points per minute in those three games so from that perspective, he looks similar to Dieng. The difference is Griffin will have guaranteed minutes.