NBA Yahoo Cup Daily Fantasy Basketball Picks for Round 19

Welcome to the NBA Yahoo Cup Picks for Round 19! Tonight’s nine-gamer is the biggest NBA DFS slate since the All-Star Break, and it is shaping up to be a very competitive slate on paper. Every single game has a spread under seven points and all but two games are over a 221-point total. There are a lot of routes to take tonight and even some popular plays worth chasing.

This is a free-to-enter, multi-round, single-entry Yahoo fantasy basketball 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 — for NBA DFS picks for the Round 19 NBA Yahoo Cup contest.

Yahoo Cup Fantasy Basketball & NBA DFS Picks | Round 19

Best NBA Fantasy Guard: Devin Booker, Phoenix Suns — $38

The Suns will be without Chris Paul for basically the remaining schedule of the regular season and that means Devin Booker will be the featured player in the offense. Granted, that was mostly already the case — he is averaging 25.5 points per game on the season — but Booker dished 12 assists last night. While he cannot be expected to replicate six steals again, the 12 assists are eye-opening since Paul was leading the league in assists and averaged 19.3 potential assists per game. If Booker is now going to take on some of that role, the sky is the limit every night for him. He has an assist rate of 27.4% when Paul is off the floor compared to 20.8% on the season.

The scariest part of last night was Booker had such a massive score while only taking 16 shots. The steals will normalize, but this is a player that is easily capable of taking 25 shots in a game, and the matchup with the New Orleans Pelicans is a good time to do just that. The Pelicans are 22nd in defensive rating, and this game is set up for Booker to feast. He has a 33.4% usage rate without Paul, and he should not be under $40 in salary, regardless of his popularity.

Not only does Booker look like a great play tonight for Yahoo lineups, but Awesemo projections have him slated for 29.9 points. His NBA player prop for points is a great bet, which is sitting at over/under 26.5, and OddsShopper has an expected win rate of 63% when betting the over.

Best NBA Fantasy Forward: Jaxson Hayes, New Orleans Pelicans — $10

This same game offers another player that will be very popular, but the salary is simply too good to pass on. Jaxson Hayes has been back and forth a little bit as far as being a starter lately, but Pelicans coach Willie Green has already confirmed that guard Devonte’ Graham will be in a bench role tonight. That means Hayes should be counted on as a starter, and Hayes has 0.89 Yahoo points per minute this season. While that may not seem like a ton, the salary is site minimum and he has flashed major upside even in games where he is played under 30 minutes. Since the start of February, Hayes has hit at least 20 Yahoo points in seven games despite playing over 28 minutes just twice. He is also mixed in games of 30.9, 41.4 and 41.7, so the upside is massive at just $10.

It is not extremely likely he will flirt with 40 Yahoo points tonight since McCollum, Brandon Ingram and Jonas Valanciunas are all in the starting lineup as well, but in this recent span Hayes has a true shooting rate of 76.9%. Hayes has taken 238 shots this season and 164 (68.9% of his attempts) within five feet of the basket. Phoenix is strong in that area, allowing the eighth-lowest field goal percentage. Having said that, they still allow a 61.9% conversion rate within five feet, and Hayes is a massive bargain that opens up the rest of the lineup to be built in any direction.

Best NBA Fantasy Center: Christian Wood, Houston Rockets — $31

The Houston Rockets take on the Orlando Magic tonight, and there is not much intrigue outside of draft implications and DFS since both teams are quite bad this season. However, no game has a higher total tonight than this game (234 points), and both teams are in the bottom six in defensive rating this year. To add another layer to the appeal for fantasy scoring, both teams are also in the top 10 in pace, and it is a great spot for Christian Wood. He is not exactly a dominating big man in the paint — just 5.4 touches per game — but he does score 5.5 points per game from the paint, and Orlando is 28th in both rebounds and points allowed in the paint. Wood averages 15.5 rebounding chances per game as well, and the environment is one of the best of the night. Wood is leading the Rockets in both usage rate (23.9%) and Yahoo points per minute (1.18), and his salary works very well with the other two players, leaving $24 per spot for the rest of the roster.

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