Hello DFS Army members and welcome to Mutt18’s Value Traps and Who’s Trending for the 2019-2020 NBA DFS Season! My name is Steve aka Mutt18. I am @mutt_18 on Twitter as well, so give me a follow for any updates on this article as I will tweet them out. A little background about me, I’ve been grinding DFS for about 6-7 years now. DFS helped me pay my way through college and I am now a full-time firefighter. If you’re familiar with last year’s article then welcome back! I’m very excited to keep doing these as I feel they provide a huge edge, especially now that FanDuel has gotten rid of the Drop Score, identifying those Value Traps is going to be even more important as rostering one of them in your lineup will ruin your night. For those unfamiliar or new to the article, I break things down as follows:
This article here at DFS Army as we will be looking at Value Traps. A value trap, also referred to as a land mine, is a player that jumps out either in the Domination Station or Research Station as representing value but in reality they really have no way of making value, either through inconsistent play, lack of opportunity, or they are just a bad play in general. These plays are often the ones that either make or break your lineups. My goal in this article is to dig a bit deeper and use all the great data available to us in the DS and RS and help try to identify those “Value Traps” that will destroy your lineups and end up costing you money. By identifying them my hope is to help educate you on what to look for and how to avoid these lineup killers. From there I will also be focusing on some of the lesser known tools available in the Research Station, specifically the Who’s Hot, and Clock Watch sections that can help us identify those players trending in the right direction that we can identify and use before the rest of the DFS world catches on.
Tonight we have a really juicy 11 game slate, so there’s going to be more Value Traps than you would find on a smaller slate and we’re going to need to really single them out to avoid them and kill your lineups, as nailing the value picks will be key to winning tonight. First let’s take a look at last article’s picks:
Value Traps:
Darius Garland (FD: 10.7 DK: 13.25) – 2.4x value return on FanDuel and 2.8x value return on DK. Nailed this pick here as he hasn’t really been doing anything offensively other than standing around.
Dewayne Dedmon (FD: 1.2 DK: 1.25) – 0.25x value on FanDuel and .029x value on DraftKings. He got relegated to the bench for playing so badly and frankly he deserves it. He got outplayed by Richaun Holmes in every aspect of the game and I see his role diminishing more once Giles returns.
Who’s Trending:
RJ Barrett (FD: 12.4 DK: 14.0) – He killed a ton of my lineups, we have to remember that he is a rookie and will struggle from time to time, but I didn’t expect him to struggle that badly in such a smash spot.
Devin Booker (FD: 43.3 DK: 47.0) – 5.1x value on FanDuel and just under 6x value on DraftKings! We knew Booker would need to step up in that game for the Suns and boy he sure delivered. If it wasn’t for me being so heavy on Barrett it would’ve been another big night.
Marcus Smart (FD: 35.8 DK: 37.5) – 6.9x value (Nice) on FanDuel, and a return of 8.3x value on DraftKings. This became and easy plug and play as we got word that Brown was out early and we already knew he was in a smash spot, so the pivot to smart wasn’t a tough decision.
Value Traps
Marc Gasol (FD: $4,900 DK: $4,900) – Gasol is projected to net you 5.6x value on both sites tonight, as his price continues to drop…however there is good reason for it. He has a 13% usage rate so far this year, and he gets a bad matchup here against Brook Lopez. With the kind of athlete that Lopez is Nurse will likely roll Ibaka out there for more minutes tonight as Gasol isn’t athletic enough to guard him on the perimeter. Even if Nurse does leave him out there against Lopez for an extended period of time, Lopez will pull him away from the basket, and most of his fantasy points are coming from rebounds and blocks, so that diminishes his ceiling even more. There will be a time to play Gasol at a cheap price, but tonight is not one of them.
Dwayne Bacon (FD: $4,300 DK: $4,300) – Bacon has been trending downward ever since that big first game of the season where he went for almost 10x value. Since then, we’ve seen the emergence of DeVonte’ Graham and PJ Washington, along with the new and improved version of Cody Zeller zapping away usage. Let’s take a look at his stats over the past few games:
As you can see he’s trending downward pretty badly, he’s returning less than 4x value over his last 3 games, and he’s only averaging 15 FPs on FanDuel and 16 FPs on DraftKings. Throw that in with his averaging around only 0.81 FPPM and he’s only projected for 24 minutes tonight. At his price he just doesn’t have the floor, or the ceiling that we’re looking for in a value play.
Just Missed the Cut: Isaac Bonga (FD: $4,100 DK: $3,600) – Bonga is also another guy that doesn’t have the upside that we’re looking for, and his minutes and usage are already trending downward from the beginning of the season. With all of the value we have with the T-Wolves there’s really no need to play Bonga tonight.
Who’s Trending
Noah Vonleh (FD: $3,500 DK: $4,200) – Vonleh is likely going to be the biggest beneficiary of KAT being suspended for the next few games. Vonleh is probably going to start over Jordan Bell, as the T-Wolves are still being cautious with him. He’s projected at around 27 minutes tonight, and he also averages around 1 FPPM. That would put him at over 7x value and at his price point, especially on FanDuel, he doesn’t have to do much to hit 5x with some serious upside here.
Andre Drummond (FD: $10,300 DK: $10,100) – The Nets are still bleeding fantasy points to opposing Centers, as they’re allowing over 63 FPPG over the first few games of the season. I am a little bit concerned about them being on the 2nd half of a B2B, but the matchup is simply too good to ignore. Blake Griffin is also still out, so Drummond will have a ton of usage down low and if Casey is smart (debateable) he’ll just have them feed Drummond down low all game long. He’s my favorite pay up option at Center, but he’s not a lock button play on this slate like he was last night.
D’Angelo Russell (FD: $9,400 DK: $8,900) – Let’s first take a look at his stats over the past few games:
Now we have Steph Curry out of the picture, and Draymond is likely going to sit this game out. His price has risen but he’ll be their main guy on offense moving forward with them now in full tank mode and he has nothing to lose here. He also has a 27.8% usage rate on the year, which will climb to over 30% with no Curry and no Draymond. He won’t be under 10K for long, so take advantage while we still can.
Just Missed the Cut: Rui Hachimura (FD: $5,900 DK: $6,200) – Hachimura has a favorable matchup, as the Wolves rank 24th against opposing PFs and Hachimura has looked very comfortable in the NBA. He has a 21.4% usage rate and he’s likely going to play around 35 minutes tonight after having the last two nights to rest. We all saw how fast paced the Wizards play after their matchup a few days ago with the Rockets and he has 40+ FP potential here.
Everyone, NBA is very volatile with late scratches so please pay extra attention to Breaking News today! Stay on your toes!
As always, keep your eyes peeled for updates as we get news closer to lock. All my updates will be in BOLD.
That’s all I got for today guys, any questions feel free to hit me up in the coaches forums (I’m your FanDuel coach today!) or via Twitter (username is at the top of the article) Now let’s go get that money!
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