We get a nice 7 gamer today with a lot of interesting leverage spots – I actually really love this slate. We have some interesting injury situations to consider, so let’s break those down:
When we look at it by position:
The top projected guards are Westbrook and Irving, which isn’t surprising. Normally I would be wary of using both of them together on a 7-game slate with low scoring multipliers, but on this slate, we don’t have a lot of high-multiplier guards that project super well, and a lot of the other good guard options have lower-than-normal multipliers (Holiday at 1.25, Tatum and Brown at 1.15, Lillard at 1.15, etc.). I’m probably content matching the field ownership on Russ and Kyrie (which I’m guessing will be high – maybe in the 50% range for each of them) rather than taking a strong stand here. Jrue is my next favorite guard (assuming Giannis is out, but I’m willing to assume that at lock time if we don’t get any news to the contrary), and the others in the mix for me are Tatum/Brown, DeRozan/Murray, Lillard/McCollum, and Paul/Booker (max 1 for each of those pairings). Beal is an interesting leverage option if you don’t want to play Russ, Garland is a strong option if Sexton sits, and then DVincenzo, Shamet, Harris, and Melton are fringy but high-upside tournament options.
Forward is a little more clustered than guard as we don’t have any studs running away with the projections here. Middleton (with no Giannis), Tatum, DeRozan, Davis, Brown, and James are your “strong” options, but there are also a lot of tourney plays here. Alize Johnson (who played 32 minutes last game and went absolutely bonkers) is a pretty amazing play with a nice 2x multiplier, and I might just go all-in on him here and hope that projection systems (and thus the field) are lower on him. Thaddeus Young, Covington, Jeff Green, and Keldon Johnson all come with nice, big multipliers and make strong tourney plays.
The clear top option here is Vucevic on a Bulls team with no LaVine, but there’s blowout risk here depending on which Bucks are active. If Giannis plays (and no other major Bucks sit), I’d be somewhat wary of Vuc, as he’s looking like he’ll be the highest owned center and that seems like a good leverage point on this slate. The next three clearly strong guys are Allen, Gobert, and Nurkic, and that’s where I want the majority of my center exposure as of now. Depending on the Bucks’ injury situation I might add Brook Lopez to that list, and then as part of me “a non-Kyrie Net in every lineup” plan, I’ll include Jordan in my player pool (assuming he starts – if he’s coming off the bench, that’s an indicator that his role is going to be very limited in that particular game).
